Why We Celebrate Weekly Communion

New Testament Practice

The Lord’s Supper is an ordinary element of New Covenant worship.

Acts

Acts 2:42–49 describes the worship life of the early church by saying several things were done “continually.” This means that whenever they met, they participated in these elements. Acts 2:42 summarizes the basic elements of New Covenant worship:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

These four basic elements of New Covenant worship were celebrated “daily” in the early days of the Church (Acts 2:46). This is why John Calvin argued for the Lord’s Supper “at least weekly” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.17.43), and also said:

Thus we ought always to provide that no meeting of the Church is held without the word, prayer, the dispensation of the Supper, and alms. We may gather from Paul that this was the order observed by the Corinthians, and it is certain that this was the practice many ages after (Institutes, 4.17.44).

We know that the “breaking of bread” was the Lord’s Supper because St. Luke uses the definite article “the” before each of the four elements mentioned in Acts 2:42: the apostles’ doctrine, the fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers. This is a definite article par excellence, meaning, it is not just any bread. The Supper was called “the breaking of the bread” because that was what Jesus did on the Passover night (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19, 24:30; 1 Cor. 10:16, 11:24). The Lord’s Supper, then, was as ordinary as preaching, prayer, and fellowship. Calvin therefore concluded:

For there is not the least doubt that the Sacred Supper was in that era set before the believers every time they met together (Institutes, 4.17.46).

The New Testament also describes the worship of the Christian community as “coming together” for the express purpose of “breaking bread.” Acts 20:7 says: “Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to [for the purpose of] break bread…”

Matthew Henry and John R. W. Stott both treated that as the “normal, regular practice of the church in Troas” (Stott, The Message of Acts, 321; Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 2154). In that passage, the Supper is joined with preaching (Acts 20:7, 8, 11). Stott commented:

Word and sacrament were combined…and the universal church has followed suit ever since. For God speaks to his people through his Word both as it is read and expounded from Scripture and as it is dramatized in the two gospel sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper...What builds up the church more than anything else is the ministry of God’s word as it comes to us through Scripture and Sacrament (that is the right coupling), audibly and visibly, in declaration and drama (Stott, The Message of Acts, 321).

1 Corinthians

Paul uses this same “coming together” terminology in 1 Corinthians (11:17, 18, 20, 33, 34, 14:23). He describes the church assembled as “coming together” for the purpose of preaching and partaking of the Supper (cf. Acts 20:7-11). This led Francis Turretin to write:

the practice of the apostolic church” was to “constantly retain[…] the breaking of the bread…which was customarily done on the Lord’s day when they assembled to hear the preaching and to perform the other public exercises of piety (Institutes, 3:445).

This “coming together” was as the “church” (1 Cor. 14:23). The Greek word ekklesia is the New Testament equivalent of the Hebrew qahal: a “covenant assembly.” What was the purpose of “coming together” as the covenant assembly? To “eat” the Lord’s Supper (11:33). Paul rebuked the Corinthians because they were not coming for that purpose but for their own purposes (11:17, 20). David Prior writes:

It is no wonder that Paul could not call the gatherings of the church at Corinth ‘the Lord’s Supper’: they were not under the Lord’s authority; there was hardly any awareness of the Lord’s presence; the purpose behind them seemed to be scarcely directed towards remembering the Lord’s death (The Message of 1 Corinthians, 187).

Hughes Oliphant Old concluded from these texts:

…it is in the meeting together for the purpose of sharing the meal that these individuals become the church…It is this supper which constitutes the church...The Lord’s Day is distinguished by the fact that it is the day for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper at the Lord’s Table, sharing all together the Lord’s Cup (Worship That Is Reformed According to Scripture, 110).

Summary of the New Testament Pattern

The life of the early Church was marked by participation in preaching and the Lord’s Supper—whether daily (Acts) or weekly (“on the first day of the week;” 1 Cor. 16:2) in Corinth.

Application: Heidelberg Catechism

This is explicitly taught in our Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 103 on the fourth commandment. We are to “diligently attend church to learn the Word of God, to use the Holy Sacraments, to call publicly upon the Lord, and to give Christian alms.” That corresponds to the four elements of Acts 2:42.

In his exposition of this commandment, Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83) said that besides preaching, prayer, and alms, we are “to use the Holy Sacraments,” and that, “…the use of the sacraments is most intimately connected with a proper observance and sanctification of the Sabbath” (Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, 568).

The Old Testament and Covenant Renewal

New Testament worship finds its background in the covenant renewals of the Old Testament. Every time we gather for worship, we renew our vows of trust in the Lord; more importantly, he renews his covenant of grace with us through the means of covenant signs and seals.

In other words, we participate in a covenant ceremony as did Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and the disciples in the Upper Room. Biblical covenants were ratified by signs in public ceremonies. That’s what we’re doing in worship.

• With Adam: animal skins (Gen. 3:21)

• With Noah: the rainbow (Gen. 9:13)

• With Abraham: circumcision (Gen. 17:10)

• With Moses: the blood of the covenant (Ex. 24:8)

• With Joshua: circumcision of the second generation (Josh. 5:2)

• With the disciples and with us: the Lord’s Supper—“the new covenant” (Luke 22:20) in visible form.

When a covenant is renewed in Scripture, a communal meal is celebrated in the presence of God (e.g. Neh. 8:9–12, 18; Ex. 24:11; Deut. 12:6–7, 14:26; John 6:53–58; 1 Cor. 5:7–8, 11:25–26; Rev. 3:20, 19:9). That’s what the Lord’s Supper is for us in the New Covenant.

The Holy Supper and our Struggle with Sin

We need the Lord’s Supper because of our wretchedness. Our confession says:

We believe that our gracious God, mindful of our insensitivity and weakness, has ordained sacraments (Belgic Confession, article 33).

The sacraments are the gifts of God for the people of God, which we need to take advantage of as much as we are able in “this present evil age” (Gal 1:4).

As those who are “insensitive” and obstinate in heart and will, our Father has given us bread and wine to fill us with his grace and move us to gratitude. They are also an accommodation to us, as our Father is “mindful” of our sin; “he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).

God has given Christ’s body and blood in visible form to those who cry, “Lord I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24), and, “increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). This is why our Confession says God gave the sacraments “to nourish and sustain our faith” (Belgic Confession, article 33) while the Catechism says they are the means by which the Holy Spirit “confirms” our faith (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 65).

God’s Works Among Us

God works through the elements of voices, water, bread, and wine. Notice how our Confession speaks of the Supper, in terms of the personal pronouns used:

God…has ordained sacraments to seal His promises…to be pledges of His good will and grace…He did so to nourish and sustain our faith. He has added these to the Word…to represent better…what He declares…and what He does inwardly in our hearts. Thus He confirms to us the salvation which He imparts to us. Sacraments are visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible, by means of which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit… (Belgic Confession, article 33)

Because we are Reformed, we believe the Lord’s Supper is not chiefly a matter of our working, receiving, or preparing, but of God’s work in us through these means. Most specifically, the Supper is the instrument of the Holy Spirit: “By means of which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Along with preaching, the primary way the Spirit sanctifies us to be holy is through these means. He fills us with himself and all his goodness that we might truly be “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 3:16). The Holy Spirit is among us not in tongues or exciting music, but in his Word and Sacraments.

The Clearest Proclamation of the Gospel

The sacraments are the clearest way the promises of God are given to us. As the Belgic Confession says,

He has added these to the Word of the gospel to represent better to our external senses both what He declares to us in His Word and what He does inwardly in our hearts” (art. 33).

Calvin wrote:

The sacraments bring the clearest promises; and they have this characteristic over and above the word because they represent them for us as painted in a picture from life. (Institutes, 4.14.5)

…in the Supper we have more ample certainty, and fuller enjoyment of it (Short Treatise on the Holy Supper, 10).

Theodore Beza, described this sensory strengthening of faith by the sacraments:

The Word…strikes only one of our five natural senses, but the Sacraments touch more the sight and other bodily senses…In a manner of speaking, they enable us to touch with our fingers and see with our eyes, and as to taste and feel Jesus Christ in Person, as if we already had and held Him (The Christian Faith, 55).

We can also say the sacraments—especially the Lord’s Supper—proclaim the Gospel clearly because they do so dramatically. Our services are too often considered dull, boring, and overly “teachy” because we have neglected drama: God’s drama of the Holy Supper.

This is why the Supper is to be festive, not overly-didactic, joyful, not somber, celebratory, not a drudgery—especially in a day when many evangelical Christians are joining Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church because of their multi-sensory worship. We Protestants tend to present Christianity either through an overly rational presentation or via entertainment-based worship, neither of which sufficiently quenches the spiritual thirst of most postmodern people.

Because the Supper is to be enjoyed and celebrated, it is to be done so with a sense of holy mystery. As Calvin said in answer to the question of how believers partake of Christ:

…I shall not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare…to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it (Institutes, 4.17.32).

How do we ascend to heaven to partake of Christ? By faith through the working of the Holy Spirit, who uses the Word and Sacraments. Calvin wrote on Psalm 132:7:

…the Holy Spirit condescends for our profit, and in accommodation to our infirmity, raising our thought to heavenly and divine things by these worldly elements” (Commentary on the Psalms, 5:150).