No part of any worship service is more filled with meaning than the Lord's Supper. Yet, no matter how we observe the communion time, it is susceptible to the onslaught of ritual over the course of time. To keep the Lord's Supper from becoming common and meaningless, some churches observe it only monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or twice a year. The Christian Churches provide the opportunity to partake of Communion every week.

Worship leaders try to protect the Lord's Supper from the dangers of ritual by changing its position in the worship service. Some experiment with the music that plays at that time. Others tinker with lighting. However, worship planners are powerless to really make the moment meaningful for anyone, because they cannot govern the meditation of others. At communion time, the worshipper is very much alone with his thoughts, whatever those thoughts may be.

Providing the Lord's Supper infrequently does nothing to protect its meaning. Christian Churches provide the emblems of the communion service every week, because we feel it is the Lord's Feast and the Lord's invitation. As for meaning, Jesus Himself gave the emblems their meaning. It is not the task of worship leaders to give meaning to the Lord's Supper. It is the task of each believer to acknowledge His meaning. The Lord's Supper is the one element of group worship where we are no longer a part of a crowd. No one feeds us. No one ministers to us. It is quite inappropriate to long for anyone to entertain us.

Almost any dimension of a church service can be enjoyed for reasons that have nothing to do with worship. A song can be appreciated for emotional reasons, for its inherent beauty, or for the quality of the performance. We can pick up information, enjoy a few chuckles and even appreciate the skills of a preacher who really does nothing to assist us in genuine worship.

The Lord's Supper is unique in respect to worship. If one does not grasp the meaning behind the Lord's Supper, it is doubtful that this moment in the service can hold any fascination for that person. It matters not how experts attempt to set the mood, govern the atmosphere, or manipulate the ambience. A person's response to the Lord's Supper will rise no higher than his understanding of the meanings Jesus Himself gave to the cup and the loaf.

Traditionally, this event in the life of Jesus is described as the Last Supper. This was the last time Jesus would share a meal with His disciples before He would die for the sins of the world. Of course, Jesus did not remain dead. The Kingdom of God was revealed when Christ was raised from the dead, proving His dominion over sin and the grave. But, the feast Jesus established that night before the cross was a "first" as well as a "last". This was the institution of a feast of "remembrance" for what Jesus was about to do.

The night before Jesus was crucified was the night of the Passover Feast in the land of the Jews. Every Passover prior to this one was a remembrance of the tenth plague upon Egypt in the days of Moses when the Israelites were slaves in that land. God struck down the first-born in all the homes of Egypt except those of His people. The blood of a sacrificed lamb was brushed on the door-frame, and this served as a signal for the Lord to "pass over" that household.

From this moment forward, the disciples of Jesus would remember His sacrificed body and blood that would protect them from God's wrath upon sin. By dying on a cross, Jesus provided a once- for-all-time-sacrifice that secures for a man a relationship with the Eternal Father. No sacrifice to cover sins ever needs to be offered again.

Modern believers have a great deal to remember as they gather before the Lord's Table. Even so, meaning can give way to form if we are not diligent in our remembering.

In the church at Corinth, believers had gone far beyond simply missing the meaning behind the Lord's Supper. As Gentiles, they were not particularly familiar with the Jewish Passover nor its link to the Lord's Supper. The Corinthians had transformed it into a riotous affair patterned after the pagan feasts with which they were more familiar.

To restore meaning to the sacred feast, Paul stripped the ordinance to its bare essentials, recalling Christ's own words.

Next, Paul added one thought of his own:

By partaking of the communion emblems, a believer proclaims the death of Jesus. An obvious question surfaces: "To whom?" We are proclaiming nothing to the unsaved around us through the Lord's Supper. Though we partake with the body as an expression of unity, we do not really proclaim His death to one another. Most clearly, this proclamation is to ourselves. We are recalling Jesus' death and what that death accomplished in our behalves. Any proclamation calls for a response.

The text continues:

The judgment upon gluttony and drunkenness in Corinth manifested itself in sickness and death (I Corinthians 11:30). Of course, they observed the Lord's Supper in the midst of a meal. Our modern practice of passing trays holding small cups of juice and tiny fragments of bread removes any risk of gluttony and drunkenness. Another question arises: "Can we still drink judgment upon ourselves when we partake at the Lord's Table without proper self-examination?"

We can and we do. The Lord's Supper is the perfect opportunity (perfect because Jesus prescribed it) to confess our sin to God. It is the ideal time to face personal areas of selfishness, idolatry and rebellion. Why? Because it is a time when we are actively proclaiming to ourselves the very heart of the gospel message. We are coming face to face with the cross. We must use this time wisely, confessing all barriers that exist between ourselves and God. If we do not use this moment which Jesus Himself ordained, then, it is unlikely that we will examine our lives at the foot of the cross on our own initiative or with greater frequency.

Ultimately, we will face those sins - after we find ourselves looking out from the "hell-holes" we have dug for ourselves by refusing to address our own sinfulness. We often endure dilemmas of our own design that might have been avoided had we treated every trip to the communion table as an opportunity to examine ourselves, confess our sins, receive God's grace and be done with it.

To "drink and eat judgment upon ourselves" is a terrifying phrase, but we do so time and time again. We do so when we miss this God-given occasion to deal intimately with grace and to allow it to its cleansing work. We bring judgement upon ourselves when we squander this opportunity to proclaim, by our actions, "the Lord's death."

The idea of partaking in an "unworthy manner" is a troublesome phrase and often misunderstood. Some people are so clearly aware of their sinful natures that they are intimidated at the thought of participating in the Lord's feast. That misses the point. Every Christian comes to the Table with barriers. If this alone disqualified us from partaking of the bread and the cup, none of us would ever take communion again. Confess the barrier of unworthiness to God and accept His grace to remove it. No man is discouraged from participating at the Lord's Table because he is a sinner. He partakes unworthily only as an unrepentant sinner.

What a unique opportunity for the Lord to keep the soil of our hearts tilled regularly - this memorial, this proclamation to ourselves of the Gospel of Christ. Every trip to the table is an opportunity for the unworthy to confess before God and to be rendered worthy by the cross of Christ.