The most popular post on this blog is this one and it’s not even close. On a Saturday evening people in the English speaking world realise they’re leading communion the following day and head to Google to figure out what to verses to read and up pops that list. I didn’t put it together to get readers, I put it together to help me. Leading communion had become formulaic and I was bored with it. I had grown up in a tradition where almost the only Scripture you ever heard was 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 and if there was another Scripture it was one of these three: Matthew 26:26–30; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-20.

That’s because when it comes to directly talking about the Lord’s Supper there isn’t as much as you might think to go on for something that seems so important. In fact of the verses above only one of them is, technically, about the Lord’s Supper. The other three are about the Last Supper – although Paul of course draws a line between the one and the other.

• It is not as obvious as you might think from the Synoptic texts themselves that a ritual to be repeated is being instituted. The reason we do think that is what is happening is not from the Gospels but from 1 Corinthians. But in the Synoptic texts Jesus doesn’t actually say that: ‘Do this,as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’ is not in the Gospels.
• The longest sections on the Lord’s Supper are in the same letter; 1 Corinthians 10:16-22 & 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.
• Acts 20:7 suggests that the church gathered together specifically to break bread as part of worship but Acts 20:11 suggests that it was also part of a meal.
• There is some discussion on whether Acts 2:42-46 refers to the Lord’s Supper or more generally to fellowship meals.
• Luke 24:30-31 & 35 is wonderfully rich and suggestive but doesn’t tell you much about the hows, whys and whats of the Lord’s Supper
• That applies to the Bread of Life sayings in John 6
• And also to references about the cup. Which we’ll get to at some point.

If I’m missing a reference that is clearly about the Lord’s Supper let me know and I’ll update the above list but I don’t think I am.

Of the names we give to this; Eucharist, Mass, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, only the last one comes directly from the Bible. Although I think you could make a case for calling it the Table of the Lord (1 Cor 10:21).

Now there is a lot more that can be rightfully be said when it comes to the meaning and the theology and the rich symbolism of bread and wine, covenant, fellowship, sacrifice, salvation and redemption, resurrection, the coming of Christ and on and on. That’s why I put this post together. But when it comes to the practice of it there are slimmer pickings.

That fact though interesting shouldn’t draw us to any rash conclusions. God does only have to say something once for it to be important after all. And what we are told even by these few references may be more than you think. I’ll dive into them in upcoming posts.