Worship Forms: The Lord's Supper
You’ve probably heard “trust the process.” Coaches, politicians, and the C-suite have all employed this phrase to reassure people that an outcome that may seem out of reach can be achieved if they would just submit themselves to a time-tested, proven plan. At City Church we riff on that and say “trust the liturgy.”
Within Christianity there are few topics more misunderstood than worship. It’s understandably overwhelming when you step back and consider what’s happening: finite man communing with the God of the universe. Thankfully we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Throughout Scripture and the history of the church there have been passed down forms of worship that have proven pleasing to God and beneficial to man. These make up the different elements of our worship service’s liturgy.
This month we’re going to explore these different forms of worship to better understand what they are and how they form us as the body of Christ. Our hope is that through this you will grow to “trust the liturgy”—to let it guide you when your heart is so full that you can’t put it into words and when it is so downcast that words fail.
You’ve probably heard the phase “Keep Austin Weird.” It was adopted as the city’s unofficial motto when they started to become a boom-town and served as a reminder as to what really made the city great: the sidewalk poets and barstool philosophers that comprised the city’s unparalleled arts scene. I could get threats for saying this, but for a modern approximation, think Portlandia but in Texas the 80s and 90s. For the truest representation of this, though, check out Richard Linklater’s student film, Slacker, which is 12 vignettes about Austin’s glorious weirdos.
Maybe it’s just my inner slacker coming out, but I want to appropriate Austin’s motto for the church: “Keep Christianity Weird.” I won’t belabor the obvious “old man shouting at the clouds” critiques of worship music resembling concerts and sermons parroting TED Talks, but that is, generally-speaking, what I have in mind. Whether in a bid for relevance or as a function of our modernist disenchantment, our tendency is to flatten the “weird” out of the church and downplay the transcendent and other-ly.
There is one moment in our weekly worship service in which this glorious “weirdness” shines through: when we feed on the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Whatever you call it—Communion, The Lord’s Supper, Holy Eucharist—it is a moment in which a mystery is being revealed—the wonder of Christ’s union with His people, the Church. As real is the bread and wine that we consume, so real is the union that we share with Jesus through faith. As the bread and wine is brought within our body, so too are we brought into the body of Christ and abide in Him. His body is broken and his blood is spilled for us so that by them we might be rightfully called what is his alone by nature: child of God.
Feeling the weird yet? I hope so! When we step back to consider what is happening at the Table we should be blown away. That’s why we call it a sacrament, which comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word for mystery. The Lord’s Supper proclaims to us the mystery of faith as it is a sign and a seal of the Gospel.
As a sign, the Lord’s Supper points us to the covenantal promises of God: that he is our God and that we are his people and that he has brought us into fellowship with him through the person and work of his son, Jesus. Just like a royal seal that enclosed and authenticated a letter from a king, the Lord’s Supper confirms that the promises of the Gospel really and truly are ours because as we take the bread and wine in faith the Holy Spirit brings us spiritually into the presence of Christ in heaven so that we may live with hope that we will—in body and in soul—be with him forever.
For more on the Lord’s Supper…
Read from the Westminster Larger Catechism: Questions 161-170
Read this essay from Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Johnston, Pennsylvania: The Lords’s Supper | An Overview
Watch this video from author and theologian J.I. Packer: What Is the Lord’s Supper?
Meditate on these passages from Scripture: Luke 22:14-23; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34; John 6:56; Luke 24:13-35
Written by Harrison Ford.