Eating and Drinking Together

One of the odd customs that has arisen in the 20th century is that many evangelical churches warp the rites of the Lord’s Supper by insisting that everyone wait so that they eat and drink together. Supposedly this is to emphasize the unity of the Church. This practice has no root in Scripture or in Church tradition.

It is not possible to wait and drink together without the use of little cups, and little cups were unknown until recently. Modern cheap plastic cups are obviously of recent origin, but even little glass cups could not have been manufactured cheaply until the 19th century. Before that time, people had to share cups, even if more than one such common cup was employed.

What Jesus instituted is crystal clear. He took the cup and “gave it to them” (Mt. 26:27). Each of the disciples at the last supper had his own cup that he had been using during the meal, but Jesus did not say, “Let each of you take his cup and let’s drink together.” No, He took His own cup and passed it to them. Obviously they passed it from hand to hand around the table.

Note also that Jesus did not go around serving each of them. They passed it hand to hand.

This is what Jesus instituted. It utterly astounds me that men think they can improve on it, but in church after church I am told to wait until everyone is served, and often I’m served by a pastor instead of receiving the element from the hand of my neighbor.

When each person is served individually, the corporate character of the meal is obscured. Moreover, a blow is struck against the priesthood of all believers. The leadership of the servant priest is clearly marked out by the fact that he institutes the rite, and eats and drinks first. He represents Jesus, who ate the first piece of bread at the last supper, and who drank from the cup given Him by His Father before anyone else did (Mt. 20:22-23; 26:39-42). But the minister leads a community in which all the kings share the wine of kingship with one another, not a gaggle of individuals who need to be served separately. The unity is that of a river, flowing from Christ to the minister and then out to the congregation.

This is what Jesus instituted. It is what we should be doing.

Let us reflect on what Jesus instituted and what it means. The wine is passed from hand to hand, and each person drinks from it as it comes to him. The cup is the expression of the new covenant, as we have seen in the previous essay. The unity of the covenant is expressed not in everyone’s drinking together, but in the passing from one person to another. This demonstrates the familiar “one anothering” theme found so often in the New Testament. The Greek word meaning “one another,” allelon, occurs some 98 times in the New Testament.

Moreover, the fact that each person is forced by the common cup to drink individually means that there is a moment of personal decision and participation in the wine, which is both martyrdom and kingship. The person next to me has just displayed his or her willingness to die for the kingdom, and that encourages me to do the same. In order to stress this one-anothering unity, and to break down individualism, a person can say “the Lord be with you” as he hands on the bread to the next person, who can reply “the Lord bless you” as he or she receives it. With the cup, the person can say, “the peace of the Lord be with you,” and the recipient can reply, “and also with you.” Or he can say, “I volunteer to die for you,” and you can say, “Thanks be to God!”

The custom of waiting and eating the bread altogether has no more Biblical foundation than does the custom of serving people individually. Since the wine was consumed as it was passed, so clearly was the bread. The minister eats first, as Jesus did, because he is Christ’s representative.

To put this another way, Jesus said “Do this.” What He did was take bread, offer thanks, break off His piece, and pass it to John with a command to take and eat. That is to say, the presiding minister at the Table, who takes the bread and offers thanks, is to break off his own piece first before passing the loaf out, and then eat that piece. The minister is not to be served last, another custom that has arisen from sentimentality and is the opposite of what Jesus instituted.

There is no excuse for changing in these ways the rite Jesus instituted. It is just as easy – easier in fact – for the elements to be passed hand to hand than for pastors to go around serving each individual. And it is just as easy for people to partake as the elements are passed as it is for them to wait.

Other “changes” arise from circumstances, and do have rationales. People allergic to wheat can be provided some other kind of bread. In any large church, more than one cupful of wine will be needed, and if the one cup needs to be replenished, there is no reason not to have more than one cup. (Jesus, after all, was only serving twelve other men, or eleven, at the last supper.) Even the use of individual cups as a charitable concession to cultural fears about disease is not a theological problem, for the “one cup” is the cup that Jesus drank from, and hence is not one physical cup. The Bible never makes anything out of there being one cup used during the rite, though it does stress the meaning of one loaf (1 Cor. 10:17) – but even here, in a large church more than one loaf may be needed. As long as the ritual starts with the minister and flows out, it does not matter if the initial loaf “multiplies” to feed 5000, and the initial cup “multiplies” into enough cups to serve 5000.

Being practical and charitable about the bread and the cup may result in things being done slightly differently from the way Jesus did them with only twelve men at the last supper. But there is no practical, charitable, or theological reason to change the rite itself. Serving people individually has no Biblical foundation and strikes against Biblical theology. Having people wait until all are served is a cute idea, but the fact that Jesus could have done that and instead did the opposite should be enough for us to reject the practice.

This article was originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog.