First Lord's Supper

At a recent OMF retreat for current language students and those who had left in the past year, I was asked to lead communion. Not being ordained this was the first time that I've led communion. When I read the accounts of the Lord's Supper in the Gospels of Mark & Matthew and the instructions for the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, it seems clear that the Lord's Supper was celebrate over a meal. However, most churches now only have a small piece of bread (or wafer) and a tiny cup of grape juice. I believe that this is an unhelpful tradition which has developed and been accepted. Some argue that the Lord's supper was orginally a joyful meal which we have now turned into a very somber ritual.

So I suggested to the co-ordinators of the retreat that we celebrate the Lord's Supper over lunch on the final day rather than in the meeting room. They seemed hesitant at first but then agreed.

So on Sunday we celebrated the Lord's Supper during lunch and it was much more meanful in my opinion.

We did have one problem though. We were sharing the camp site with another group within OMF who had Thai Christian workers with them. When they found out that we were going to celebrate the Lord's Supper this way, they said that it would be better if we have separate lunches, because they felt that the Thai worker would not cope with the Lord's Supper being celebrated outside of Church. It is sad that like in Corinth, the Lord's Supper became a cause of division rather than reaffirmation of the unity we have in Christ by his death and resurrection.