The Lord’s Supper
It was a supper.
The Greek word behind “supper” is deipnon — a meal, a dinner, a banquet. The churches in the New Testament remembered Jesus while they ate together.
We have shrunk a dinner into a crumb and a sip. Read the New Testament without that picture in your head, and the language is plain. When Paul names “the Lord’s supper,” the second word is the ordinary word for supper.
Deipnon across the New Testament
Wherever deipnon shows up, it is a real meal. Herod’s birthday was a supper for his nobles. Jesus tells a parable about a man who made a great supper and sent his servant to say, “Come; for all things are now ready.” Mary, Martha, and Lazarus made Jesus a supper. The night He was betrayed was a supper. The marriage supper of the Lamb is a banquet, not a symbol of a banquet.
And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee.
Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.
There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.
And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.
What went wrong in Corinth
Paul’s rebuke only makes sense if the church had come together to eat. Some went ahead with their own supper. Some were hungry. Some were drunk. You cannot get drunk on a thimble of juice, and you cannot leave a brother hungry if the “meal” is a wafer. Paul does not cancel the supper. He tells them to wait for one another when they come together to eat, and to remember the body and the blood in the middle of that meal.
When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another.
How we keep it
At RichEllen Park, and in homes around Clarksville, Palmyra, Erin, Dover, and Cumberland City, the Lord’s Supper is a shared meal on Sundays at 11 a.m. We give thanks for the bread and the cup. We remember that His body was given and His blood was shed. We eat together so that no one is overlooked. Later centuries turned the meal into a sacrifice offered by a priest at an altar. The New Testament does not. Jesus offered Himself once. We proclaim that death by eating as a family until He comes.
Sundays at 11 a.m.