Our practice of the Lord’s Supper is often influenced by our local traditions—“what we have always done.” However, it ultimately reflects what we believe about the Supper and how much we value it. Before deciding on how often to share the sacred meal, or how to administer it, churches should carefully consider what Scripture teaches about the Lord’s Supper, and how that teaching has been interpreted and applied throughout church history—even if one is not convinced by everything that has been said.
Wesley and Brevint
In the Preface to his Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745), John Wesley includes a lengthy excerpt from The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice (1672) by Daniel Brevint. Brevint was a leading minister of the Church of England, in which Wesley was a lifelong priest. Brevint became known for his writings against Roman Catholic abuses, especially in his work on The Depth and Misery of the Roman Mass Laid Open (1672), then served as Dean of Lincoln from 1682 to 1695.
In Wesley’s excerpt of The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, Brevint writes that the Lord’s Supper is “one of the greatest mysteries of godliness, and the most solemn feast of the Christian religion.” He organizes his thoughts according to the past, present, and future dimensions of the Supper: (1) It is a memorial by which the past sufferings of Christ are represented and remembered; (2) it is a sacrament by which the blessings of Christ’s atonement are conveyed—a means of grace by which present graces are signified and given; and (3) it is a pledge to assure us of the glory that is yet to come at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, and in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Brevint concludes by clarifying the sense in which the sacrament is a sacrifice and therefore a central act of Christian worship.
Sacrament
While highlighting the past, present, and future dimensions of the Lord’s Supper, Brevint emphasizes that participation in Christ’s atoning sacrifice is its primary purpose. The sacrifice is remembered and represented so that it can be shared, and it is our sharing in Christ which assures us of heaven with him. “The main intention of Christ herein was not the bare remembrance of his Passion; but over and above, to invite us to his sacrifice, not as done and gone many years since, but, as to grace and mercy, still lasting, still new, still the same as when it was first offered for us.”
Brevint highlights the language of “participation” in 1 Corinthians 10:16, as well as the peculiar curse for partaking unworthily (1 Cor. 11:29), which conversely assures us of the extraordinary blessing of partaking rightly. Strangely, some have warned against “drinking damnation to one’s soul” while claiming that the Lord’s Supper is “just a symbol.” Brevint asks,
How can we think that it is thus really hurtful when abused, but not really blissful in its right use? Or that this bread should be effectual to procure death, but not effectual to procure salvation? God forbid that the body of Christ, who came to save, not to destroy, should not shed as much of its “aroma of life” to the devout soul, as it does of its “aroma of death” to the wicked and impenitent. I come then to God’s altar with a full persuasion, that these words, “This is my body,” promise me more than a figure; that this holy banquet is not a bare memorial only, but may actually convey its many blessings to me, as it brings curses on the profane receiver.
While the bread and wine have no power in and of themselves, they are powerful as outward and visible instruments ordained by Christ to communicate his spiritual and invisible grace. As God used ordinary clay to heal a man’s eyes, a simple rod to part the Red Sea, a trumpet’s blow to level Jericho, ordinary water to cure Naaman, and the apostles’ clothes and shadow to heal the sick, Christ now uses ordinary bread and wine to save, sanctify, and strengthen his Church.
Sacrifice
Brevint goes on to clarify the important sense in which the Lord’s Supper may be called a “sacrifice.” Importantly, the Lord’s Supper is not a “re-sacrificing” of Christ. Article 31 of the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church, which Wesley affirmed, is clear on “the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross”:
The Offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.
Christ is not re-sacrificed, but his once-for-all sacrifice is made present and available to us.
While the sacrifice of Christ can never be repeated, Brevint concludes that “this sacrament, by our remembrance, becomes a kind of sacrifice, whereby we present before God the Father, that precious oblation of his Son once offered.” Christ is not re-sacrificed, but his once-for-all sacrifice is made present and available to us. The holy priesthood of New Testament believers does not continually offer new sacrifices, but we do continually encounter and lift up Christ, who ever stands before us as a bleeding Lamb (Rev. 5:6). Wesley’s Hymn 3 says,
Th’ oblation sends as sweet a smell,
Ev’n now it pleases God as well
As when it first was made,
The blood doth now as freely flow,
As when his side received the blow
That showed him newly dead.
In Hymn 117, the Wesleys write,
Thou Lamb that suffer’dst on the tree,
And in this dreadful mystery
Still offer’st up thyself to God,
We cast us on thy sacrifice,
Wrapped in the sacred smoke arise,
And covered with th’ atoning blood.
Furthermore, the Lord’s Supper becomes a sacrifice as we sacrifice ourselves in union with Christ. In the arrangement of his Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, Hymns 116–127 are titled, “The Holy Eucharist as it Implies a Sacrifice”; Hymns 128–157 are titled, “Concerning the Sacrifice of Our Persons.” By partaking in Christ’s body and blood in faith, we are crucified with Christ. At the Lord’s Table, we come to the foot of the cross, and we join him there. The Lord’s Table is the place where God meets us to give us his Son, and where we meet God to give him ourselves. As Michael Svigel observes, weekly Eucharist is a kind of weekly “altar call”—a Table call to rededicate ourselves. Hymn 128 says,
While faith th’ atoning blood applies,
Ourselves a living sacrifice
We freely offer up to God:
And none but those his glory share
Who crucified with Jesus are,
And follow where their Saviour trod.
The Lord’s Supper becomes a sacrifice as we sacrifice ourselves in union with Christ.
Hymn 131 asks,
Would the Saviour of mankind
Without his people die?
No, to him we all are joined
As more than standers by.
Freely as the victim came
To the altar of his cross,
We attend the slaughtered Lamb,
And suffer for his cause.
Brevint concludes that Christ gives varying degrees of grace through the various ordinances of the church, but the Lord’s Supper, when well used, exceeds even fasting and hearing God’s Word (IV.6), since it makes Christ’s sacrifice present to us in a unique way. Wesley agrees and elsewhere describes the sacrament as “the grand channel” of God’s grace. Hymn 4 rejoices that it is “as though we every one beneath his cross had stood, and seen him heave, and heard him groan, and felt his gushing blood”:
This eucharistic feast.
Our every want supplies;
And still we by his death are bless’d
And share his sacrifice.
By faith his flesh we eat,
Who here his passion show,
And God, out of his holy seat
Shall all his gifts bestow.
The Center of Christian Worship
For these reasons, Brevint and Wesley viewed the Lord’s Table as the center of Christian worship, even as the altar was the center of temple worship in the Old Testament. Sacrifice is central to biblical worship, and the sacrifice of the New Testament Church is the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, represented “as still fresh”—still powerful to salvation—and extended to God’s people in holy communion. Today, most Christians would object to a single Sunday without singing or preaching; for over 1,500 years, the whole Church never went a single Sunday without the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Sunday worship without the Table was as unthinkable to Wesley (and to the Church before him) as Old Testament temple worship without the altar. Wesley’s Hymn 123 says,
Those feeble types and shadows old
Are all in thee the truth fulfilled,
And through this Sacrament we hold
The substance in our hearts revealed;
By faith we see thy sufferings past
In this mysterious rite brought back,
And on thy grand oblation cast
Its saving benefit partake.
The sacrifice of the New Testament Church is the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, represented “as still fresh”—still powerful to salvation—and extended to God’s people in holy communion.
In his Sermon on “The Duty of Constant Communion,” Wesley thought that it was “absurd to the last degree” to speak even of “frequent communion,” since he believed Christians are obliged to share in the Lord’s Supper “constantly” (Sermon 101, II.1). For Wesley, “constantly” meant “at least every Lord’s Day,” and “as often as one has opportunity.” Wesley himself communed almost every day and taught that the sacrament was “daily received in the beginning by the whole Church of Christ, and highly esteemed, till the love of many waxed cold, as the grand channel whereby the grace of his Spirit was conveyed to the souls of all the children of God” (Sermon 26, III.11). John instructed Methodist Elders to administer the sacrament at least every Sunday, and he published 166 Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, mostly written by his brother Charles, as a resource to continually draw out the meaning and significance of the sacrament. Hymn 124 reflects Wesley’s preference for daily Eucharist:
Yet may we celebrate below,
And daily thus thine offering show
Exposed before thy Father’s eyes;
In this tremendous mystery
Present thee bleeding on the tree
Our everlasting sacrifice.
Churches that only share the Lord’s Supper on a monthly or quarterly basis should carefully consider the sacramental theology of the Methodist and Anglican divines. If the Lord’s Supper is “just a symbol,” or a mere remembrance of what Christ has done in the past, then it makes sense to move the Table aside for three-fourths of the month or year, and to cover it in decorations. After all, we can remember the cross by singing or preaching, and that takes much less time than preparing the meal and distributing it to a large group of people. But if the Lord’s Supper is a sacrament and sacrifice—a divinely instituted means of grace and central act of Christian worship—then “constant communion” is, as Wesley said, “a duty,” as well as a joyful privilege.
When he the table spreads,
How royal is the cheer!
With rapture we lift up our heads,
And own that God is here. (Hymn 158)
