For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till He come. 1 Corinthians 11:26
There are several terms, most of them valid, for the event described in our text today. We often speak of ‘remembering the Lord’, a very scriptural term considering the reference in verse 25 to the Lord’s words: In remembrance of Me. We also speak of the Breaking of Bread, the Lord’s Supper, and the Morning Meeting. Terms that we don’t use so often are the Eucharist, which the religious world uses and which comes from a Greek word meaning grateful or thanksgiving, and holy communion, another term used by religion. Our text brings before us another term we can use for this event: showing the Lord’s death.
We don’t use that term much, do we? And yet it is very appropriate and very valid. When we gather for the partaking of the bread and cup, we are showing the Lord’s death in several ways.
We are showing His death in the emblems of which we partake, the bread the symbol of His body, all the wounds and suffering that He bore, all the agony that His humanity endured that He might save us. In the cup, we appreciate the magnitude of the price that was required to redeem us, the greatness of the love that sent the Saviour to the cross, the wonder of infinite value of the crimson tide that flowed to wash away our guilt and shame.
We also show His death in the appreciation of the everlasting life that He has given us. Little companies of His own gather as sinners saved by His matchless grace, showing that is death has given us eternal life.
We also show His death by publicly participating in this event. Those who would can come and view what we do, as we lift our songs and our thanksgivings, our worship and adoration, to our Saviour. We tell the world how much His death means to us, how important it is that we spent the first portion of our week in His presence to dwell on the wonder that Christ died for the ungodly.
Amid whatever other terms we give to our hour of worship, let us remember that it is the showing of the Lord’s death. -Jim MacIntosh