In Remembrance of Me
1 Cor. xi. 24
This Epistle to the Corinthians is prior in date to any of the Gospels, consequently we have, in the section from which my text is taken, the earliest account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. More than that, the account is entirely independent of the oral tradition which may be supposed to have preceded the written Gospels amongst the Christian communities. For the Apostle distinctly affirms, in the immediate context, that he received this narrative of the institution of the Lord’s Supper from none of the guests in that upper chamber, but from the host Himself.
By what means the communication was made it boots not to inquire; vision, or ecstacy, or special revelation, we know not how. But if language have any meaning, we have here an account which the repeater of it to the Corinthian Church declares he got straight from the lips of the risen Lord Himself.
Consequently the words before us, and the whole section, of which they are a part, afford us a means of
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tracing up the celebration of the Lord’s Supper to a period very near in time to the death of Christ, and thus yield to us a very strong presumption, in addition to that of the Gospel narrative, of the historical accuracy of the story, and a valuable indication of the aspect in which it was regarded by the primitive belief of Christendom.
The occasion for the utterance of the words of my text is also very characteristic of the Apostle Paul, and instructive to us: If it had not been for some abuses in the Corinthian Church, we should never have had here from his lips one word about this ordinance; and in that event there would have been scarcely any reference in the whole New Testament, to the Lord’s supper beyond the short narratives in three out of the four Gospels.
These entirely incidental, fragmentary, sparse references in the New Testament to all matters of Church organisation, polity, and ritual, ought to be very instructive to us as to where the true centre of gravity lies, and ought to rebuke the attempts that are made to lift any of these outward things, the form of the sheepfold or any of the modes of worship, into a position of more than secondary importance. I heard someone say, a day or two ago, that the Emperor of Russia, with Nihilists round about him ready to blow him up, spends most of his time in designing buttons for the uniforms of his soldiers; and I think Christian men who waste time and strength over such questions at this day are not much wiser than that. However, that is not what I wanted to talk about this morning. I desire to take these words as the foundation of a few remarks in reference to the purpose and meaning of the great rite of Christendom — the Lord’s Supper.
I. — And first, let us regard it as a memorial.
Now, observe that the words which I have read are even stronger in the original than they are in our transition. “This do in remembrance of Me” might mean ‘* This do because you remember. “But the real rendering is: — “This do for a remembrance of Me “; “in order that you may remember,” or “lest you forget.” And the words are all but a verbatim quotation of those used in the institution of that Passover which our Lord, with sovereign authority, brushed aside in order to make room for His own memorial rite. “This day shall be unto you for a memorial,” says the law of the Passover. The Lord’s Supper was grafted upon and meant to supersede the older feast. And the words forming our text must obviously be supposed to have distinct reference to those of Exodus, and to be meant to substitute for the memories so stirring to Jewish national pride and devout feeling, the remembrance of Him as the one thing needful.
Notice also that this is Christ’s own distinct statement of the purpose of the Lord’s Supper, “for a * remembrance,’ in order to bring Me again to your recollection.” I suppose He is likely to have put foremost the main purpose of the ceremonial, and I suppose that if there be any alleged purposes of it, of which there is no hint to be gathered from His own distinct statement of what the meaning of the rite is, that is a strong argument against these. So I want you to mark that Christ Himself has told us that this rite is meant to bring Him to our remembrance, and that He has given us no other statement of its purpose but that. Nor will you find anywhere in the New Testament any statement of the purpose of the Lord’s Supper additional to this. And so I say that all our theories about the meaning and value and virtue of this Communion Service must be found within the four corners of that word: — “This do for a remembrance of Me 1” — a memorial rite, and as far as I know, nothing more whatsoever. Nothing more, certainly, in so far as Christ’s own solemn declaration of its purpose, and of His intention in establishing it, can be supposed to a:o.
Notice further about this first part of my subject: — of what the Lord’s Supper is a memorial, viz., “A memorial of Me.” Of Me! I do not need to dwell upon what I have hinted already — the remarkable way in which Christ deals, as One that has authority, with the sacredest rite of the nation to which He and His Apostles belonged; brushing aside the thing that for centuries had been the very Palladium of their national life, and the vital centre of their national worship; and saying in effect: — “Moses and that old redemption that you have heard about all these centuries, are antiquated; and a mere flickering taper light as compared with the redemption that I bring. You have remembered him and his deliverance; forget him 1 Lo, the shadow passes, and here I stand, the substance 1 Do this; never mind about your old Passover; — that is done with, wheeled away into a corner and forgotten. Do this in remembrance — no longer of dead Pharaohs and exhausted deliverances, but do this in remembrance of an everloving friend and helper; and of a redemption that shall never pass away. *In remembrance of Me I’”
What a marvellous, unique, majestic prevision that was, that from that little room, in some upper chamber in that obscure corner of the world, looked all down the ages and expected that to the end of time men would turn to Him with passionate thankfulness, and with a flame of love ever leaping in their hearts 1 And more wonderful still, the forecast has been true, and the memory of millions turns to one thing in the past as the centre of life, the Cross of Christ, and to one thing in the future as the fountain of Hope — the Throne of the crucified Christ. “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
And as majestic as is the authority so tender and gracious is the condescension: — “Do tJiis for a remembrance.” He does not rely upon His mighty love and sacrifice for the “IN RBMBMBRANCB OP MB.” 103
remembrance, the grateful remembrance of the world, but He consents and condescends to trust some portion of our remembrance of Him to mere outward things. The world, time, sense, the material and the visible come rushing in upon us and make us forget. Like a snowstorm in an American winter, our atmosphere is all filled with the flying motes, almost impalpable, of the thick driving trifles that hide the sky from us. The fluttering flakes of ever-recurring cares and duties, joys and sorrows, obscure the blue and the Christ that is there.
And so He takes and uses for once the things of time and sense to fight the things of time and sense with, and says: — “The visible shall serve Me in this one instance; and the material elements shall conspire to help you to remember My great love.”
Surely we need all the help we can get to keep His memory vivid and fresh in spite of the pressure of the visible and temporal. If it be possible to bring Him and His great world of love before our minds through the help of sight as well as by the hearing of the ear, we shall be armed with double armour.
The purpose of Christ in instituting this rite is simply that men should have presented to them in visible form, as well as in audible form by the spoken voice, the facts on which their salvation depends. Although the differences are infinite in regard of the sacredness of the person and the thing to be remembered, shall I shock any of you if I say that I know no difference in kind between the bread and the wine that is for a memorial of Christ’s dying love, and the handkerchief dipped in blood, sent from the scaffold by a dying King with the one message: — “Remember 1” “Do this for a memorial of me 1”
II. — I come to the next point that I wish to touch on, viz. the Lord’s Supper as being what is called a means of grace; or, less technically, a source of religious profit and growth. Now, if what I have been saying about the one purpose of this Communion rite be true, there follows from it, as a matter of course, this — that the only way by which this or any other outward ceremony can do a man any good is by its fulfilling the purpose for which it was appointed, and setting him to think of and feel the truth that is in Jesus Christ. I know only one way by which what theologians call grace can get into men’s souls, and that is through the occupation of a man’s understanding, heart, and will, with Jesus Christ and the Gospel that tells of Him. To think of Him, to contemplate Him, to love Him, and to yield the submission of the will and the life to Him: — that is, at bottom, the one channel through which all God’s grace comes to a man’s heart; and the good that any outward thing does us, the good that any act of worship does us, that any rite or ceremony whatsoever does us, is only this: that it brings before us the truth on which our hopes depend, and knits to our contemplation and our heart the Christ and His love; and the measure in which it does that is the exact measure of the blessing that it works upon us.
I can find nothing more than this in this Communion, except only that it is obedience to a definite command of Jesus Christ, and so has the blessing which always follows upon obedience to Him. These two, the blessing that comes from obedience to His commandment and the blessing that comes from having our thoughts turned to Him, and faith and hope excited and kindled towards Him — these exhaust, as far as I know, the whole of the good that that Communion Service does to any man.
And I think all that is confirmed very strongly by the remarks in the context about the mischief that it sometimes does to people. We read there words which superstition has laid hold of in order to darken the whole horizon, and turn the whole purpose of the Lord’s Supper “IN REMEMBRANCE OF MB.” 105
to another thing altogether from what it was in its original institution. We read in the context about an unworthy partaking, and that unworthy partaking is defined. — Whoso eateth and drinketh “(not “unworthily,” for that word in that verse is an unauthorised supplement), “eateth and drinketh judgment to Himself, not discerning the Lord’s Body.”
That is to say, unworthy participation is a participation which does not use the external symbols as a means of turning thought and feeling to Christ and His death; and unworthy participation does a man harm, as unworthy handling of any outward rite does.
I preach a sermon. I try with words here to lead men to look to Jesus Christ. If my poor attempt fail and my words come between you and Him rather as an obscuring medium than as a transparent medium, then my sermon does you harm. You read a hymn. The hymn is meant to lead you up to Christ your Saviour in aspiration and devotion. If it does not do that, then it does you harm.
If through the outward ritual we see Christ, we get all the good that the outward ritual can do us. If through the outward rite we do not see Him, if the coloured glass stay the eye instead of leading it on, then the rite does us harm. To my judgment the difference between the Lord’s Supper, and its operation upon the Christian life, and a sermon or a prayer or the reading of a chapter or any other piece of Christian worship and service and their operation lie here; that, first, one is more definitely a commandment than the other; second, that the one presents the truth more directly to the understanding through the ear, and that the other presents it in symbolical and pictorial form through the eye, and third, that in the participation of the Lord’s Supper there is an increased sacredness by reason of the sacredness of the thing of which it is a memorial, and by reason that it is a more personal profession of faith therein. These points, I think, exhaust all that the New Testament tells in reference to its sanctity.
And sure I am that neither it nor anything else can do a man spiritual good, except by one way, and on one condition. All outward rites and forms are “schoolmasters to bring us to Christ.” If they do that they help us, if they do not, they hurt us. The one condition of spiritual blessing is union with Him, the one means of union with Him is the exercise of faith and love towards Him. If the rite strengthen this, it has blessed you; if it does not, it is a curse to you.
How the whole fabric of superstitious sacerdotalism and externalism that has cursed God’s Church for centuries disappears when once men find out that there is nothing to help them but only their grasp of Jesus Christ, and that the only way of grasping Him is by faith and love, and that the only good of anything ritual is as subserving that, and perchance stimulating and increasing these I
III. — And so, lastly, and briefly, there is another aspect of this rite, which is set forth in these words, namely, the Lord’s Supper as a witness for Christian truth.
“This do for a remembrance of Me! “I do not dwell further upon what I have already said about the significance of that extraordinary self -consciousness which here claims to the end of time the reverence, the regard, the remembrance of humanity. Nor do I merely mean that the Lord’s Supper, by reason of its very early origin and the history of Christianity, is a witness as to the belief predominant at the point of origin. But what I mean is this: — Christ Himself, if we accept the story of the Gospels and of this chapter, has appointed this institution and selected for us, by the pointing of His finger, the part of His mission which He considers the vital and all- “IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.** 107
important centre: — “Do this in remembrance of Me I *’” This is My body, broken for you. This is the new covenant in My blood, shed for many, “according to the other version in one of the Gospels,” for the remission of sins. *’
There is the heart of Christ’s work, my brother. That death is the kernel of objective Christianity. Not His words, not His loving deeds of mercy, not His tenderness, to nothing of all these does He point us. They are all included and subordinated, but He points us to His violent death; for from the fact that “body “and” blood “are contemplated apart, it is clear that not merely death, but a violent death was in His mind. He points us to His violent death, as if He said,” There is the thing that is to touch hearts and change lives, and bind men to Me with endless bonds of deep and life-transforming gratitude.**
Christ Himself has taught us that what He will have to be remembered through all generations is the fact that He died, the fact that He died for us, the fact that in His blood is the covenant of our pardon, and of our peace with God. Forms of Christianity which have let go the Incarnation and the Atonement do not know what to make of the Lord’s Supper. There is no room for it amongst them, and practically you will find that such forms of Christianity have relegated it to a corner, and have almost disused it. They who do not feel that Christ’s death is their peace, do not feel that the rite that commemorates the broken Body and the shed Blood is the centre of Christian worship.
I dare say I am speaking to people this morning who regard it as a very unnecessary part of Christian service. My brother, Jesus Christ knew what He meant by His work quite as well as you do, and he thought that the part of it which most concerns us to remember wai
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this: “that He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.” I commend that thought to you, and point to that table as a witness to every man and woman who believes that this Communion was established by Jesus Christ Himself, that the centre of Christian truth and of the Gospel of Christ is the good news of His death on the Cross for the sins of the whole world.
And now I ask you, dear brethren, to remember this, that as plain and distinct as the teaching is of this ordinance in reference to what is the living heart of Christ’s work for us, so plain and distinct is its teaching in reference to what is our way of making that work ours.
We eat that we may live, we take the bread that perisheth into our lips, masticate and swallow and the food is assimilated to our body, and so we are nourished.
We take Christ. “Believe and thou hast eaten,” says Augustine. We take Christ, the fact of His death, of His love, of His personal life for us to-day, and by faith we partake of Him, and the body is assimilated to the food, and so in that higher region we live. If we are to have life in us, it must be by no outward connection through ritual and ceremony, but by an inward possession ol that which ritual and ceremony proclaim, namely, the life of Him that lived that we may be partakers of His Resurrection, the death of Him that died that in Him we toG Yiight die to self and sin.
This table preaches to us all, “My flesh is meat int.eed, and My blood is drink indeed.” And it preacher n( less emphatically the other great word, “Whoso eaith My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; a*. ’ //ill raise him up at the last day.”