Sometimes "The Way We Used to Do It" is the Best way to do it.

I have been attending Baptist churches since I was a young child and today I had an experience during worship that I have never encountered before.  Now I know that we attend church to have those “never before” experiences with the Lord’s people and His presence but this one really was a surprise of a different kind. 

To be certain it took place during what should always be a most hollowed and solemn observance . . .  The observation of the Lord’s Supper. For those who are not aware, the Lord’s Supper is in Baptist churches a symbolic activity. . . . it a sense it is a metaphorical not metaphysical experience.

 For us, Baptist, the Lord’s Supper (Communion) is where we create a living picture through action which reminds us of the Lord Jesus’ sacrificial death. The elements bread and wine (grape juice for Baptist since prohibition) represent his body and his shed blood as he died for our sin. It conveys no special grace or spiritual endowment but serves as a reminder of what the Lord has done for us. It can and should be a spiritually rewarding experience.

Now while the meaning of the Lord’s Supper has not changed over the centuries among Baptist the means whereby we observe it certainly has evolved. In the early days Baptist were literalist in the way we observed the Lord’s Supper. Baptist in past centuries would literally take a loaf of unleavened bread, break off a piece and pass it around the group where the rest of the congregants could break off their own piece of bread. For centuries this was the way we did it. However, eventually we did start precrumbling the bread and offering it in small bite size pieces to make sure there was enough to go around. 

However, when it came to the wine, we remained literalist in the strictest sense. Jesus passed his chalice around and so Baptist used a single chalice from which all would drink. Then, probably due more to modern science than anything else, this single cup idea began to change. Some churches (more liberal  minded) started using individual cups while others (more conservatively minded) continued to use the single cup. The theological argument against the individual cups was that the practice corrupted the ordinance. Jesus did not use many cups but one signifying his dying once for sin Of course the use of an individual cups could just as easily been said to represent the fact that He shed his blood for all people. However, that would have opened a larger argument between the Calvinist and the Armenianist. I suspect the most common argument for the single cup was the fact that Jesus used a single cup andthe fact that he said he would not share it again until He did so in the Kingom.

I think the use of individual cups prevailed because the non-dippers (snuff) and non tobacco chewers of the 1800's just got tired of the tobacco juice being left behind in the wine and on the cup. So in my mind while the single cup appeals to me spiritually, the use of individual cups gets my attention hygienically. 

I was OK with the change in the way we accessed the bread that represents the body of Christ and the wine that represents His shed blood because it didn’t change my focus during the ceremony on the meaning of that in which we are engaged . . . the Lord’s Supper as He instituted it. I was still able to focus on the ordinance, its meaning and my spiritual condition at the time without beiing distracted by the containers that delivered he elements to me.

But today, I had a new experience regarding the Lord's Supper.  I suppose was inevitable  . . . . after all I'd head about these cups many years ago.Today as I observed the Lord’s supper I received both elements (bread and wine) in a self-contained hermeneutically sealed cup. I must say right up front that I didn’t like it. At first I couldn’t think of any theological reason to object. After all, we were still remembering Christ sacrificial death. I just knew, I didn’t like it.  

Then we began to observe the ordinance and I discovered several problems. First, my wife could not get her container opened so while the pastor spoke I was busy trying to open the little sealed up cup so we could eat the styrofoam wafer and drink the BHT laced grape juice. I'm not even sure the wafer was bread . . . it seemed to me to be more like a thin rice cake or a slice of the little filler under the cap of a bottle of Alka-Selcer. Then we went through the same battle with the grape juice. To tell you the truth I thought I was opening my ketchup at Burger King.

Suddenly, it dawned on me about what was wrong with this approach. The problem is not with the elements themself or which how the ceremony was performed. The problem is that it forces us to focus on the instrument by which the elements were delivered and not on the elements and their meaning. I couldn’t focus on the ordinance for struggling with the container and the struggle other people were having.  

 I think I am going to relegate these things to “nice try” but no thanks. I’ll just stick with either of the old fashioned ways of observing the Lord’s Supper mentioned above.  

Sometimes, the way we used to do it is the best way.