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The Table and the Body - Unity, Discipline, and Mission

The argument in short

Communion is called the sacrament of unity. Unity is created rather than expressed: Paul's Greek in 1 Corinthians 11:18 can be read "when you come together to be the church," which means this Supper constitutes the church rather than merely picturing it. Unity which cannot be broken cannot mean anything, which is why fencing the table is an enforcement.

Table of Contents

  1. #The Supper constitutes the church
  2. #A unity that cannot be broken means nothing
  3. #The Dutch Reformed Church and apartheid
  4. #What Belhar says
  5. #Discipline with restraint
  6. #The table preaches
  7. #Emmaus, and being recognised in the breaking of bread
  8. #Sources

The Supper Constitutes the Church

Old makes the point from the Greek of 1 Corinthians 11:18, which "might be translated, 'when you come together to be the church.'" His conclusion:

The text seems to imply that it is in the meeting together for the purpose of sharing the meal that these individuals become the church, the body of Christ. This Supper constitutes the church.
(Old, 2002)

That is a stronger claim than the usual one. The standard line is that Communion expresses a unity we already have. Old's reading is that it makes one, which fits Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 10:17 exactly: there is one loaf, therefore we who are many are one body. The loaf is the cause in Paul's sentence, not the illustration.

Old also notes how few things in the New Testament are called "the Lord's": the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table, the Lord's Cup, the Lord's Day. "That is about it. These things all belong together" (Old, 2002). A weekly gathering, on His day, at His table, around His cup. The pattern says something about how central this meal was to how the first Christians organised their week.

A Unity that Cannot Be Broken means Nothing

If the table is genuinely open to anyone in any condition, permanently and unconditionally, then sitting at it declares nothing. A sign that cannot be withheld is not a sign. It is an argument about the extraordinary case, where a church is being asked to declare unity with something it must not declare unity with.

Billings provides a case study:

The Dutch Reformed Church and Apartheid

In 1857 the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa changed its polity to permit white members to exclude black members from the celebration of the Lord's Supper.

The change was framed pastorally. The whites who did not want to celebrate with black members were designated "weaker brethren," and the decision was offered as an accommodation to their conscience. Nobody then had to defend racism. They only had to defend pastoral sensitivity toward the scruples of the weak, which is a category they took from Paul himself.

Billings notes that "historians have pointed to this action as a decisive move toward the eventual advocacy of racial apartheid by the DRC," and his assessment is unsparing: "This 1857 'pastoral accommodation' was in fact a choice to bow to the idolatry of racism rather than the Lordship of Christ" (Billings, 2018).

In 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared apartheid a heresy, and excluded the DRC from membership and from the table at WARC events until they repented. Billings' observation about why that mattered:

Talk alone can be cheap… An unconditional "welcome" of the DRC to the table, in light of their ongoing advocacy of apartheid, would have been a sham, a contamination of communion with Christ and his body, the church.
(Billings, 2018)

Within several years the DRC began moving away from apartheid. Billings draws the general principle:

While it may sound "progressive" to have a communion policy completely "open" to anyone, believer and nonbeliever, never fencing the table for discipline, it's profoundly naïve concerning the power of human sin… A temporary fencing of the table, in this context, is not to protect the status and privilege of the congregation, but to testify to the unity and reconciliation accomplished in Christ.
(Billings, 2018)

Note what happened across that history. Both the sin and its remedy operated through the table. The 1857 decision to divide at Communion produced apartheid; the 1982 decision to exclude from Communion helped end it. This is the doctrine doing what it does, in public, with consequences for a nation.

What Belhar Says

The Belhar Confession was written shortly after that exclusion, and it states the theology underneath it. God's people…

have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope,

and therefore…

this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered.
(Belhar Confession, quoted in Billings, 2018)

The logic runs from the one bread to the visible unity to the credibility of the gospel in front of the watching world. It is Paul's logic in 1 Corinthians 10:17, applied by people who had watched what happens when a church breaks it.

Discipline with Restraint

The abuse of discipline is a real danger, and it has done at least as much damage in our circles as the neglect of it. Bavinck's account of Reformed practice is worth noting precisely for its restraint, because he anticipates the abuse.

He shows three limits:

  1. The objects of discipline are individual persons, not groups or classes. You do not fence a category of people.
  2. The grounds are "the sins that cause offense among the members of the congregation," not the ordinary weaknesses into which believers fall. If it were the ordinary weaknesses, nobody would eat.
  3. It stops the moment there is repentance. "The moment the transgressor shows sincere repentance, all church discipline in the narrow sense stops. Those who confess their sin find mercy with God and therefore also with his church" (Bavinck, 2008, vol. 4).

The process leading to exclusion "always starts only after impenitence and obstinacy have been evidenced." Not after sin, after obstinacy. The whole thing is aimed at restoration and it stops the instant restoration occurs. That is a very different thing from the instinct to make people prove themselves worthy before eating, which 1 Corinthians 11v17-34 - Discerning the Body shows is Paul turned upside down.

The Table Preaches

Fee argues against the view that the meal is itself the proclamation, holding instead that "during the meal there is a verbal proclamation of Christ's death," and that this is why Paul repeats the words of institution at all. With the word over the bread, the congregation proclaims that "this bread is 'Christ's body for you (us)'"; with the cup, that His blood was poured out to ratify the new covenant (Fee, 2014).

Old adds that Paul probably has in mind the preaching that normally preceded the meal, and points to the Emmaus road as the shape of it: Jesus explains the Scriptures at length, and then sits down to supper (Old, 2002).

Two consequences for how church should run:

  1. The proclamation has to be spoken. A silent distribution with an instrumental pad underneath is not, on Paul's own account, doing what 1 Corinthians 11:26 says the meal does. Somebody has to say what this is.
  2. And the preaching comes first, then the table. That is the Emmaus order, and it is the historic order of Christian worship for good reason. Word, then sacrament. The meal is where the sermon is handed over in a form you can hold.

Emmaus, and Being Recognised in the Breaking of Bread

That Emmaus connection is worth pressing, because Luke tells us the disciples' eyes were opened and Jesus "was made known to them in the breaking of the bread" (Luke 24:35).

Peter Orr notes that both verbs are passive, and that the disciples' failure to recognise Jesus indicates "the ability to grasp that Jesus is risen is not a simple matter of natural observation but of revelation" (Orr, 2018). They did not work it out. It was disclosed to them, and it was disclosed at a table.

Bock observes that in the Emmaus account "the raised Jesus sits in table fellowship with his disciples. He is in the midst of his people even when they are not aware of it" (Bock, 1996). The presence of Christ at the table does not depend on the congregation noticing it.

Old draws a liturgical parallel:

Just before Jesus went to the cross, he joined himself to his disciples by means of the Supper that they might participate in his suffering and its redemptive power. Now the risen Jesus once more shares a meal with his disciples that they might participate in his victory over death.
(Old, 2002)

Two meals, one on either side of the tomb. The first joins us to His death, the second to His resurrection, and every Communion since has been both at once.

See also: 1 Corinthians 11v17-34 - Discerning the Body | Koinonia - Participation in the Body and Blood | Communion Practice - Frequency, Elements, and Admission

Sources