The Lord’s Supper as a Spiritually Formative Experience of Scripture

Abstract

The Lord’s Supper in its New Testament context is an experience of Scripture, a reenactment of crucial divine acts in salvation history with Jesus’ death and resurrection as the nexus. As such, it grounds communicants in the biblical metanarrative and directs them to generosity, forgiveness, and patient, hopeful witness.

1. Introduction

Most Christians observe the Lord’s Supper regularly, yet Christians sharply dispute its significance. Literature on the Lord’s Supper largely focuses on differences in its interpretation in dogmatic theology and, less often, on its connection to the historical Jesus. Whereas the former may have catechesis as an eventual formative objective, the latter has no avowed concern for such a goal. These areas of investigation leave considerable room for fresh analysis exploring how Lord’s Supper observance is experienced as spiritually formative. Using tools of New Testament exegesis and biblical theology, this paper will explore that neglected function.

Our method will primarily be intertextual, exploring implied connections between the observance of the Lord’s Supper and texts of the canon of Israel’s Scriptures. With primary reference to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament alludes directly to one critical episode in Israel’s sacred history—the Passover—and less directly to other themes and events in the Scriptural canon, including Jesus’ meals with sinners, the prophetic image of the eschatological feast, and, of course, Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The archetype of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus’ Last Supper, stands at a specific junction in the Synoptic narratives, echoing earlier episodes of eating and drinking to which Jesus attaches complementary significance. Likewise, both Jesus’ words at the Last Supper and Paul’s interpretation of them in 1 Corinthians 11 orient observance toward a hoped-for future, connecting observance to a seminal eschatological image in Israel’s prophetic literature. The discussion here will make the case for these intertextual connections.

The resulting understanding of the Lord’s Supper’s significance in the biblical metanarrative will provide a means to see it as spiritually formative. Leaving aside questions of transubstantiation, consubstantiation, real presence, and the like, the paper will consider how participating in the Lord’s Supper is an experience of Scripture enacted. Its earliest observance, evinced in the New Testament, expresses this experience. For generations following, regular observance of the Supper provides a definition and direction to the communicant, provoking identification with the work of the Triune God and celebration of and participation in that work.

2. Passover, Exodus, and Wilderness

The Synoptic narratives clearly align Jesus’ Last Supper with Israel’s Passover celebration. While differences in narration between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel raise the question whether the event was on the evening of Passover as observed by most of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, on an alternate date observed by a dissenting Jewish group, or on the evening before Passover at Jesus’ direction, the obvious clues of the Synoptic narratives simply identify the occasion as the Passover meal (Carson 1991, pp. 451–58).

As is well known, Passover is celebrated by the reenactment of the beginning of Israel’s liberation from Egyptian enslavement. Exodus 12 describes it as the beginning of Israel’s year (v. 2), observed by the slaughter of lambs at twilight (vv. 3–6), the marking of the household’s doorposts with the lamb’s blood (vv. 7–8), the roasting of the lamb, and feasting on its roasted meat until it is entirely consumed (vv. 9–10). Accompanying the lamb are unleavened bread and bitter herbs (v. 10). Israel was to eat hastily with belt and sandals on and staff in hand; that is, ready to make a hasty journey (v. 11). These elements variously celebrated the experience of liberation: bitter herbs recounting the hardships of slavery, unleavened bread underlining Israel’s sudden departure from Egypt after so many disappointments, belt and sandals and staff signifying hopeful readiness for liberation, and the blood distinguishing the house of Israel from their Egyptian captors.

This observance, then, engages the entire congregation or sacred assembly of Israel (Exod 12:3, 6, where both ‘edah and qāhāl are used to refer to Israel assembled) in a reenactment of Israel’s seminal experience of their God. Yahweh has overcome Israel’s imperial captors by defeating both their king and their gods (Exod 12:12). By this reenactment, Israel remembers God’s action (Deut 16:3), an action not merely of cognition but of self-definition and active obedience. As Israel receives the law with the prelude, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exod 20:2), its memory of that event shapes their covenant obedience to God’s gracious and mighty action on their behalf. Outwardly and inwardly, Israel is to live (Exod 20:17) according to the defining memory of God’s liberation of their forebears.

As the commencement of the exodus, Passover provokes memory not just of the fateful night of the tenth plague but of the entire journey to follow: of miraculous deliverance at the Sea of Reeds (Exod 14:1–15:21) and of the miraculous provision of bread (Exod 16) and water (Exod 17). All those actions take place in the context of Israel’s inconstancy. Israel grumbles repeatedly, forming a sort of refrain in the narrative (Exod 14:11; 15:23–24; 16:2–3; 17:1–3). Their grumbling climaxes but does not end with the infamous golden calf episode (Exod 32:1–33:6). God (sarcastically) proposes to start again with Moses alone, ironically underlining Israel’s habitual failure and God’s relentless graciousness (Exod 32:9–14). There is no entertaining the notion that the chosen people were choice. No, their just God is supremely merciful (Exod 34:6–7).

The larger narrative setting of the Last Supper similarly juxtaposes divine acts of deliverance and sustenance with the disciples’ response evincing something in the range of naïve incomprehension to stubborn unbelief. Jesus’ miracles of feeding echo the Exodus narrative: the miraculous provision of bread in the wilderness (Mark 6:31, 32, 35//Matthew 14:13, 15//Luke 9:12), sitting on green grass that indicates the season near Passover in Galilee’s Mediterranean climate (Mark 6:39), groups of one hundred and of fifty (Mark 6:40//Luke 9:14; Exod 18:21), and twelve baskets of leftovers at the end (Mark 6:43//Matt 14:20//Luke 9:17). The story is introduced with Jesus’ telling the twelve to give the people bread and their perplexed reply that they are powerless to do so (Mark 6:37//Matthew 14:16–17//Luke 9:13). In Matthew and Mark, the scene with a marginally smaller multitude is repeated a second time, with a second failure, narrated with close verbal similarity (Mark 8:1–10//Matthew 15:32–39).

The scenes between Jesus and the disciples in storms at sea offer less obvious echoes, though a connection with Israel’s crossing the Sea of Reeds is not out of the question. As with the archetypal Exodus narrative, divine intervention reverses what is otherwise deadly peril (Mark 4:35–41//Matthew 8:23–27//Luke 8:22–25; Mark 6:45–52//Matthew 14:22–33; Exod 14:1–31; cf. Psalm 107:23–32). The connection in Matthew and Mark of the second storm narrative with the first feeding story, duplicated in John’s Gospel and followed by a story of grumbling (John 6:16–21, the only instance of a Johannine parallel to the Synoptics outside the passion narratives), arguably further invites connection to the Exodus archetypes.

Both these strands of failure are brought together as Jesus confronts the twelve about “the leaven” of his opponents (Mark 8:14–21//Matthew 16:5–12//Luke 12:1). Even here, the disciples fail to understand Jesus’ words, mistaking them for some sort of practical advice addressing their lack of bread. Jesus remonstrates by reminding them of his provision of bread on prior occasions. It is no accident that this episode occurs once again in a boat on the sea or that Jesus addresses the disciples with the metaphor of leaven, the forbidden substance of Passover (Exod 12:15, 19–20; 13:3, 7; 34:25; Deut 16:3–4).

The pattern of the twelve’s misunderstanding is immediately amplified when following Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ; he, speaking for all the twelve, rebukes Jesus for his prediction of crucifixion and resurrection (Mark 8:32//Matt 16:22). The failure of the twelve to understand Jesus’ plain words warning of his passion is a motif throughout the rest of the Synoptic narratives (Mark 9:32//Luke 9:45; Luke 18:34), carrying through to the Upper Room and so framing the Lord’s Supper (Mark 14:17–21//Matt 26;20–25//Luke 22:21-23). Ironically enough, though the church later inculcated communicants to confess awareness of the atoning work of the cross (sometimes reinforced by a decontextualized reading of 1 Corinthians 11:27; e.g., The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) Question and Answer 81), Jesus shares the foundation for the Lord’s Supper with men who are habitually clueless and, on this occasion, acutely clueless.

These two narrative themes—the mighty acts of God on behalf of his people and his people’s repeated stubborn failure—thus permeate Passover and the Lord’s Supper. Participants “remember” not just what God did for his people but the overwhelming grace that characterized what God did, given the people’s habitual unbelief and obtuseness. To remember is, therefore, to define oneself as weak, helpless, stubborn, recalcitrant, ignorant, and often faithless. To receive the elements is to confess this self-definition, addressing it with the unmerited gift God provided then and provides now for helpless sinners. The sacred meal thus nourishes the heart, soul, and mind toward love for the God of the exodus and the Christ of the cross. It is thus a spiritually formative experience of Scripture, inviting the communicant to be a participant in the sacred narrative.

3. Eating with Sinners, Dying for Sinners

Likewise, the Synoptic narratives depict Jesus’ Last Supper as the climax of the series of meals running through the narrative. These present a clear motif aligning with Jesus’ words in the Last Supper account.

Characteristic and famous in the Synoptic narrative is Jesus’ habit of dining with “tax collectors and sinners” (Matt 9:10–11; 11:19; Mark 2:15–16; Luke 5:30; 7:24: 15:1). This feature of Jesus’ ministry is widely regarded as central to his work, whether viewed from the literary/theological perspective of the Synoptic Gospels (e.g., Neale 1991) or the historical perspective of reconstructing the Jesus of history (e.g., Donahue 1971; Blomberg 2009).

Discussion about these meals with sinners in the so-called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus has, in fact, brought clarity to their significance, both as to which the historical Jesus assigned significance and as elements of artistry and theologizing in the Synoptic Narrative. Though this debate was carried out apart from concerns for spiritual formation, the result offers provocative insights into that aim. E. P. Sanders effectively launched the Third Quest with his observation that a common Christian reading of these accounts had mischaracterized the Pharisees as opposed to the forgiveness of sinners. Pharisees, Sanders effectively argued, very much favored forgiveness conditioned on the sinner’s repentance. Thus, Sanders argued what was scandalous about Jesus’ eating with sinners was not that he offered forgiveness but that he did not condition it on repentance, with sayings about repentance, therefore, being judged as post-Easter revisions of the story by Christians falling back into conventional ways of thinking. Otherwise, asks Sanders, what could possibly scandalize Pharisees, who very much favored the forgiveness of repentant sinners (Sanders 1985, pp. 174–211, see especially p. 206)?

To Sanders’ seminal provocation, N. T. Wright offered a rejoinder. Indeed, Pharisees embraced forgiveness for the repentant, but during the Second Temple period, Pharisees insisted, as did most observant Jews, that forgiveness was mediated through sacrifice in the temple. Jesus’ association with sinners was, therefore, scandalous, not because forgiveness was thought unavailable or because he offered forgiveness without repentance but because he gave assurance of forgiveness to the repentant apart from the temple, mediating the forgiveness himself (Wright 1996, pp. 273–74). Jesus assumed the role of the promised “Son of David” who builds God’s house (2 Samuel 7:4–17, with many other canonical oracles reiterating and reinterpreting it) by identifying himself as the temple of fulfillment, the nexus of God and humanity. Thus, Jesus spoke of his eating with sinners not simply as his extending gracious forgiveness to them but as their mutual celebration of the sinners’ reconciliation (Luke 15; Bailey 1976, pp. 142–206). This identification is found even more explicitly in the Fourth Gospel when Jesus speaks of rebuilding the destroyed temple in three days, which the narrator interprets as a mysterious reference to his death and resurrection (John 2:13–22; Barrett 1978, p. 201).

The Last Supper narrative further develops this nexus by identifying Jesus’ death with temple sacrifice. The description of the bread as Jesus’ “body broken for you” and the wine as Jesus’ “blood poured out for you” embraces the Levitical sacrificial ritual in which the body of the animal is cut into pieces before being placed on the altar and the blood is drained from the body, caught in a basin, and then poured out before the altar as the sacrifice is burnt (Leviticus 1:1–17 and variously thereafter). These descriptions, in fact, more closely resemble the temple ritual than they do the narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion that follows, which says nothing of dismemberment or the pouring out of blood. The differences are so striking as to suggest the likelihood of their historical authenticity, as a theologically motivated creation would likely bring either the words of the institution or the narrative of Jesus’ death into conformity with the other.

Therefore, the Last Supper recalls Jesus’ prior meals with sinners, celebrations of the forgiveness he offers as the Son of David who builds the true temple, namely, the temple that is his body. Simultaneously, the Last Supper identifies Jesus’ death as the atoning sacrifice (“for you”) anticipated by the Levitical temple sacrifices. Its institution as a repeated rite among Jesus’ followers reinforces these messages: one comes to the table as a sinner, receiving freely from Jesus the forgiveness anticipated by the temple and its sacrifices and effected by Jesus’ own atoning death. Communicants thus confess when they receive the elements: they confess themselves as sinners and Jesus as, by his death, their savior. Thereby, they identify themselves in the fabric of the canonical narrative as participants in the divine drama of salvation. This experience is again fundamentally spiritually formative.

4. The Feast of Creation and Re-Creation

Another “feast” lies in the narrative prior to the Last Supper. Variously referred to as the messianic feast or eschatological feast, it has its clearest antecedent in Israel’s Scriptures in Isaiah 25:6–8, a feast “for all peoples” at Mount Zion, the temple mount, at which Israel’s God will “swallow up death forever” and “wipe away tears from all faces” as he removes his people’s reproach. Following a series of oracles warning of Yahweh’s judgment against Israel’s neighboring nations and Israel itself (Isaiah 13–24), this image startles with its vivid depiction of all peoples united in a feast celebrating the gracious forgiveness of the God against whom they have rebelled. With the abolishment of death, the creation narrative, in which God creates living things and breathes life into the human, is recapitulated (see later Isaiah 65:17–25). The Creator God recreates, redeeming the world’s rebellious peoples and restoring them to the divine gift of life. In the larger prophetic vision articulated in the whole of the book of Isaiah, this anticipated feast aligns with Yahweh’s gathering of scattered Israel (Isa 11:12), the establishment of the promised temple (Isa 56:7), the reign of the promised king (Isa 9:1–7), and the light of God going to the nations (Isa 42:6; 49:6). In other words, it is the feast of the inauguration of the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ image of peoples from “east and west” dining with the patriarchs while many in Israel are excluded appears to be an allusion to the prophetic vision of the messianic feast (Matt 8:11; Luke 13:28). It is, in fact, hard not to see this allusion as a further commentary on his practice of eating with sinners. Those feasts were not so much offers of forgiveness as celebrations of forgiveness received. But, in light of the promise of a future feast for all peoples, from east and west, they appear also to anticipate the messianic feast.

Such anticipation Jesus expresses in his words at the Last Supper, as he speaks of eating and drinking with the disciples in God’s kingdom (Matt 26:29//Mark 14:28//Luke 22:18). His dining with the twelve already makes allusion to earlier meals in the narrative, as the twelve are characterized as repeatedly failing in their discipleship (e.g., Matt 8:26; 14:31; 16:8, 22–23; Mark 4:40; 8:32–33; Luke 8:25; 9:45), even at the Passover meal (Matthew 26:20–25; Mark 14:17–21; Luke 22:21–30). This meal is yet another Jesus holds with sinners, ironically those sinners being his close followers. But as it looks backward to earlier meals celebrating forgiveness, this feast, with its kingdom language, also looks forward to the messianic feast.

Yet the impact of this reference to the kingdom arguably has the impact of a hard saying that can only be unwrapped after the passion and resurrection. As is well known, the evening of Passover initiated the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:15). Indeed, the term “Passover” itself could refer to the entire festival as well as the day of Passover proper, the meal on Passover night, and the lamb slain and roasted for the meal (Bauer and Danker 2000, pp. 724–85; Silva 2014; Josephus and Thackeray 1965, Antiquities, 14.21 “the Feast of Unleavened Bread … which we call the Passover”). As already noted, the twelve disciples enter the Passover with Jesus, still unable to understand or accept his warning of his impending death. Not anticipating the dire event to come but knowing they were at the beginning of an extended feast, Jesus’ pledge not to eat the feast again until the kingdom arrives arguably would have struck the twelve as a promise of the kingdom’s imminent arrival: when we eat again, it will be in God’s kingdom.

Luke appears especially attuned to this perlocution. Immediately following the narration of the Last Supper, Jesus rebukes the disciples for their argument over who is the greatest, ending his rebuke with a promise that the twelve will share Jesus’ table and judge the gathered tribes of Israel in God’s kingdom (Luke 22:24–30). Later in the Lukan resurrection narrative, Jesus reveals himself to two disciples in Emmaus by breaking bread (Luke 24:30–31), acting as host at a table where he is clearly the guest. Then, appearing to the twelve (now eleven, minus Judas) in Jerusalem, he proves to his incredulous followers he is not a ghost by eating a fish (Luke 24:41–43). These otherwise gratuitous details cohere with the larger narrative arc when we hear Jesus’ statement about eating again in God’s kingdom as a veiled promise that the kingdom of God comes with his death and resurrection. For Luke, Jesus’ reinterpretation of Passover prefigures the messianic banquet inaugurated with Jesus’ resurrection and ultimately fulfilled in Jesus’ return (Acts 1:11).

Thus, even within the Lukan narrative, the formative nature of the Last Supper for the twelve provides the genesis of its formative role in the church. The twelve join Jesus in the feast despite their ongoing failure, and despite the disloyalty, all will show just hours later. But Jesus includes them in the feast he reinterprets as referring to his own story as the climax of God’s redemptive activity. The twelve feast in ignorance and failure but are invited to look forward to enlightenment and absolution.

This inference appears to be near Paul’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper as practiced in his churches. Paul assures the Corinthians their mindful observance of the Lord’s Supper is a declaration of the Lord’s death—surely not just the fact of it but its significance—“until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). With that perspective, the Corinthian church is urged to recognize the “body” of Christ—one another—in generosity and acceptance (1 Cor 11:27–31), much as Jesus received the twelve. The observance has been ground zero for their unfaithful selfishness; it must become the tangible expression of their self-giving love.

Therefore, the Lord’s Supper commemorates the kingdom’s inauguration and looks forward to its fulfillment. It looks backward and forward, as far back as the exodus, clearly back to the upper room and cross and empty tomb, and as far forward as the renewal of all things, placing the communicants in the middle, celebrating and anticipating as they receive and participate.

This eschatological focus brings the biblical metanarrative to its consummation. The bold declaration of Israel’s Torah is that Israel’s God is the creator of all nations, and so the rightful king of all nations. The nations’ rebellion, including Israel’s, is the fundamental explanation for the creation’s endemic dysfunction and the human creature’s mortal misery. If Israel’s God is to be king, he must overcome this rebellion, a task he promises from the first (Gen 3:15) and promises again as he calls Israel into existence (Gen 12:3). Thus, God pledges to re-create fallen creation, a pledge embodied in the construction of the tabernacle and temple, with their reminders of God’s work of creation and sovereignty over his creation. The end recapitulates the beginning, and the middle remembers the past and points to the future. The entire story of God and his creation is embraced in the sacred feast.

5. Rite, Narrative, and Spiritual Formation

Years ago, I attended a funeral mass in which the priest officiating began the service with the remark, “Symbols often speak more clearly than words”. Wisely, he then used words to explain the meaning of the symbols in the service to come.

So it is with the Lord’s Supper. Its symbols are rich, but their riches can only be appropriated when they are understood and when they have been meaningfully explained. The burden of this paper has been to do that and to recommend to pastors and other church leaders that such explanations need attention in church life. Regular, even frequent observance of the Lord’s Supper is potently formative of Christian faithfulness when performed in the context of a community’s growing understanding of its place at the intersection of salvation history. With thoughtful exposition, the ritual of observance becomes a rehearsal of the biblical metanarrative, a confession, a catechism, and a proclamation of the Christian story and Christian identity. When worship centers on the Lord’s Supper, the essence and fullness of the Christian faith are placed front and center for all who participate.

Participation in the Lord’s Supper then becomes a vital means of internalizing and expressing the Christian message and its implications. As Jesus could call the twelve to express greatness in service (Luke 22:24–30), as Paul could call the Corinthians to recognize Christ’s body in one another and their needs (1 Cor 11:17–34), the Lord’s Supper’s web of narrative supports the practice of cruciform faith.

Contextualized in the Last Supper narrative in Luke is Jesus’ exhortation to seek greatness in service for others (Luke 22:24–29). This exhortation, like its parallel in a different context in Matthew (20:24–28) and Mark (10:42–45), directs Jesus’ followers to follow his own self-sacrifice on their behalf, a sacrifice he makes for them at the very height of the disciples’ recalcitrance and ignorance (see also John 13:1–17). Alongside the explicit exhortation of self-giving service, therefore, stands the implicit exhortation of forgiveness: as Jesus dies for the forgiveness of those who, though confessing loyalty to him, fail to affirm what he teaches them, so they are to forgive others (Luke 11:4; Matthew 6:12).

To the Corinthians, Paul rehearses the Last Supper to correct wealthy congregants’ neglect of the hungry poor—a problem likely exacerbated by a famine (Winter 1989)—as they gather for worship and the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17–33). He measures their formation in the love of Christ (1 Cor 8:1–3; 13:1–13) by their respect for the scruples of their sisters and brothers (1 Cor 8–10) and their humble exercise of gifts for others’ edification (1 Cor 12–14), with generous hospitality addressed between the two longer exhortations. The measure of their formation is love, and love is expressed in hospitality.

With these observations, we can invite the central rite of Christian worship back to the table of spiritual formation practices. Whatever questions have arisen about its practice since its inception—the nature of the Lord’s presence (Aquinas et al. 2024, Summa Theologiae, IIIa q. 75, aa. 2–5), the inclusion of the unbaptized (Ehrman 2003, Didache 9.5), and the exigencies of pandemics and lockdowns (Village 2022)—communicants familiar with the multiple intertextual references of the Lord’s Supper can embrace a consciousness of their place in the middle of God’s story as recipients of the self-sacrificial grace by which the Creator is renewing his creation and by which the source of life is giving eternal life. Such consciousness can vigorously direct them to loving, forgiving, and generous service shaped by that story. What is Christian spiritual formation, if not that?