A Family Meal

The Lord’s Supper by definition is a corporate activity. We can pray alone, study the Bible alone, even sing along; but Communion is something we partake in together. It is a defining act of the body of Christ (see Acts 2:42). As Gordon Smith puts it in his little book entitled A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church: “We can so easily come to feel that we need no one. Our social context encourages us to make our own choices, live our own lives, and engage with others only when we think they have something to offer us. This is not a Christian spirituality. Further, it is an approach to life that does not foster true engagement with God or truly enable us to experience the full grace of being a Christian. . . . Nothing so effectively mitigates against the propensity toward individual autonomy within our culture and within Western Christianity as the Lord’s Supper. This meal is a means by which we see, feel, and taste that we are in this together. We need one another. We depend on one another. Together we will know God and grow in faith, hope, and love.” (10-11)