Like a Multifaceted Diamond

Q

In prior columns, you’ve explained that the Lord’s Supper has many layers of meaning (RW 86, RW 88, RW 93, RW blog). My question is how to put that into practice without having to introduce the Lord’s Supper with a long teaching lesson.

A

It is remarkable that biblical narratives link the Lord’s Supper with so many different, complementary themes. The Lord’s Supper is like a multifaceted diamond. It testifies to the one gospel of Jesus and does so by calling attention to several layers of meaning, as the chart below suggests.

To put this into practice, one promising place to start is to identify songs conveying these themes that your church already knows and loves, and then to sing them before or during your Lord’s Supper celebrations. Then gather these into a Lord’s Supper songbook to share as a devotional for use before and after your sacramental celebrations.

Importantly, these songs do not necessarily have to explicitly refer to the Lord’s Supper. For example, the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” ^{18th century, LUYH 61, GtG 88, PsH 328} may not strike many people as a Lord’s Supper song. But when it is sung during a Lord’s Supper celebration, it powerfully expresses how the sacrament looks both back to the past and ahead to the future.

When you choose a song that people might not expect to sing at the Lord’s Supper, provide some way for people to know why the song fits. This could be as simple as printing its key biblical phrases (see chart on next page) on a slide or in the bulletin next to the song lyrics, or providing a pithy, one-sentence explanation such as “Jesus began the first Lord’s Supper celebration by giving thanks for the bread and cup, showing us how gratitude leads the way when we gather here at the Lord’s Table.”

This Lord’s Supper songbook could be as brief as ten songs—one per theme.

The very process of organizing songs in this way will be instructive. You’ll likely find some of these categories more challenging to fill. Pay attention to those. That signals an area of your song repertoire that needs work.

Don’t treat any of these themes as optional. They are, after all, Scriptural. Failing to engage them leaves congregations with only a partial view of the beauty of the Lord’s Supper and of the gospel.

This exercise will likely stretch congregations to include a broader range of emotions in Lord’s Supper celebrations. The Lord’s Supper is a natural home for aching longing, heartfelt penitence, and grateful celebration. Both “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” ^{Watts, LUYH 175, GtG 223, PsH 384} and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” ^{Wesley, LUYH 182, GtG 245, PsH 388} belong at the table.

Having a Lord’s Supper songbook like this can also help churches move toward more frequent Lord’s Supper celebrations, demonstrating how these celebrations could vary over time by highlighting different themes.