My Favorite Lord’s Supper Ever
The Lord’s Supper is sacred time. While the moments pass quickly, those few minutes are the centerpiece of the Christian’s week. It can be a struggle to do what we often pray about, and “remove all worldly thoughts from our minds,” but if and when we do, those few minutes are utterly soul-changing. To spend even a handful of minutes with our minds focused on nothing other than what Jesus has done and our hope in Him because of it should be what we look forward to the most each week.
It is true that the Lord’s Supper is an individual act. I can’t eat this meal for anyone else, nor can someone else get inside my mind and tell me what to be thinking about. It is my time with my Lord.
But there is also a community aspect to it. After all, we are all eating the supper together. Through these few minutes with the bread and the fruit of the vine, we are proclaiming our shared faith in the cross and the resurrection. Though extremely simple in nature, it is profound in meaning.
But this past Sunday was my favorite Lord’s Supper ever. Each communion meal is equal in importance, but this one had special meaning to me, and I pray I never forget this one sacred meal.
Here’s why:
For 11 1/2 years, my family of four has worshipped together. Unless we were separated because of travel or someone was sick, we have all been at worship together. We sit in different “formations,” but the most common way we sit is me on the end (after all, I typically have to get up to preach), Turner next to me, Leah beside him, and Mary Carol on the other side.
From a quite young age, we tried to encourage Turner to pass the Lord’s Supper trays from me to his mother (or vice-versa), but he wasn’t always willing to do so. Sometimes, he just wasn’t paying attention. At other times, well, he was just being a boy.
This past Sunday, though, when I handed Turner the tray for the bread, he not only passed it, but he took of it. He did the same with the little cups of juice that came by a number of minutes later.
The reason was simple: this was his first Sunday as a Christian. Last Thursday, he decided to put Christ on in baptism. My daughter, Mary Carol, became a Christian about 2 years ago. So now, our little family of four all wear the name of Christ; thus, all four of us are to take of the memorial feast that God has given us.
Last Sunday morning at breakfast, I asked Turner if he had any questions about the Lord’s Supper, since this would be his first time taking it. After saying “no,” he said something like this:
When you eat the bread, you’re supposed to think about Jesus. And when you drink the juice, you think about His blood.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. In fact, I need to do better about that, making sure I’m thinking about those simple things during my time eating the Lord’s Supper.
But I have to say, as I looked up last Sunday and saw all four of us eating that bread and then drinking that cup, I felt something that I knew had changed in our family, and it made me both supremely proud and super nervous.
I was proud because my wife, daughter, and son are all Christians.
But I was nervous for the same reason. Why? Because now, my role as a father is not just to get my kids “into the baptistry.” (That was never my role, but I hope you know what I mean in saying that.) As Christians, my role is now to make sure they understand the eternal significance of growing in their faith daily.
Still, with those nerves, last Sunday was my favorite time eating the Lord’s Supper ever. I sat beside two Christian sisters–who just happen to be my wife and daughter–and one Christian brother–who just happens to be my son, We, though we took of the emblems individually, we still together enjoyed a small feast that bonds our souls together; a meal with our Savior that has ramifications throughout the eternal ages.
How could it not have been my favorite?
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AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
Photo background credit: FergieFam007 on Creative Commons
