The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 130: Bringing back the lost art of the biblical Lord's Supper (Christa Sanders Bryant)
On June 12, 2025, The Christian Chronicle's Bobby Ross Jr. released a story about the Arlington (Virginia) Church of Christ. That congregation removed the pews from the center of its auditorium and replaced them with tables. Now, worshipers leave their seats and gather around those tables to share the Lord's Supper with each other.
The article stirred up strong opinions among Christian Chronicle readers. Some affirm how the Arlington Church of Christ is trying a fresh and purposeful practice of the Lord's Supper. Others, however, believe that the new practice distracts worshipers from a solemn remembrance of the death of Jesus.
The energetic conversation among readers led The Christian Chronicle's opinions editor, Dr. Jeremie Beller, to write a column of his own. He wasn't the only Bible scholar to weigh in. Christa Sanders Bryant, an author, teacher, and PhD student in Biblical studies at Faulkner University shared the article and some thoughts of her own.
In this episode, Bryant shares her own experiences with the Lord's Supper and how her biblical research reveals what 21st century Church of Christ folks may be missing from the church's first century practice.
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Family and friends, neighbors and, most of all, strangers. Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We're bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. I'm BT Irwin. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God.
BT Irwin:What is the right way, the biblical way, to do communion, the Lord's Supper, in the Church of Christ? We all know that the biblical command and example is to partake of it every first day of the week. I dare say you will not find a congregation with Church of Christ on its sign out front that does not observe the Lord's Supper every Sunday. But how each congregation practices the Lord's Supper can be different from how each congregation practices the Lord's Supper can be different from one to the next. For example, at the congregation where I grew up, we did the Lord's Supper before the Sunday morning sermon, after the third song to be exact. Imagine the scandal. The first time I went to a congregation that did the Lord's Supper after the sermon, I remember asking my parents on the ride home if that congregation was aware of its transgression. If you're used to doing the Lord's Supper one way for so many years, it can feel just wrong to do it any other way. Large is the fleet of church buses that it would take to hold the many folks who have, over the years, left their congregations. Over changes those congregations made to their practice of the Lord's Supper Changes as seemingly lightweight as, whether it happens before or after the sermon, changes like those may seem even more lightweight when we remember how the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 forced every congregation to rethink its practice of the Lord's Supper. Raise your hand if the sound of ripping cellophane is now as much a part of your Sunday morning assembly as prayers, preaching and singing.
BT Irwin:I thought the changes congregations made during the pandemic would make it less likely that Church of Christ folks would take issue with each other over future changes congregations might make to the practical parts of the Lord's Supper. For example, some congregations may go back to passing trays and some may stick to rip and sip. Or some congregations may change the format and timing of the Lord's Supper within their assemblies, as long as they gather every Sunday to partake of unleavened bread and fruit of the vine in remembrance of Jesus Christ. How that happens is a matter of what works for each congregation within the bounds of biblical command and example. That's what I thought, but a couple of weeks before we recorded this episode, the Christian Chronicles' Bobby Ross Jr published a story about the Arlington Church of Christ in Arlington, virginia. When that congregation began meeting again after the pandemic, they took the disruption as an opportunity for refreshment and renewal of their assemblies. In particular, they asked if their practice of the Lord's Supper was as biblical and substantial as it could be. They concluded together that they could do better. So, after much prayer, reflection and study, they made some changes to their practice. They removed the pews from the center of their auditorium and replaced them with tables for the bread and fruit of the vine. Now the folks in the pews get up from their seats and gather around the tables as they share the Lord's Supper with each other. When Bobby's story appeared on the Christian Chronicles Facebook page, it fermented like a forgotten bottle of Welch's grape juice from March 2020.
BT Irwin:Some folks from our Christian Chronicle audience affirmed the Arlington Church of Christ for trying to be more biblical and intentional about the Lord's Supper. Others, however, took strong issue. For example, a sister named Sue wrote quote If I'm looking into someone else's eyes, I'm focusing on them instead of Christ. The focus should be on Christ, end quote. A sister named Betty wrote quote. We should sit quietly and contemplate Jesus' suffering and love for us. The Lord's Supper is not a fellowship event end quote.
BT Irwin:A sister named Trisea wrote quote the Lord's Supper is not a buffet. It's to commemorate the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ. Sitting with our heads bowed in humility to Him is most appropriate. End quote. A sister named Amy wrote quote. Seems this would definitely be a distraction and take away from examining yourself during the Lord's Supper. End quote.
BT Irwin:A sister named Doris wrote quote the Lord's Supper is not a social event. It is a solemn memorial of our Lord's death. What could be more solemn than partaking of the bread and fruit of the vine and contemplating the Lord's suffering? End quote. And a sister named Joyce wrote quote. The Lord's Supper is a time to reflect upon the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you want something to do while the bread and cups are passed, read about the death, burial and resurrection. End quote.
BT Irwin:So Bobby's story about the Lord's Supper at the Arlington Church of Christ is turning out to be one of our most exciting stories of 2025 so far. So exciting that our opinions editor, dr Jeremy Beller, felt compelled to write a column in response to the response the story is getting. We'll post that column in the show notes. Another person who read the piece and felt a strong response to it is our guest today. Krista Sanders Bryant is a Church of Christ lifer who is an author and teacher when she's not raising five count them five daughters. She is a recent recipient of the Master in Biblical Studies from the Kearley Graduate School of Theology at Faulkner University in Montgomery, alabama, where she is now pursuing the PhD in Biblical Studies. As part of her graduate program, she wrote many papers on the Lord's Supper, including a 31-pager she titled the Form, function and Fellowship of the Eucharist. You won't find too many people in the Church of Christ who are better prepared to think and talk about the Lord's Supper. We welcome to the show Krista Sanders-Bryant.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Thank you.
BT Irwin:So I want to start by giving you a chance to do a little bit of storytelling what is a personal story? By giving you a chance to do a little bit of storytelling what is a personal?
Christa Sanders Bryant:story that gets at what the Lord's Supper means to you. When I was a young wife, one of the elders' wives at our congregation offered to teach all the younger wives how to make communion bread and I couldn't come to the class. So I told her. I said I can't come that day but I would love to learn how to do it. Is there another time or is? Can you give me the recipe? Can you know something? And she's like oh yes, I'll meet you up here at the church building another time. And she said that you need to read the recipe before you come and if you've made communion bread before, you know it is not difficult. The recipe should be a small card and she handed me a packet that was eight pages long.
Christa Sanders Bryant:And so I start flipping through it and it gives all the ingredients and it gives the steps, and for every little thing there was something about how much of an opportunity this was to serve the Lord and to serve the congregation. And one of the steps was to make it easier for the congregants to break the bread. Take your fork and delicately make holes in the bread so they can break it off easier. But when you do that and when you're taking your fork, think about the nails that went through Jesus's hand. And every little step had something to remember, to remember the crucifixion, and that was so at the time I got in the car and I showed it to my husband and we kind of laughed a little bit about how long it was and um, but that stuck with me.
Christa Sanders Bryant:I mean, that was 20 years ago and we still talk about that packet and how incredible that was. And in contrast, that with COVID and I went and I got this cardboard box out from underneath the table and I scooped out communion kits and put it into a for lack of a better word small trash bag to put out on the door for people to come pick up, and what a difference that was. And I think in that moment of pulling the communion cups out of the box and putting them on the porch, I thought about that package. Yeah.
Christa Sanders Bryant:And like what are we doing? Yeah, what are we really doing. And that that moment stuck with me because it was such a clinical thing Almost. I don't want to say dirty, because it wasn't dirty, but it was just so common. Yes.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Compared to what we did with. You know, when you poke the bread with a fork and think about the nails that went through Jesus's hands to scooping them up and putting them in the trash bag to put on the, to put on the porch for people to come pick up, and I don't know, it was such, a, such a contrast in my brain and I think in that moment I thought what are we really doing? Yeah, wow, what a story.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Yeah, what are we really doing and how do we remember God in this moment? And that was five, four or five years ago, and since then this has been on my heart and on my mind how, how do we do it? Why do we do it?
BT Irwin:Okay, before we go on, I got to know, do you still have that eight page?
Christa Sanders Bryant:I do not. In fact I asked Dwayne last night. I was like do we have this paper? He's like I don't think we have it, but she had made copies and she had, like she passed them out to everybody. So I'm I'm wondering if some of my friends still have it. I love that. That was 20 years ago.
BT Irwin:I grew up at a church where one of the elders' wives made all the communion bread and taught other people how to make it too, and I think I was in my 20s before I tasted the cracker or the monster, whatever it is that most congregations use. The way you ended up here on the show is when the story about the Arlington Church of Christ came out a few weeks ago. You shared that the Lord's Supper has been a subject of close concentration and special study for you over the last year or two, and now I think I know why. So that season appeared to begin for you, probably like it did for a lot of us during the pandemic Right. How has that taken shape then, over the last four or five years?
Christa Sanders Bryant:So during COVID I started my master's degree at Palmer and you know you're always looking for paper topics. You're always looking for paper topics and for the last year I've probably written four to five papers just on the Lord's Supper in some some way, either the one that I sent you or three or four others that have to deal with the wording of certain sections, or comparing to two parts of it, or picking out different things and really focusing on every step of it. And I think you know, when you go to worship it's not something that you just do, it's something that you engage in, and I want to make sure that how can we best be engaged in the Lord's Supper and not just, you know, take a little piece of cracker and drink a little bit of juice and check that box and go on?
BT Irwin:So when you saw the article that Bobby Ross wrote about Arlington Church of Christ, you read it, like lots and lots of other people did, but that inspired you to share it and talk about it too.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Yeah, I think what drew me to the article originally was not even the topic, it was the picture, and the picture of the table in the middle of the auditorium and the idea of table fellowship, and that's something that we've lost, especially in the 21st century. And I wanted to know okay, here's a church that realizes we've lost something integral to the original feast and they're doing something about it. And I don't know that they're doing all parts of it like they did in the first century, but I do know that they're making an effort to say how can we make this better? That's, I think, what made me so excited, because there is an element of, you know, we we call it communion because we commune with God. You know we're supposed to be, but there's also this idea that we commune with God. You know we're supposed to be, but there's also this idea that we commune with our fellow church member, and we've lost that.
Christa Sanders Bryant:I mean, when most of us go to church, we either stare at the person in front of us, at their head, we don't look at the person next to us, unless we're passing the tray, and so it's a very individual, it's a very isolating experience and there's not that communion. And how much more meaningful is it when you see the 80-year-old widow woman taking communion, who's gone through horrible, horrible things with the loss of her spouse and maybe her life has been difficult in taking communion, and it's being so much more special and pertinent to her. And then me, who has not been through that experience, to see her celebrate the life of Christ in a way that I can't relate to, but know that she is, but know that she is.
BT Irwin:Does that give you hope for your future or make Christ more meaningful to you? At the top of the show I read some of the comments that the Arlington Church of Christ story received from our Christian Chronicle audience. Many were affirmative, but many criticized or questioned what the congregation did with its practice of the Lord's Supper, and the most common objections seem to come from a place of concern that gathering around tables in the middle of the auditorium would distract people from the self-examination and solemnity of what is indeed a memorial to Jesus Christ.
Christa Sanders Bryant:I think if we go back and we look at that scripture in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 28, there is an adverb in that sentence that is, before you examine yourself before, you don't examine yourself during the taking of the sacraments that moment is for you to think about Christ, it's not to think about yourself. And so you examine yourself before so that when you do come to the table you're already in a state of remembrance and in a state of right, living with God. And I think we forget that, like we run up to communion, oh, now I've got to examine myself and be holy for this moment. And that should have happened, you know, way before. So I think we forget that. And so if you are taking communion around people and it's hard to to self examine yourself because you're looking communion around people and it's hard to to self-examine yourself because you're looking at other people that there's a purpose for that.
Christa Sanders Bryant:When christ sat down at the table with the passover, they didn't sit by themselves, they sat around the table all looking at each other. When the church, in troas and acts, sat at a table looking at each other. And so that's, I think, something that's cultural to us in the 21st century that we would have to learn how to manage that, how to get through that. But yeah, we are supposed to examine ourselves before and then. I think when we talk about solemnity, solemnity doesn't mean silence. We've all been to a funeral and we've all been to a funeral, yes, and we've all been to a meal after that funeral, and that's not necessarily a happy, joyful time Talking about the person that died and the influence they had on your life or things that they did. Can we not take that idea of a funeral meal where that person who has died and is the subject of that meal, can we not replace that with Christ and say how did Christ's death affect me this week?
Christa Sanders Bryant:If this might be a little bit too technical, but in the first century the bread was taken at the very beginning of the meal and the and the cup was taken after the meal was eaten. And so you're not going to break the bread and think about Jesus's death and and think about you know what he did and his sacrifice, and then immediately look up and say, hey, guess what happened to me at work this week and you know you're going to want to discuss that with people and talk about it, and we've lost that, we've lost that tradition and we've lost that process. And so I think it's a very difficult thing for people to think about. How can we do this in a way that honors God?
BT Irwin:I like that you brought up a funeral meal, a wake, a repast, it's called different things in different cultures, but've few times in my life have I experienced a meal that was more meaningful and more just, overwhelmed with both laughter and tears, as a funeral meal. There's there's storytelling, there's laughter, there's crying, there are moments of silence, stories about the person, and I have vivid memories of some funeral luncheons that I attended over the years. So I like that you brought that up. You wrote a 31-page paper the Form, function and Fellowship of the Eucharist. I wonder if we could touch on a few of the points that you make in the paper and to the point.
BT Irwin:I think of the discussion folks were having on Facebook and that we're having today. You wrote in your paper, quote it was precisely the lack of remembrance that Jesus so wanted his followers to avoid. Yet two millennia later, the feast looks little like the meal of the first century. The Enlightenment, historical theology and other influences have changed the practice of the memorial. Feast were only a small remnant of what Jesus instituted remains end, quote. I reckon those are jarring words for a lot of folks in a Church of Christ audience for a lot of folks in the Church of Christ audience.
Christa Sanders Bryant:The Church of Christ, which I have been a part of since I was born on a Sunday and I have been at the church since that first Sunday we take great pride in being the church of the first century. We advertise that, we tell people, we try to be the church of the first century. We're non-denominational, we're, you know, we want to do things like jesus did and, of course, being in the 21st century, that's not always going to look alike. There wasn't powerpoint or air conditioning and all that stuff that we, that we enjoy. But I think this is one of those things that we could do and we could do well today that we have lost the first century, for years spent time around the table talking about jesus and his death and his resurrection and what that meant and what that meant for his people and what that meant for the church, and and that was that was inspiring to them. So now we take a little, a little cup, a little piece of bread, a little thing, and it's very ceremonial, it's very ritualistic and we pass it in within, depending on the size of your congregation or whether you use the little all in one things communion can take anywhere from five to 15 minutes, and it's. It's not what it looked like then and I don't know necessarily that it's a sin, not that it looks like that but I think we've missed something and I think we've missed the remembrance that Jesus wanted.
Christa Sanders Bryant:When we taste the juice as it goes down, you know, sometimes it's bitter and sour and we think about that. How much of that are we thinking about? That Jesus's blood was shed for us. You know, when they did it in the first century especially when you read it in Mark Jesus took a pitcher and he poured the juice into his cup. And then they took that pitcher and they all poured juice into their own cup.
Christa Sanders Bryant:And there's something about the visual effect of seeing blood or the juice, the red juice, go from one pitcher and think about the spilling of blood. And just like the blood comes out of the body, it came out of the pitcher and that's a visual thing that you know that was a lot of blood or that was a lot of liquid and that's important. And when you break the bread you have to break away and especially if you have like homemade communion bread, it's a little bit more work. You have to put a little bit of effort into it and think that was his body and they broke it. You know we don't participate in any of that, we just do the bare minimum and I think that just makes me sad.
BT Irwin:The bare minimum. Those words, they, they strike a minor chord with me. I I had to write a graduate paper a couple of years ago and part of that paper involved observing and timing the things that we did on Sunday morning. And we there were two or three Sundays where the total amount of time we spent on the Lord's supper was 60 seconds. We're still ripping and sipping um at our, at our congregation, and and I I thought that feels like the bare minimum, right as a prayer rip and sip. And now we're on to the announcements and let's get out of here and head to lunch.
BT Irwin:So those words bare minimum that you just said right there, I've said to my wife a few times about the Lord's Supper. I feel like we're doing the bare minimum. We can check the box and say we did it because they did it in the first century, but kind of like you said when you were putting those rip and sip cups in the garbage bag, what are we doing here? What are we doing? One of my takeaways from your paper is the biggest change or biggest missing piece maybe the biggest change, maybe the biggest missing piece from the Lord's Supper in the first century in our practice of the Lord's Supper in the 21st century Church of Christ is what you call the agape feast, which is an actual full meal, what we would call a fellowship meal in our congregations today. You write, quote perhaps the church should revisit the agape feast and its incorporation for the weekly meeting. End quote.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Yeah, the church in the first century. When I was researching this, I found it really interesting that they had a worship service very similar to what our worship service is, but they didn't include the Lord's Supper. It was a separate event. Sometimes the worship service happened at the synagogue and that worship service was for everybody, if I mean anybody could come in off the streets and be a part of that worship service. But the agape feast, the meal was only for those who were in a covenant relationship with God, who had been baptized, who are part of the group, and they came together and they took bread together and they ate the meal, and then they ended that meal by taking the cup and remembering the blood, and so it was bookended by those two events and the meal happened in between.
Christa Sanders Bryant:That would be a very powerful experience and I think it's funny in some ways that nonbelievers were not allowed to be part of the meal and we kind of maybe arrogantly, say, oh, we take the Lord's Supper as a teaching moment for our kids or as a way to show believers how important it is, but it wasn't for that.
Christa Sanders Bryant:I mean, it wasn't a teaching moment. It was for them to put everything else aside. There was not supposed to be any of them in that moment. It was supposed to be all about remembering Christ and his sacrifice and what that meant to maybe to them as a congregation, and remember this was, you know, in the first century, people being persecuted and and you know, how does that, how does that resonate with them in that moment that we can't relate to. So I think the meal there is something to that meal. Now, the Jews understood that and they'd had practice with that because of the Passover, and we don't have practice with that, so it's a foreign concept to us. How do you have a remembrance meal that is um, that is significant and solid, and I don't know that we, we do that well.
BT Irwin:It'd be hard to do. Yeah, you think about. Uh, you know, my congregation has 250 people, so to have a meal for 250 people every week, it's I think. I don't know if you've used the word convenience yet. Oh, no, but that's a word that comes up. A lot is convenience and it would be very inconvenient to have a meal every week if you've got 50 people. Way more convenient to line them all up in military formation in pews and have them pick up the rip and sip cups on the way in the door.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Right.
BT Irwin:And that's how you end up with communion that takes 60 seconds. So I like that you brought up the agape feast. It certainly does challenge a lot of what we think we know about the first century and about the Lord's Supper and how we practice it today. And I wonder if you find this interesting. There's a church in the city where I live I live in a suburb of Detroit and there's a congregation there called Middle Eastern Bible Fellowship, and it is made up entirely of Christians from the Middle East that are what I would call exiles. Uh, they have fled their home countries, uh, and they've ended up here, and so the service every week is in Arabic. The entire service is in Arabic. They have about 300 people and um I, uh.
BT Irwin:I sat and had coffee one day with the pastor at the church. He was fairly critical of the Church of Christ. It was interesting. I found out that I'm a member. He said y'all do communion, all wrong. That was the first thing he said. He said you do it every week and you're really proud of that, but you don't do it the way they did it in the first century. And one of the things that that congregation does is the first hour of every Sunday morning the entire hour is devoted to the Lord's supper, the entire hour. And then, after the Lord's supper is done, they take a break and then they have their worship assembly, kind of like, you know, with the singing and the prayer and the sermon and everything. But he said y'all Church of Christ. People sure are proud of doing the Lord's Supper every week, but you do it all wrong. And this is how we do it at our church. We give it a full hour, just the Lord's Supper.
Christa Sanders Bryant:That would be fascinating to go and see, especially to see how they conduct it.
BT Irwin:Yeah, I've been there and it's challenging because every single word is in Arabic.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Oh.
BT Irwin:Which also he pointed out with great pride. He said Arabic is as close to Aramaic as you can get, said, Arabic is as close to Aramaic as you can get. So when we speak the words of Jesus in Arabic in our church, that's as close as you can get to hearing Jesus speak in his native tongue. But when you said something about the first century church going, uh, worshiping at the synagogue or having their assembly and then having a meal separate, you immediately made me think of Middle Eastern Bible fellowship and, uh, that and that coffee I had with their pastor there. So I think one of the places where folks may get hung up if I'm looking at all the commentary we got on the story is if the Lord's Supper is to be a memorial, a remembrance of Jesus's death. How does that fit with what most of us picture when we imagine a big family meal? Uh, words like feast and festive. So we just talked about an agape feast. Um, that doesn't jive with what most americans think of as a memorial or a remembrance.
BT Irwin:I'm thinking of memorial day, when you go to right and taps and you know everyone's very solemn and so, um, maybe we've already hit on this when we talked about a funeral meal, but I, I think people have a hard time thinking of the Lord's supper as a feast, as a fellowship, when they feel like I'm supposed to be sad, I'm supposed to be downcast, I'm supposed to, you know to, to be solemn and quiet.
Christa Sanders Bryant:And I guess there is an element of sadness to it. You know, christ died because we sinned and we messed up and a sacrifice had to be made. But what other thing in life can we be joyful about if not the death of Christ? Yeah, he died, and he died because we were sinners. But shouldn't we be so excited and so happy that he did so, that we have the hope of heaven? And I don't.
Christa Sanders Bryant:I don't think being solemn and being joyful are two mutually things. I think you can have both. I think you can be extremely solemn and extremely serious and be extremely grateful that that happened. The word Eucharist gets its meaning from the word thankfulness in Greek and it should be a time of thanksgiving. I think there is joy in Christ's death.
Christa Sanders Bryant:It's ugly and it's horrid and it's painful and I would never want to experience it, and I would be the first one to tell you that if I was there I probably couldn't watch and you know I would have to hide my face. I wouldn't want to see it. But on the other hand, how grateful can we be that it happened and what a relief that is that me, with all of my sin and all of my issues and all of my problems, can still have the joy of heaven and the hope of being with him, because he did, and that's an inspiring thought. And to lose that in the Lord's Supper, to only think about the ugly part of it, it is sad and I don't want that for my kids. I don't want that for the other people in the congregation, because I want them to leave there with hope, not just sadness that they've seen.
BT Irwin:You know cause I was raised to bow my head and close my eyes and imagine Jesus on the cross when I was a kid, growing up, and that's, that was what my parents did and that's what I learned how to do, and the result of that is that the Lord's supper became a time for me to feel ashamed of myself, right. I was.
BT Irwin:I was concentrating on that, the agony and the pain and the torture that Jesus experienced because of me, because of my sin, and so the Lord's Supper became a time of just feeling wretched about myself, how sinful I am, how guilty I am. Look what I did to Jesus and I wonder, if is that? What is that? What the Lord is going for when he tells us to do this in remembrance of him? Is that we would just feel wretchedly ashamed of ourselves? Uh, at the at the Lord's table? Or do you think he asked us to? He commanded us to remember him for more than that, or something different from that.
Christa Sanders Bryant:If you're leaving the Lord's Supper feeling wretched about yourself, then your concentration is on you and it's not on God.
BT Irwin:Wow, wow.
Christa Sanders Bryant:You know the word worship in Greek, proskuneo, to bow down, to bow down with your face to the ground. Nothing of you is in that moment of worship. It is all Christ. And when we take the Lord's supper, it is a moment when he said do this in remembrance of me. He doesn't say do this in order to feel shame, do this in order to remember your sin, do this in order to remember you're not worthy. Do this to remember of you and me, who made you worthy. And that's a powerful thing. I will agree. I've heard that most of your life, you think about what Jesus did and how awful it was for him, and that your sin was what put him there. It was, and that's true, that's happening. But it was also a choice that he made. He decided that I didn't ask him to sacrifice himself so that I could go to heaven. He decided that for all humanity and how grateful we should be If we are walking away from the Lord's Supper simply ashamed of our sin, and we didn't do it in remembrance of him.
BT Irwin:We did it in remembrance of me. Wow, wow, that's powerful. So you wrote Krista quote for those in the church who simply take the bread and sip the cup in acknowledgement of the risen Savior, perhaps have not truly celebrated the Lord's Supper as it was fully intended, end quote. That's a pretty strong statement.
Christa Sanders Bryant:That was one of those statements that for me was kind of a turning point in what I thought, because it is so easy to go and just to sip the cup and take the bread. And I'm a mom of five kids and my kids are all older and can sit through church now, but there was a time where they couldn't, and you know you're doing your best just to get the cup to your mouth without a little hand like smacking it away at some point. And I remember another mom said you know, if I can just get through the Lord's Supper, then I felt like I worshiped God that day and that kind of struck me as another moment of huh. If I can just, you know, take a minute, remember him, I've gotten through worship. And I said I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted my children to see that it's more than that.
Christa Sanders Bryant:And there is so much that we've lost so much tangibleness of the original feast that we've lost by just picking up the little plastic cup and taking the little wafer, of breaking the bread, of pouring the cup, of seeing the juice or what should be the blood pass from one cup to the other, of feeling the breakingness, of looking into somebody else's eyes who's remembering what God has done for them. We've lost so much of that and you know, have we really remembered? If we just you know have a 60-second memorial feast, you know it might cross through our heads, it might remember some story we heard about the crucifixion or about Christ. But have we really thought about and remembered who Christ was, that he did this, and not just that it happened?
BT Irwin:So I know we have a lot of congregational leaders listening to this show, not only in the United States but around the world, and you said this has been one of your main areas of study and thinking over the last five years. Now You've written graduate papers on it. You've been reading and researching a lot. You were delighted by the story that we ran in the Christian Chronicle.
BT Irwin:As these congregational leaders are maybe letting you help them think in a different way about the Lord's Supper, let's just freestyle here a little bit. At the end you mentioned one thing pouring the fruit of the vine from a pitcher into a cup so you can see the flow of blood. Right, that's a very five senses thing. We've talked about the bread and piercing it with the fork right and thinking about the nails piercing Jesus's hands, piercing it with the fork right and thinking about the nails piercing Jesus's hands. We talked about the tables that Arlington Church of Christ set up in the middle of their auditorium.
BT Irwin:If congregations are kind of like you right now, feeling led in a direction where we want the Lord's Supper to come alive again, so to speak, to recapture some of that spirit of the first century you know it's a touchy subject in our congregation you change any one little thing and it can be a little dangerous. But how would you recommend a congregation or even an individual whose congregation maybe isn't going to change, or even an individual whose congregation maybe isn't going to change? How would you recommend that people start to move in that direction of rediscovering the essence of the Lord's Supper for their congregations or for themselves?
Christa Sanders Bryant:I think one thing that has been so instrumental for me is going back and reading the accounts of the last supper in the gospels and reading all the accounts of the Lord's supper throughout the New Testament. If you, you know I often say if you were on a desert island and you didn't have the history of tradition behind you and you just wanted to read about the Lord's Supper without all of the stuff that we know, you just have the Bible. What would the Bible teach us? And you read it. You know, and as a member of the Church of Christ, that's what we pride ourselves on. But if you read the account in Mark, mark is the one that says you know, I'm pouring the blood, I'm breaking my body, and that's it's almost written in a command. So if you were reading that, it would, it would be a command. And then you read about the agape feast in Corinth. And even that was a messed up thing they were doing, it wasn't right, but they were still participating in a feast, they were still getting together to talk about it and to remember the Lord. You know, they had that example. And if you think about the time period, corinth was 25 years after Christ's death. For 25 years they celebrated an agape feast in different cities like the Passover meal in the church. That's how they did it and you know we don't have. You know one, two, three, four and you have a checklist that you go through we have.
Christa Sanders Bryant:The more you study the Bible, the more you'll see how the how communion was actually really done. And you don't need all the traditions and you don't need all of the things that we have built in to make communion special, all of the things that we have built in to make communion special. I think it was you who said we were to examine ourselves, but nobody really knows what that means or how to do it. Like what does that mean? To examine yourself? Like? I have ideas, but for the church in Corinth that meant are you going to share your food with the person next to you? Are you going to honor that person? Are you partaking of this meal in such an unworthy manner that you can't even be kind to your neighbor? That's what they meant in the Bible. And so when we are partaking of our meals, are we doing it in a worthy manner? That's laid out in scripture and not whatever we've made it out to be in the churches of christ and you know we've heard sermons about it and in lessons and classes and people always have their own ideas, they bring their own thoughts to that whole idea, but they've turned it into something that maybe it wasn't in the Bible. And I think if you really want to worship God and you really want to take the church, the take communion, like the first century did, just read the Bible, just read it, and that will give you so much more insight into what Christ did than all of the noise of our tradition.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Like how we got to communion today. I don't really Something I've been confused about for a really long time. How did we get to where it is? Is it just a matter of convenience? Was it coming out of the Presbyterian convenience? Was it coming out of the Presbyterian church? Was it coming out of the Catholic church? Was it something else that happened? How did we get here? That for me to say to my congregation, hey, let's do it as part of a meal would be we can't do that. How did this tradition become so embedded in us? We can't do that. You know, how did our this tradition become so embedded in us that we don't take scripture as seriously as we should?
BT Irwin:Krista Sanders Bryant. Thank you for reading the Bible through fresh eyes, studying it, writing graduate papers on it, continuing to turn it over and over in your mind, and for giving us all a lot more to think about in our practice of the Lord's Supper in our congregations. We sure appreciate you for being on the show.
Christa Sanders Bryant:Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to share some of these things with y'all and hopefully people will listen and make some changes.
BT Irwin:The pleasure was all ours. We hope that something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened or enriched you in some way. If it did, thanks be to God and please pay it forward. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. Recommend and review it wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Your subscription, recommendation and review help us reach more people. Please send your comments, ideas and suggestions to podcast. Reach more people. Please send your comments, ideas and suggestions to podcast at christianchronicleorg.
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