(d) The communion is a festival of commemoration,—not simply bringing Christ to our remembrance, but making proclamation of his death to the world.
1 Cor. 11:24, 26—“this do in remembrance of me.... For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come.” As the Passover commemorated the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and as the Fourth of July commemorates our birth as a nation, so the Lord's Supper commemorates the birth of the church in Christ's death and resurrection. As a mother might bid her children meet over her grave and commemorate her, so Christ bids his people meet and remember him. But subjective remembrance is not its only aim. It is public proclamation also. Whether it brings perceptible blessing to us or not, it is to be observed as a means of confessing Christ, testifying our faith, and publishing the fact of his death to others.
(e) It is to be celebrated by the assembled church. It is not a solitary observance on the part of individuals. No “showing forth” is possible except in company.
Acts 20:7—“gathered together to break bread”; 1 Cor. 11:18, 20, 22, 33, 34—“when ye come together in the church ... assemble yourselves together ... have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not? ... when ye come together to eat.... If any man is hungry, let him eat at home; that your coming together be not unto judgment.”
Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 191-194, claims that in Acts 2:46—“breaking bread at home”—where we have οἶκος, not οἶκία, οἶκος is not a private house, but a “worship-room,” and that the phrase should be translated “breaking bread from one worship-room to another,” or “in various worship-rooms.” This meaning seems very apt in Acts 5:42—“And every day, in the temple and at home [rather, ‘in various worship-rooms’], they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ”; 8:3—“But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house [rather, ‘every worship-room’] and dragging men and women committed them to prison”; Rom. 16:5—“salute the church that is in their house [rather, ‘in their worship-room’]”; Titus 1:11—“men who overthrow whole houses [rather, ‘whole worship-rooms’], teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.” Per contra, however, see 1 Cor. 11:34—“let him eat at home,” where οἶκος is contrasted with the place of meeting; so also 1 Cor. 14:35 and Acts 20:20, where οἶκος seems to mean a private house.
The celebration of the Lord's Supper in each family by itself is not recognized in the New Testament. Stanley, in Nineteenth Century, May, 1878, tells us that as infant communion is forbidden in the Western Church, and evening communion is forbidden by the Roman Church, so solitary communion is forbidden by the English Church, and death-bed communion by the Scottish Church. E. G. Robinson: “No single individual in the New Testament ever celebrates the Lord's Supper by himself.” Mrs. Browning recognized the essentially social nature of the ordinance, when she said that truth was like the bread at the Sacrament—to be passed on. In this the Supper gives us a type of the proper treatment of all the goods of life, both temporal and spiritual.
Dr. Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, claims that the Lord's Supper is no more an exclusively church ordinance than is singing or prayer; that the command to observe it was addressed, not to an organized church, but only to individuals; that every meal in the home was to be a Lord's Supper, because Christ was remembered in it. But we reply that Paul's letter with regard to the abuses of the Lord's Supper was addressed, not to individuals, but to “the church of God which is at Corinth.” (1 Cor. 1:2). Paul reproves the Corinthians because in the Lord's Supper each ate without thought of others: “What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not?” (11:22). Each member having appeased his hunger at home, the members of the church “come together to eat” (11:30), as the spiritual body of Christ. All this shows that the celebration of the Lord's Supper was not an appendage to every ordinary meal.
In Acts 20:7—“upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”—the natural inference is that the Lord's Supper was a sacred rite, observed apart from any ordinary meal, and accompanied by religious instruction. Dr. Fox would go back of these later observances to the original command of our Lord. He would eliminate all that we do not find in Mark, the earliest gospel. But this would deprive us of the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the discourses of the fourth gospel. McGiffert gives A. D. 52, as the date of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and this ante-dates Mark's gospel by at least thirteen years. Paul's account of the Lord's Supper at Corinth is therefore an earlier authority than Mark.
(f) The responsibility of seeing that the ordinance is properly administered rests with the church as a body; and the pastor is, in this matter, the proper representative and organ of the church. In cases of extreme exigency, however, as where the church has no pastor and no ordained minister can be secured, it is competent for the church to appoint one from its own number to administer the ordinance.
1 Cor. 11:2, 23—“Now I praise you that ye remember me in all things, and hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them to you.... For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread.” Here the responsibility of administering the Lord's Supper is laid upon the body of believers.