Communion as Thanksgiving in the Lord’s Supper
Communion as Thanksgiving is a central theme in this Christian Standard excerpt from Ethan Magness. The article points readers to the Lord’s Supper as both memorial and Eucharist, a meal of memory, proclamation, grace, and joy.
- The Lord’s Supper can shape believers when practiced meaningfully.
- The meal remembers and proclaims the broken body and shed blood of Jesus.
- Communion is presented as a thanksgiving meal filled with grace and joy.
By Ethan Magness
A Downloadable Resource on the Lord’s Supper
This article is no longer available online, but articles about the Lord’s Supper that appeared in the July 12/19, 2009, and June 10, 2007, issues of CHRISTIAN STANDARD–plus more–are available for purchase as a single, redisigned, easy-to-read and easy-to-use downloadable resource/pdf (a fuller explanation is below).
The Lord’s Supper: A Memory and More
Item D021535209 • $2.99
If you keep doing something often enough, long enough, it will change you. Take, for example, the Lord’s Supper.
If we practice the Lord’s Supper in a meaningful way, week after week, it will change us for the better by helping us grow closer to God. If we treat it as a ritual largely devoid of meaning, however, it can damage us by causing our faith itself to become a meaningless ritual.
In this 14-page resource, eight writers look at the Lord’s Supper (Communion) past, present, and future—its power, purpose, and promise.
As one writer puts it: “Nothing delivers the death of Jesus like the Lord’s Supper!”
The articles previously appeared in CHRISTIAN STANDARD (primarily in the issues of June 10, 2007, and July 12/19, 2009).
All downloads include permission to reproduce material up to 10 times for ministry and educational purposes. To sample the first few paragraphs of Ethan Magness’s article, continue reading below . . .
Remembering and Proclaiming at Communion
When we prepare for the Lord’s Supper, and when we partake of it
- We remember and proclaim that this meal is a memorial. Like the Passover meal Jesus was sharing with his disciples, this is a meal of memory. It is a meal rooted it history that finds its most basic meaning, not in the beauty of its symbolism or the power of the ritual, but in the historical facts it remembers and celebrates. Jesus’ body was broken and his blood was shed. In the breaking of the bread, we remember and we see Jesus.
- We remember and proclaim that this meal is a Eucharist. It is a thanksgiving meal, a celebration filled with joy. We may weep as we remember Christ’s death, but we also rejoice at the grace his death brings to us—like a funeral that turns into a party. The Communion cup is a toast to God who has given up so much so that we might be given so much. In the cup we taste and see that the Lord is God.
We remember and proclaim that . . .
