St. Boniface House

Once there were a couple of boys who were the recipients of a promise from their father that he would play football with them in the backyard on a Saturday afternoon. They looked forward to playing with their father all week, and then when Saturday came, they found their father sitting on the couch watching college football on television. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Boys: Dad, are you ready to play football with us?

Now, take away the finitude of the father (allowing for the possibility of forgetfulness), and the sinfulness of the father (making it likely that he would forget having made such a promise), and we have some insight into what we are doing when we eat the Lord’s Supper.

You may have noticed that I have been deviating somewhat from the words that we traditionally say at the institution of the Lord’s Supper. We are all accustomed to hearing and reading Jesus as saying “Do this in remembrance of me”, and yet I have been saying “Do this unto my memorial”. What gives?

Jesus’ words in the Gospels and in Paul’s First letter to the Corinthians are capable of being translated either as “remembrance of me” or “my memorial”. It is when we start trying to understand what these words mean in the Bible that we realize that “unto my memorial” is a better translation, and this helps us better to understand what it is that we are doing.

A “memorial” in the Old Testament was a God-given means of calling God to remember his covenant promises. The rainbow, after God made a covenant with Noah, is a “memorial”, and when God sees it, he remembers that he has promised not to destroy the earth again. The stones that the Israelites placed at the Jordan (some of them underwater, where only Yahweh could see them) were a “memorial” calling on God to remember his deeds on Israel’s behalf, and his commitment to give Israel all the land of promise. Even the special name that God gave Israel to call him by, Yahweh, is said to be a “memorial” name, so that whenever Israel calls upon the name, they are reminding God of his promise to be their God and that he will always be with them.

Unlike the father in our not-so-hypothetical scenario, the fact that God gives us “memorial offerings” to offer does not mean that he has forgotten his promises or is capable of forgetting them or is somehow in need of reminding. It means that he has graciously given us a means of calling upon him to fulfill his promises. When we eat the Lord’s Supper, we are not saying “God, we think you might have forgotten your promises”. We are, in Paul’s words, “proclaiming Christ’s death until he comes”—proclaiming that our fellowship with God, our coming to this table, is on the basis of the death that the Lord Jesus has died on our behalf, and therefore, even though we are addressing God with a “reminder”, in the end, like all of God’s provisions, it is for our benefit.

It is important for us to understand, though, that a “memorial offering” is not a “remembrance”. In other words, we present a “memorial” to God by doing something. By eating the bread, and drinking the wine. The Lord’s Supper is not a time for you to squish up your eyes and try to muster up some kind of mystical experience all on your own. Open your eyes, look around you, enjoy the people with whom you are feasting, and know that God hears the pleading of the bread and wine, and is pleased to bless you, strengthen you, and fellowship with you for the sake of the Lord Jesus, who died for us.

This is the Lord’s table…