Reimagining the Lord’s Supper…..

So I have recently been reading a couple few books by, Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity and Reimagining Church. They are meant to compliment each other. Pagan Christianity talks about where we took all the practices that we use in todays “Church Services”. I was pretty surprised to see where we got a lot of the things that are done today in Churches. There are a lot of things that are done that are not all that biblical. I would suggest this for reading, it made me think pretty intensely about the way things are done. I have this on audio book if anyone would like to borrow for a listen (aren’t audio books great, all the fun of reading without the reading).  But I am currently reading the book Reimagining Church. It is the follow up to Pagan Christianity. It talks about a multitude of things for us to rethink in the Church, and how it can look. He talks about the Church as an organism, the meeting place, the Lord’s Supper (which is where I am heading with this, so hang in there), the Leadership, etc… But so far the thing that has got my attention is the Lords Supper, or Communion, however you want to think about it.

I have always loved Communion, I think that is why this Chapter in Violas book stood out to me. He explains the “elements” in depth and what they fully represent. He says this about “the Bread”. “The bread- being the most basic and lowly of all foods– points to the humility and availability of our Lord. By taking on our humanity, Jesus Christ became accessible to us all– just as bread is available to us all, just as bread it available to everyone, both rich and poor.” What really stands out to me in this chapter about the Lords Supper is how Viola points out how the early Church views the Lords Supper. They view it as a banquet, an entire meal, with fellow believers, remembering Christ, His death, but most of all His resurrection and the life that it gave us, a celebration of what has happened. Viola calls this a covenant meal, in the fact that we are to remember the new covenant we have with God, through Jesus Christ. I love this statement that Viola makes “the Lords Supper was never meant to be a morbid reminder of Christ’s suffering. Nor was it a somber occasion where Christians mourned over their sins. Instead, the Supper was a cheerful reminder of who Jesus Christ is and what He has done. It was a reminder and a proclamation of His glorious victory at Calvary, which will be comsummated at His future coming.” It is meant to be a celebration. So I say let us celebrate! The celebration of Passover is just around the corner. I think it would be really neat, to get some peeps together, have a meal, a full spread, the works if you will and celebrate what Jesus has done in our lives. To come together and share prayer and thanksgiving, words of encouragment, stories of victory in our lives personally, anything. I just think that would be awesome! I am going to try and see what I can pull off for this, I would like to get some people together, it would be powerful and encouraging. But those are just some thoughts that I have been meaning to post on here. Hope everbody has a great Tuesday!