For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is My body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way also He took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

You may think what I am going to write is obvious; you may think it scandalous and unacceptable!

Among Protestant Christians there has been a desire to repudiate elements of mediaeval Roman Catholicism; rationalism has come to prevail among us. Resultantly liberal Protestants have called into question the miracles of Jesus. I heard a BBC broadcast in which a clergyman said, “I believe the miracles are true but not that they happened”!   Another well-known minister questioned the resurrection saying, “I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead spiritually but not bodily.” So increasingly those who profess Christianity may spiritualise the gospel narrative until it becomes meaningless. We must resist any such undermining of faith.

The passage we call the ‘Institution of the Lord’s Supper’ assumes the real presence of Christ. We should not detract from it.

I  The Lord WAS really present in the First Coming

Have you ever wondered what Paul meant when he said that he “Received from the Lord…”? It is suggestive that the Communion formulary was revealed directly by the Lord Jesus — a supernatural revelation. Certainly Paul records in Galatians that things were revealed in the desert where he spent time with the Lord, but three years later he did confer with Peter as well. Peter was in a position to relate the event of the Last Supper and at the least confirm the details of the event.

For the apostles Jesus was no mystical figure or fairy-tale character. He really was there among them. They saw and heard everything happen. The Christmas narrative was not just a nice story draped with tinsel and decorated with snow, but history.   The crucifixion was not just a poetic way of speaking about the love of God, but an horrific execution in space and time. The institution of the Lord’s Supper was not just a tradition, but a record of events of which the disciples had been a part.

II  The Lord SHALL BE really present in the Second Coming

I turn to the final words of our passage: You proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. The Lord’s Supper is occasion when we look back and we remember, but it is also a time for looking forward to when He comes again. There is about the Sacrament this challenging tension between past and future.

His second coming will be as real as the first. We are talking about the passage of history and the concluding and momentous event at the end of history. There will be a day when everything will be changed. The bus will no longer run; and the television programmes will no longer be broadcast. It will be such as we cannot properly imagine and the Lord will be here — not metaphorically but really.

III    The Lord IS really present in the Communion

Here is a mystery. When in the upper room at the Last Supper Jesus took bread and said “This is my body” what ever did He mean? Now that He is corporeally in heaven He still says of the bread “This is my body”. Clearly He does not mean corporeally, but mystically and very really.

What we affirm is not to be mistaken for transubstantiation. We are not saying that bread changes its substance and becomes flesh or that the wine turns into blood. The writers of Scripture were quite capable of identifying such a change and that is what is recorded in John 2: When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine. But neither is it sufficient to say that there is no more to the Holy Communion than our activity of remembering. Remembering is what we are commanded to do, but He, Christ, does something too — He comes to us by the Holy Spirit. He feeds our souls with His flesh and blood.

His presence is not simply His omnipresence (that He is everywhere) and it is more specific than that He is in the midst where two or three are gathered (Matthew 18¹⁹). God was never limited to a temple, but He was present in a special and supernatural way in the tabernacle’s holy of holies where the shekinah glory appeared. He is present in a special and supernatural way in the Holy Communion. It is here that Christ, who is really present, is united with those who by faith feed on His flesh and blood.
Among Protestants mere memorial-ism seems to have prevailed and persuaded many. In consequence we see church worship reduced to singing worship songs which we are told bring us near to God. Biblical and apostolic worship is about Scripture and Sacrament. It is by these things that we draw near to God. Let us take seriously the words of the Lord when He says, “This is my body”. Of course, it is a work of the Holy Spirit, and by faith, but let us not ‘spiritualise’ away the ‘real presence’ of Christ.