16 Communion
This document is about the communion ceremony and how different it is to the way it was celebrated in the early church.
Communion is a form of fellowship and worship.
Early communion was a ‘love’ feast to remember what The Father had done through Jesus and a witness to the reality of Jesus and His Work of Redemption.
The first thing to say is that Jesus said:
Mat 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
So, where Christians are gathered together for the purposes of the Kingdom Jesus is in their midst. Yet His presence is usually never acknowledged!
He is there and they say they gather to remember Him but yet ignore His presence.
The Communion in the first few centuries celebrated what The Father had done and was thanksgiving to Him for the redemption He gave us through Jesus.
The Didache has chapters on communion and show how it was celebrated in the early church and shows how vastly different it is to what is passed off as communion these days.
Jesus said we were to pray to The Father and the first part of the communion is to thank The Father for His provision that made redemption possible and then to Jesus for carrying out what was required for our redemption.
The Father’s role is ignored yet the emphasis in the early celebration of communion was to thank The Father for redemption and then Jesus was thanked for doing what was necessary to obtain it for us!
So, our pattern for prayer should always be:
Thank The Father for His Provision
The Lord Jesus for carrying it out and protecting it
The Holy Spirit for guiding us in what to do during the celebration.
This should be the pattern for remembrance in communion and prayers during it
It is not a somber service celebrating the suffering of Calvary but a celebration of the life we have though redemption now and later in heaven.