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Some of you who have been following this blog for a while may think we’re being redundant with this week’s word, since we covered the word Communion back in April. But, is communion the same thing as the Lord’s Supper? The church often uses those words interchangeably. For this post on the Lord’s Supper, I’d like to focus on the act that happened while Jesus was still on the earth, and how that relates to our other recent blog posts on logos and love.

What we call the Lord’s Supper (or sometimes the Last Supper) is the meal Jesus had with His disciples to celebrate the Passover feast, right before Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. The account of this can be found in all of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, though John’s account is different than the others. (I’ll let you do some reading if you want to find out how.)

So why is the Lord’s Supper important to us? In it, Jesus shared bread and wine with His disciples. Those elements symbolize Jesus’ body and blood, that His body would be broken for them (and us) and that His blood would be poured out in death for them (and us). Our Lord Jesus celebrated this meal with His disciples so they (and we) would have a symbolic way to remember His sacrifice for us.

Why did Jesus do this? He had to suffer and die for us because He alone is the logos (the Word) and a manifestation of true love. It was out of love for each one of us that Jesus performed the act of sharing the bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper, as a foretelling at the time of what His physical body would have to go through. Because Jesus is the true Word and Creator God, He was able to be that sacrifice for each one of us.

The Lord’s Supper isn’t just something that Christians do at church every now and then. It is an act of receiving God’s love for us and revering the sacrifice that Jesus made for each one of us so long ago, and the reason Jesus came to us in human form as we just celebrated in the Christmas season.