"For I have 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 he took the cup also, 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."

1 Cor 11.23-26 (compare Mk 14.22-25; Mt 26.26-29; Lk 22.15-20; read also Isaiah 53)

The remembrance of the future

What the apostle Paul cites here is a tradition which derives from Jesus. It is the interpretation of the Lord's supper, which is one of the chief characteristics of the church of Jesus Christ. It is a liturgical text which the apostle uses to underline the significance of the Lord's supper for the church and its unity.

The central issue of the Lord's supper is remembrance (1 Cor 11.25; compare Lk 22.19). A person remembers the passion of Jesus, his suffering and his death. But it is not a melancholy and sad memory. It is a remembrance which is directed towards the future: "...until he comes" (v.26), that is, until Jesus Christ comes to reveal his honour and the will of God before all creation. In the version which we read in the gospels, the Lord's supper is connected directly with the kingdom of God. Jesus says that he will not drink wine again until he is in the kingdom of God (Mk 14.25; Mt 26.29; Lk 22.18). The wine he gives and the bread he breaks are the deposit on the coming kingdom of God, and the table of the Lord is the anticipation and the beginning of the joy of the kingdom; it is a "remembrance of the future."

The mediator

In our present situation, the future and hope are combined with faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus confronts mankind with the kingdom of God and interprets his death as a sacrifice which opens up the kingdom for them. He was delivered up into the hands of men (1 Cor 11.23), who have become guilty of his death. His history reveals thus the limits of human ways. But at this point the true character of God was revealed. "For God raised the Lord" (1 Cor 6.14). After his death, the disciples experienced his new presence, which they expressed with the simple confession, "he was raised (by God)" (1 Cor 15.3b-5; Rom 1.3f), and God identified himself with the "friend of sinners." The new aeon has already begun.

Now our situation appears to be a different one. We too may receive the promise of God and rely upon the fact that the end of God's way is not judgment and death but new life, not bitter abandonment but the fellowship of his kingdom. This is what Jesus vicariously mediated for us (read Isaiah 53). If nothingness were the end of our ways, then our lives would be senseless.

This appears not to be very concrete, but it impinges upon all the concrete tasks of mankind in the world. Without the gospel, even Christian endeavours for peace and for social justice are jeopardized by doubt or superstition. Everything is at stake for humanity in the gospel. We owe the world this witness which relates to the basis and meaning of hopeful, responsible action.

The covenant

The word for covenant which Jesus used here (1 Cor 11.25; Mk 14.24; Mt 26.28; Lk 22.20) could also be translated with "legacy" or "testament". It refers, of course, to the relationship between two partners (God and his people), but the initiative rests on God's side. In the Bible, the covenant of God is connected to the fact that God does not directly punish or reject sinful man, but rather that he gives us time, space, and opportunity to repent within history. That was the meaning of the story of the flood which can never take place again (Gen 9.8ff). In the covenant with Abraham, God obligates himself to create his people upon earth (Gen 15) and to give them his law (Ex 24.2ff). The promise of protection is the content of the covenant with David (2 Sam 23.5; Ps 89.4; Is 55.3). They then expected that God would conclude a new covenant with mankind in the final day, that through his Spirit he would change the hearts of humanity so that they would acknowledge him as God and live in fellowship with him (Jer 31.31-34). This became reality in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 8; compare Rom 2.29). Every confession of Jesus Christ is a sign that the new covenant is becoming reality; every spontaneous proclamation of the gospel is a sign of the grace of God for this world.

The church and the kingdom

The Lord's supper is the sacrament which belongs to the essence of the church. It is the church which regards itself as the people of the New Covenant. Is that justified? Were not the prophet Jeremiah with his expectation of the new covenant and Jesus with his proclamation of the kingdom of God thinking differently? The Catholic Modernist, Alfred Loisy, made the famous statement at the beginning of this century: "Jesus expected the kingdom of God, and the church came instead." The Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, also declared that the church was a misunderstanding. This is a serious problem, for as soon as the church forgets that the coming of the kingdom of God is its purpose and its limitation, it becomes "salt without savour" because it loses its foundations and its perspective.

On the other hand, we must clearly answer that the alternative, church or kingdom, is false. If the kingdom of God means true fellowship, then it must be prepared for in the demanding milieu of this world, in the realm of relative human autonomy, where a person must decide within the limits of human life and under restricted historical possibilities, where a person is confronted with sin and evil. The kingdom of God is the God-given perspective of such people.

We know that the church inadequately witnesses to Jesus Christ, and that it is not an accident that repentance is an essential part of the church. We must always clearly state our failure. But we must also always thank God that the awareness of mission and the proclamation of the grace of God have never completely ceased in the churches. The kingdom of God has constantly been rediscovered, and the sinful church has testified to the infallibility of the gospel which is its basis through its own confession of its concrete fallibility. That is the essence of the Reformation in the deepest sense of the word, the Reformation which does not divide, for it is only the gospel which creates the conditions for the unity of the church and its identity within history.

In the history of the church, there are, next to many abuses of the name of God, some bright points to which one can, in faith, relate. This is true for us especially with regard to the Reformation. But the New Testament also related to the legacy of the Old Testament, as far as the interpretation of the Lord's supper (the eucharist) as the New Covenant was concerned. As long as the church proclaims the gospel - including sacramental proclamation - it is indispensable for the world and points towards the coming kingdom of God. We may not equate the boundaries of salvation with the boundaries of the church (for example: extra ecclesiam nulla salus -'outside of the church there is no salvation'). Judgment is not in our hands, but rather in the hands of the merciful God. But without the mission of the church, that is, without the gospel, the grace of God would be speechless, and the history of humanity would be senseless, so that we could say: 'Without the church there is no salvation' (sine ecclesia nulla salus).

The social character of faith

The Lord's supper is a celebration of fellowship. God concludes his covenant with his people (paragraph 2.3). The Christian is incorporated in the church through Baptism (1 Cor 12.13), having many members like a body. They must live together if they want to live at all (read Rom 12.4-8; 1 Cor 12.12-31; Eph 4.1-16). The social character of the kingdom of God (paragraph 1.4) has its contemporary dimension as well, to which the church testifies through its social form, in spite of its weakness. The effectiveness of the church, its mission in the truest sense of the word ("sending"), depends chiefly upon its ability to create an open fellowship. Unfortunately, the persuasive power of our Reformed church life is not all that high, generally speaking. We are not a community of all classes of people, but rather a fellowship of intellectuals and of the middle classes. There are, to be sure, Reformed Christians among all the races of the world, but they seldom live together in a common community. In our worship services, the element of gracious thanksgiving is often lacking. Reformed Christians are more tied up with so-called Christian civilization than are other Christian groups.

What are the roots of this condition? I do not know a simple answer. In part it is related to the understandable polemic against the Catholicism of another age, a polemic which profoundly moulded all Protestantism. In the polemic against the Catholicism of the 15th to 19th centuries, views were often adopted (Renaissance, Enlightenment, Liberalism) which were burdened by illusions about the human personality. With the rejection of the hierarchical and superstitious elements of the Catholicism of that period, the visible existence of the church was often under-estimated: the being-together of people who are different, the visible witness of the sacraments, the distinctiveness of the church in this world (compare paragraph 5.4). I am not saying that the Catholic church has mastered all of this more successfully. But I would like only to say that the anti-Catholic negation appears to be one of the sources of our later crises.

The Reformers emphasized the Bible against the false views of churchly tradition at that time. Later, however, the Bible was unfortunately removed from the context of the Christian community. Rather than as a witness, the Bible was used as a textbook, and in order to harmonize the various statements (compare paragraph 3.2), the living Jesus, who gathered both Pharisees and publicans around himself, was sometimes underemphasized.

The prerequisites for a new thought process are present - in the Pauline concept of the justification of the sinner, which the Reformation emphasized as the best interpretation of the gospel. The crucified and risen Jesus invites all people to himself - without preconditions. Actually, there is one single condition which the sinful person must fulfil in order to belong to the community of new life: he should desire that other people might enter into the kingdom of God (compare Mk 2.13-17 and parallels). That is the essence of repentance and conversion. If the church, in the structure of its worship, only suggests this reality, then it has fulfilled its mission. Especially the Reformed churches, which seldom exist as state churches, have in their relative powerlessness a special opportunity to proclaim authentically the gospel as the acceptance of sinners. Without this attitude, we cannot understand each other and cannot have an effective impact, for the concrete tasks are different in the various contexts in which we live. When we are united in the common knowledge that we are forgiven sinners, then we can not only respect each other in our differences but also enrich each other mutually.

The ecumenicity of faith

I need not demonstrate that mission belongs to the essence of the church. Mission has been understood as a kind of propaganda and, advertising, but when we examine the biblical reports more carefully, we see that Paul, for example, only founded the support centres of church life which were accessible for most of the residents of the respective Roman provinces (Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, etc.). According to 1 Cor 14.23ff the Christian community is supposed to be able to address new people understandably and to receive them into the community. The social differences between members should play no role at all in the Lord's supper. (1 Cor 11.17-22; in James 2.6f we hear a warning against asocial behaviours in the context of baptism). In the Johannine scriptures, the extensive (centrifugal) mission recedes and the life of the community becomes the means of mission: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13.35).

In Jesus we encounter a practical concentration upon the nation of Israel (Mt 10.5f; 15.24, and parallels), which apparently is in contrast with his fundamental openness to Gentiles and sinners. But this is, in reality, not a renunciation of the mission to the Gentiles, but rather an intensive (centripetal) mission, which has its roots in the Old Testament. There must first of all be a community there which would be able to testify to mankind of the kingdom of God. The people of God should be prepared to receive the streams of Gentiles coming to Jerusalem. The expected pilgrimage of the nations to Zion was regarded as a sign of the turning point of the ages (for example Is 2.2-5; 60.5; 69.9). The Gentiles will then seek the Saviour (Is 11.10) and seek instruction about his ways (Mic 4.1f).

After the resurrection of Jesus, the Christians realized that the true Jerusalem was not bound to Mount Zion and that the temple of God is the living church (compare 1 Pet 2.5f) which arises where the gospel is trustworthily proclaimed. This led them to mission which goes out into the world.

Today, in most parts of the world, intensive (inward-oriented) mission has become again an urgent need. People know about us Christians, but they find no home in the church, and they do not hear in the churches a clear answer to their questions about the "ways of the Lord". They do not encounter in the church plain signs of the kingdom of God and of the presence of Jesus who also died for them. We often invite people, but to what? In contrast to the biblical parable (Mt 22.1-10; Lk 14.15-24), our invitation is often accepted, but the banquet does not follow. Our worship services do not function as the anticipation of the joy of the kingdom of God (Acts 2.46; compare paragraph 2.1), like the worship services of the New Testament period or of the Czech Reformation which discovered anew the eschatological joy in the fellowship of the table. Only the first signs of a new beginning are perceivable; people are interested in knowing the New Testament understanding of the Lord's supper, the Hussites and the old Unity of the Brethren are no longer regarded merely as enthusiasts, and we are seeing more attempts made to renew the life of Christian congregations.

Especially in socialist countries, the spread of the gospel is chiefly a task of church renewal, the church's concentration upon the gospel and the gospel's understandable interpretation (compare paragraph 3.4). People know very well about us, but we don't always speak understandably enough. There is too little openness and joy amongst us; we have too many themes and too little gospel. This is basically true of the entire oikumene. But the situation is clearer in our country, where there are more Christians by conscious decision and less by force of custom. The situation of the church is seen much more soberly, clearly, and in order to evaluate it, we are really forced to rely upon our faith. That is a perspective which makes the church's life so fascinating for us, in spite of all its weakness. We are learning gradually to count on God the Creator and Redeemer.

Questions

There are several concepts which are often and improperly used as alternatives. What is the relationship of these terms: word/sacrament; theology/practice; mission/congregational development?
How has the negation of earlier Catholicism moulded Protestant spirituality in its various cultural settings?
How could one explain the biblical concept, "covenant"?
What kind of experience have you had with mission and evangelization in your particular setting? How would you evaluate its practice as it has been done up to now?