THE LORD’S SUPPER: HOW OFTEN?
By ROBERT R. MEYERS¹

A bright young German university student visited on Sunday in a church of the Restoration movement. He came with a fellow college friend who had been a member of that church all his life. As the two left, the young German asked, “Do you have the Lord’s Supper every week?” Upon being told that the church did, he asked, “Why is this?” His host looked at him first with incredulity, then with triumph, because he was sure that here was one point which he could make easily.

He turned to Acts 20:7 and asked the German youth to read. After a moment, he said, “Now you see why we do this every week. The Bible tells us to, and we try to obey in all things.” The German looked at him blankly. “But this does not order you to observe the rite weekly,” he said. “It only says that a certain church met on at least one Sunday for the purpose of breaking bread. It says no more than that. Do you have other Scriptures which tell you plainly how often to celebrate the Supper?”

His host knew enough about language, and had sufficient honesty, to admit the force of the questions. He saw that Acts 20:7 does not constitute an imperative. He began to think more carefully on the subject of frequency of observance of the Lord’s Supper.

This essay is a study of the puzzlement of an honest mind when it first confronts such questions. It is written in the painful knowledge that it will be almost impossible for some of its readers to study it objectively. Certain formulaic answers have become sacred furniture in our minds, and a different answer shocks deeply. Yet there are good reasons why the questions should be raised again, and answered in the light of a spreading honesty which bids fair to add new lustre to the Restoration plea.

The conclusion of the essay may as well be stated at once, so that the reader will not be in doubt as he begins. The simple truth is that we have no law governing frequency of observance of the Lord’s Supper, and that our efforts to supply one have involved us in sophistry and legalism.

While the Restoration reader remains shocked, if he is, some distinctions need to be made. To say that we have no law, no positive commandment, no clear imperative, about how often we are to commune with God in this particular way is not the same as to say that we have no example of how other Christians felt about it. Nor is it to say that we cannot make some deductions about a safe, and helpful point of view. What this essay insists upon is that we have no clearly stated rule about this matter, and that we have no right to fabricate one.

If it helps anyone to judge more calmly what will be said here, the writer admits to having taken the Lord’s Supper weekly for more than a quarter of a century. He is happy in this practice, and plans to continue it. He has never encouraged Christians to take it less often. But he is at the same time deeply sure that the Scriptures contain no law which binds weekly observance, and that recognition of this fact is of importance in the ceaseless war against legalism.

“But if you are willing to take it weekly,” someone protests, “why bother people with talk of ‘law’ and ‘commandment’ and ‘imperative’? Won’t you merely upset people who would be better off undisturbed?”

The answer to this is that where complacency disguises an essentially sectarian attitude, disturbance is in order. When men legislate where God has not, they set a dangerous precedent. If a man can make one law, and denounce all who fail to keep it, who is to say when he may decide to make another and cut himself off from still more of his fellows? In the absence of a positive commandment, even a good practice should not be bound upon others with any cords stronger than those supplied by their own voluntary love. To do otherwise is to be sectarian, exalting the interpretations of the party. If one feels that this is so, it is his duty to point out the danger, put his remonstrances where they can be studied, and then be patient while his warning is evaluated by wise and honest readers.

The fact that most Restoration congregations accept as law, rather than as custom, the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper is another indication of how easy it is to substitute a fabricated imperative for a voluntary expression of love. When we read carefully, we learn to our surprise that we have caused a single example to have the force of a commandment, and that we have caused a set of deductions to have the force of unvarying law. When we have done so, we can no longer count as fellow Christians those who refuse to obey our law, and another barrier to fellowship goes up.

This is ground that quivers with explosive force. More than twenty years of ministering to Restoration congregations lies behind the writer’s knowledge of the emotional reaction which comes when a cherished “law” is challenged. We become immensely fond of our own creations, because they give us such marvelous feelings of wisdom (we deduced them), of security (we keep them), and of superiority (others do not care as much about truth as we do or they would learn and practice exactly the same).

Realizing how hard it will be for some to read objectively, the writer stresses that he proposes no revolution in practice. But he does suggest a revolution in attitudes. The absence of a positive law about how often to take the Supper need not lead to a reduction of the weekly observance. If we learn that our action should spring from love rather than from a code-book injunction, we need not begin expressing that love less often. But although practice may remain the same, attitudes necessarily change. The moment we admit that we have no law governing frequency of observance, a corollary follows: no man can dis-fellowship another simply because they differ over how often the Lord’s Supper is to be observed.

At this point, a standard objection arises. “But people who take the Lord’s Supper once a month or once a year are usually wrong about a lot of other things.” This is a kind of guilt-by-association argument which is unworthy of students. If other groups were wrong about everything else, it would not prove them wrong about frequency of observance. Each issue has to be judged on its own merits. Blanket indictments usually serve only to obscure the really relevant points at issue and make rational discussion impossible.

To simplify the issue and vitiate the above objection, let us suppose that we have two men trying to follow Christ. They are so nearly alike on all matters but one that they might easily worship together. But one has made a law of weekly observance, while the other has understood the Bible to have made no law on this matter and so observes it monthly as his fellows do. If one asks what should be done in such a case, many Restorationists would answer, “Let the man who takes it monthly get right and take it every week, and I’ll fellowship him. After all, we’ve got to take it every week like the Bible says.”

And here we are back at the beginning again. For the Bible does not say that at all. We only make it say so. Yet so strong is the passion for justification that even when some have looked in vain for the clear imperative, they still insist that it is there. Shaken by the challenge, and emotionally fearful that this may undo them in some way, they simply shake their heads emphatically and insist that they are going to follow the Bible, no matter what others may choose to do.

So we must come now to Scriptural specifics. The only argument of any weight at all for weekly observance as a law is based on Acts 20:7. The passage reads: “On the first day of the week, when we had met for the breaking of bread, Paul addressed them, as he was going away the next morning, and he prolonged his address until midnight” (Goodspeed).

It may be difficult for some, but what we must do now is distinguish carefully in this verse between fact and assumption, between what is clearly said and what we supply in order to corroborate a long-standing practice. Unless the reader is willing to supply a scrupulous honesty, it is pointless to read further.

First, then, we must admit that it is an assumption that the breaking of bread mentioned here refers to the Lord’s Supper rather than to a common meal. The writer believes that the assumption is most reasonable, and almost certainly true. But honesty compels him to confess, when discussing this with a man of opposite views, that it is only an assumption, reasonable or not. He cannot, for his life, prove that the breaking of bread here mentioned was not a common meal. He knows that it is possible for his interpretation to be wrong.

The next assumption is that this congregation met every Sunday to break bread. Again, the writer believes it likely that they did. Yet this, too, defies proof. It is always possible that the Troas church made a special occasion of meeting on this particular day. The language permits such an interpretation, and if we are susceptible to semantic proofs at all we must admit this.

The third assumption is in the nature of a conclusion based on the preceding two. Accepting it that the Troas group met to have the Lord’s Supper, and that they met every Lord’s Day for the same reason, it is concluded that every church in the first century met every first day of the week to break bread.

No student could pass a course in logic if he performed like this on his final examination. In the absence of some clear word of Scripture, how can we possibly know that all churches did what we think the Troas church did each Sunday? We may be assuming a uniformity which did not exist during the first generation or two. On the other hand, we may be quite right. But the point is that we do not know for sure, and so we cannot legitimately construct a law.

But there is more to come. From the preceding series of assumptions and deductions, we veer off to another conclusion. Having assumed, reasonably, that breaking of bread meant the Lord’s Supper; having assumed, with less proof, that the Troas church met to do this every week; and having assumed, with no Scriptural proof at all, that all early churches did the same, we triumphantly arrive at our law: God commands that all Christians at all times shall partake of the Lord’s Supper each first day of the week.

Anyone who reads with unprejudiced eye can see that nothing requires that this conclusion shall follow the inferences made. But we have so long based our weekly observance upon an imagined law that it will be utterly impossible for some of us to see that no law ever existed. We have leapt from a hint of weekly observance by one church to a commandment for weekly observance by all churches. We found a hint of a practice and when we were finished with it, we had made it a law. Yet as the writer will show later, there are other practices of the early church, better documented in Scripture than this one, which we do not feel we need make into laws. In fact, there are some clear imperatives several times stated in the New Testament which we do not observe ourselves, and which we do not insist that others observe before we fellowship them. The reason for this inconsistency, this difference in approach, lies in the force which tradition assumes among any people and the feeling that sooner or later tradition must be bolstered by finding a law for it.

If the reader wishes to know what the writer considers a more cautious conclusion to the inferences discussed above, it would go like this: since it is hinted in Scripture that early Christians met on Sundays to partake of the Supper, and since it is clearly stated in secular literature that they were doing so near the end of the first century, we follow a safe and sensible course in doing the same. Perhaps this goes further than a hostile and intelligent critic would permit. But it at least avoids making a law based on evidence which has led equally honest searchers, by valid intellectual processes, to different answers.

It is strange to the writer that for many years he never thought of a simple help in this problem. It did not occur to him to reflect that on an important matter like this, God would hardly leave us in doubt. He does not tease us with trios of assumptions and tangential conclusions. All we need for settling the problem is to find this clear imperative somewhere in His book: “All Christians must partake of the Lord’s Supper weekly.”

This takes up little space. It could have occurred several times in Paul’s letters, as much less significant material often does. And it would have put an end to the matter for those who claim to follow quite literally each commandment of the Bible. We do not have to pile up assumptions to prove that Jesus commanded baptism, loving our neighbors, hospitality, courtesy, generosity, and the forgiving spirit. We can turn, for these and many other requirements, to a clear and positive command.

But on the matter of how often to take the Supper, there is no such word. Are we willing to consider the implications of this fact? Surely God could have spoken such a law if He had desired. Any writer of the New Testament had the ability to put this matter so clearly that this particular controversy might have been eliminated. Since it was not done, this writer concludes that there was a reason and that the reason was this: here, as in many other things involving Christian devotion, no law was framed so that the response made by the free Christian might be his own voluntary gift to God.

This is precisely the difference between the essential spirit of Christianity and the essential spirit of Judaism. One seeks to provoke a voluntary response, the other lays down rules. This is why we blunder when we cite the Passover feast as a parallel to the Lord’s Supper and argue that its annual observance justifies insistence upon weekly ritual as law.

But the analogy cannot be pressed without destroying the argument. Whole chapters in Exodus are given to the minutest details for observing the Passover. The date, place, materials, preparation of materials, eligible officiating persons --- all these and many other details were fully explained so there could be no danger of misunderstanding. Does this not raise some wonder as to why God would be so much more careful about a ritual in that dispensation than in this one? Have we not the right to expect that whole chapters, at least whole paragraphs, should be given over to detailed instructions about exactly when to take the Lord’s Supper, how often, what time of day, materials to be used (consider the difference of opinion as to wine or grape juice), how the materials are to be prepared, procedural matters, and whether we should offer the Supper at night to those who did not attend the morning service?

The reason for the great difference must be that in giving laws which arc to be rigidly followed, one must make each detail as clear as possible so that no one will, through ignorance, be guilty of violation. But in asking for a voluntary response, procedural matters may be left up wholly to the man who is expressing his devotion. It is his devotion and his voluntary commitment which are important, not the endless trivia which must always surround any significant ritual involving many people.

It may be well, before leaving this digression, to note that by analogy with the Passover feast, we could also insist upon closed communion (Ex. 12:48). And we are in difficulty again with the analogy when we see that the date of the Passover varied considerably, since the beginning of the month was dependent upon the moon. Precise advice was given as to how to figure the time correctly, of course, but even this contrasts with the vagueness as to just when the Supper was celebrated in Acts 20:7. The Interpreter’s Bible asks: “But was the time Saturday evening --- the ‘first day’ on Jewish methods of calculation beginning at what we would call 6 P. M. on Saturday --- or Sunday evening? Almost certainly the latter, as the morrow, when Paul intended to depart, most naturally means the day after that first mentioned, and therefore is presumably Monday” (IX, 267).

The vagueness here should be a cause of concern to the legalist, because there is no reluctance in other places in the New Testament about making details quite clear. It seems apparent that the ceremony, while well established by the time Acts was written, still had not assumed such essential importance as it was to get later. Men were still far more interested in voluntary expressions of devotion than in the careful enunciation of regulations. The Supper meeting at Troas was a mark of Christian devotion in that city, but one can hardly believe that we would not have had additional clarification on crucial matters if the writer had known of a specific law on the matter of frequency.

There is only one other comment which has close bearing on frequency of observance of the Supper. It is found in 1 Cor. 11:25, which says, in part, “Whenever you drink it, do so in memory of me.”

With scrupulous honesty, let us examine this brief sentence as if it were under a microscope. What have we? One thing is clear: we are specifically told what attitude we must have in partaking. This is so clearly and positively said that no one could change it and claim to honor the Bible. Whenever I partake, this verse says, I must do so in His memory. If I fail to do it for this reason, I have violated a clear utterance of Scripture. If anyone has wondered what the writer meant before when he spoke of a “clear imperative,” here is one: “do so in memory of me.”

But observe that how often we are to partake is left quite unspecified. This becomes even more significant when we recall that this is the only time in the New Testament where the words of Christ, relative to frequency of the Supper, are quoted. The only time. Yet the language is unspecific.

Who can believe that if frequency of observance had been a matter of salvation or of fellowship requirements, Christ would have missed a chance like this to make the matter crystal clear to us? Can you believe that He knew we would be condemned if we did not partake weekly, yet in His only recorded utterance bearing on frequency of observance left the matter unspecified? How easy to have said, “Each Sunday when you take this, do it in memory of me,” This would have left us without doubt as to His position. We could then honestly argue that in addition to a law governing attitude, he had also given us a law governing frequency. But He did not.

It would be immensely helpful if we could find an exact parallel to this language elsewhere in the New Testament. There happens to be just such a parallel in Christ’s attitude toward and comment about fasting. It is remarkable to see how our legalizing some aspects of the Supper must crumple before an honest confrontation of His words on fasting.

Christ assumes that His disciples will fast (Matt. 6:17), but lays down no law about frequency. His comment, “But when you fast” is exactly equivalent to “Whenever you drink.” Both statements imply that a thing will be done, but both of them leave frequency unspecified.

Christ goes on in the Matthew account to tell His followers what attitude they should have when fasting. The parallel with 1 Cor. 11:25 is exact, since there he tells His disciples the attitude to have in partaking of the Supper. We can only conclude that with Him, attitudes and motives were of paramount importance. In both cases, He leaves it up to His followers to decide how often to express themselves in these particular ways. Obviously, this is a matter for the free Christian to decide in response to his needs and God’s grace.

We pride ourselves so much on doing all that the New Testament commands that I cannot resist reminding my readers of something. We have more reason to bind fasting upon modern Christians than to bind weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper upon them! This is easily demonstrable, and if we are to be thoroughly consistent, we shall have to stop fellowshiping Christians who do not occasionally fast.

Christ assumed we would fast (Matt. 6:17)

Christ fasted, giving divine example (Lk. 4:2)

The Apostle Paul fasted (2 Cor. 6:5)

Paul and Barnabas fasted (Acts 14:23)

Paul anticipated it for others (l Cor. 7:5)

The Antioch congregation fasted (Acts 13 :2, 3)

Secular literature confirms the practice.

Now compare the smaller fund of information from which we deduce weekly observance as a law and bind it upon all Christians:

Christ assumed we would partake (l Cor. 11 :25)

The Troas church met on at least one Sunday to take what was almost certainly the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7)

Secular literature confirms weekly observance.

There is absolutely no other Scriptural comment bearing specifically upon the frequency of observance of the Supper, yet from this second set of statements we infer that anyone who does not commune weekly in this fashion is not a Christian and cannot be fellowshipped. Surely one of us fails to see that we can much more easily make a law from the first series and preach: “If you do not fast, you are not a Christian, and cannot be fellowshipped.”

In fact, if we were as consistent as we like to think we are, we could go even further. The “example” of Acts 20:7, which is so stridently and strenuously cited as proof that we must commune weekly, is no more an “example” than is Acts 13:2, 3. Since the Antioch Christians fasted before sending out preachers, why should we not make a binding law that no church send out preachers without fasting? Consistency demands it, or else humility requires that we stop supporting our good practice with laws which do not exist.

Because this matter of consistency is so important to our whole approach to Scripture and to Christian attitudes, perhaps the reader will excuse some more remarks about it. Has it ever struck any of us as strange that we dis-fellowship Christians who do not take the Supper weekly, but that we do not observe the holy kiss at all? We are never once commanded to take the Lord’s Supper every week, but we are five times commanded in the clearest of language to greet one another with a holy kiss (Rom. 16:16, 1 Cor. 16:20, 1 Th. 5.26, 2 Cor 13:12,1 Pet. 5:14).

It is customary to evade the force of this commandment by saying, “Everyone knows that this was a custom, and all we have to do to please God is to retain the spirit of it. We do this in shaking hands. We change the form, but we keep the spirit, and that’s what is important.”

This is perfectly sensible, but it is absolutely devastating for a legalist to say it. Because the obvious retort from one who changes the elements used in New Testament times to, say, orange juice and cookies, is this: “Everyone knows that these elements were used then --- it was the custom --- but all we have to do is to retain the essential spirit of the thing. We change the form, granted, but we keep the spirit, and that’s what is important.”

We would be aghast at such temerity, and charge such a man with corruption of the plain and simple truths of the New Testament. Yet the thing which we quite happily change the form of is five times specifically commanded! How strange that we should charge a man with sin who will not accept our deductions about frequency of observance of the Supper as law.

If this is not enough to humble us, perhaps another illustration would be helpful. In John 13:14-15, Jesus says: “If I then, your Master and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet too. For I have set you an example, in order that you may do what I have done to you.” Why is it that we can fabricate a clearly stated and permanently binding law out of a sentence like this: “Whenever you drink it, do so in memory of me,” but can quite ignore another action which He said, on the same night, we ought to do?

If Acts 20:7 is really a binding example, even though it is not called one, how do we evade binding this one, which is called an example? Even granting that foot washing was never part of congregational ritual (which grants too much), would not the strictest consistency require that it at least be practiced in the home as a Christian commandment? Perhaps it was only because it seemed a less profound ritual that this custom did not harden into law. Yet the imperative stands as Christ spoke it, and legalists have no recourse, if they are consistent, but to reinstate it.

The writer believes, of course, that we are quite right to substitute some other expressions of the realities for which the holy kiss and the washing of feet were symbols. But we must see that this may lead to our being asked how we know, in the absence of a clear and final word, when a form in early Christian ritual or practice was only a temporary custom, and when it was only a temporary custom, and when it was to be made a test of fellowship forever. If this teaches us nothing else, it will teach us the saving grace of humility and charitableness towards the honest views of others.

A final word before we leave this already-too-long digression. Our inconsistency does not arise merely from neglecting some practices which have equal sanction with those we insist upon, but also from adding practices for which we have absolutely no warrant at all. One such example is our double Lord’s Supper each Sunday. Totally without warrant, it is nevertheless the natural result of our legalistic zeal to create laws and then to inaugurate practices designed to guarantee that no one violates the law we made up. Having made weekly observance a law, we double its availability on Sundays to be sure that no believer has any reason to miss it and therefore to become guilty of the law. It could as logically be offered every hour on Sunday, so as to protect even more believers from the consequences of missing it. To such absurdities does legalism inevitably run.

Since the foregoing remarks illustrate the dangers of legalism and its inevitable inconsistencies, they make, however tangentially, some contribution to this essay. There is really no need to have difficulty with all these things. Christ replaced a religion of laws with a religion of love. He left frequency of fasting up to the believer. He left frequency of foot-washing up to the believer. These harmonized with his general approach to religion. He also left frequency of observance of the Lord’s Supper up to the believer, and spoke no law about it.

Who really decides how often, then, to take the Supper? The answer by now should be clear: the believer. Who else? If no apostle spoke a clear imperative, if Christ gave no law on that aspect of it, if the Bible reveals no commandment anywhere on the subject, where did weekly observance come from? Surely from the Christians themselves.

How? Voluntarily, if one is to argue from the analogies cited. As an expression of love to Him who rose on that day. We cannot know precisely when the first Christians began to observe the Lord’s Supper weekly. This is at present beyond our knowledge. But we can, with some hope of accuracy, speculate on what must have taken place.

Many capable Bible students think that the earliest Christians took the Lord’s Supper every day for a time, although probably they did not make it so formal an occasion as did the later church. Meeting in Jerusalem, under unusual circumstances, they probably combined their common and their “holy” meal, at least once a day.

“The early Jerusalem company . . . had their own special services among themselves, with prayer, mutual exhortation, and ‘breaking of bread’ daily in private houses (Acts 2:46). This ‘breaking of bread’ served a twofold purpose. It was a bond of fellowship and a means of support for the needy. The expectation of the speedy coming of the Lord made the company at Jerusalem a waiting congregation, in which the support of the less well-to-do was provided by the gifts of the better able, so that they ‘had all things common’ (Acts 2:44). The act was much more than that, however. It was a continuation and a reminder of the Lord’s Last Supper with His disciples before His crucifixion. It had, therefore, from the first, a sacramental significance.” (Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, p. 22).

Elsewhere in this widely used text, Walker says: “It has been seen that ‘breaking of bread’ in connection with a common meal, was a Christian practice from the beginning” (p. 80).

All this, of course, is assumption. It has seemed reasonable to many, as it does to the writer. But although it suggests something of the practices of the first disciples, it does not answer our question as to when the Supper began to be taken weekly. Walker has a comment on this. “By Justin’s time (153 A.D.) the Lord’s Supper was already separate from the common meal. It was held early on Sunday morning and comprised the following items: Scripture readings interspersed with psalmody, common prayers with the congregational ‘Amen,’ the kiss of peace, the consecration of the bread and wine, and the communion” (p.90).

Earlier than this, in the Didache (120 AD.), there appeared this comment: “But every Lord’s day do ye gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanks after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure” (Chap. 14). This clearly shows that by this time church leaders were, giving specific advice as to frequency of observance. If we could find such specific advice as to frequency of observance. If we could find such specific language as this (“Every Lord’s day. . . break bread”) in the Bible itself, this essay would have to be rewritten. But it appears in a collection of suggestions, many of which we would strongly reject, and reflects a time when the church had already begun to lose some of her liberties and had moved in the direction of law-making. From a voluntary response to a rigid law, enforced by insistence upon it --- this has ever been the direction of religious movements.

It would seem that there are always men who have no faith in the spontaneous actions of loving hearts. Men cannot be trusted, they think, to do the right thing out of love. They must be told what to do in laws which are divided, sub-divided, catalogued, and commented upon, so that no one will miss an iota of his duty.

Many who have read the New Testament carefully believe that this is not the Spirit of Christ, nor of the Christian religion in its purity. What Christ wanted was the response of a loving heart. He knew as well as any wise wife that one does not make a law for husbands to bring roses once a week. A wise wife will so live that her husband will love her, and loving her, he will find ways to express it. And these ways however frequent or infrequent, will be the devotion of a sincere and loving heart. Uncommanded, they will not become duty, mechanically or grudgingly done.

Some believers want to take the Lord’s Supper weekly. Let them do so as an expression of love, in memory of Him. Others believe that the ceremony means more to them if they take it monthly. Since there is no commandment on frequency, let them do so, as oft as they do it, in memory of Him. It is not within our rights to command on this matter, although we may urge our understanding as a better one, if we believe it is.

What recommendations has the writer for his readers? That if they wish to urge weekly observance strongly, no one should say them nay. They may suggest that this helps make a good habit and that weekly food is more nourishing than monthly food. These are plausible comments, and may be persuasive, but they are not commandments and should not be presented so as to make it appear that they are.

Restorationist Christians need only recognize that they take the Supper weekly out of love, not because of the pressures of a law. Realizing this, they need not feel that their neighbor, who expresses his love once a month or twice a year, is committing a damning error. They have a right to say to such men only what the Bible says: Whenever you do this, do it in memory of Him.

Shall we be content with what the Bible says, or must we add to it in order to justify what is an unobjectionable custom among us?

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