Sermon For Holy Communion Service

Do This in Remembrance of Me: A Homily for Holy Communion

When the Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth, he does not begin with a new idea. He begins with something received. "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you." That single sentence carries enormous weight, because it tells us that what happens at this Table is not a human invention, not a pious custom that grew up over time and can be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. What happens here was given. It was entrusted. It was handed down from the Lord himself, through the apostles, through the centuries of the Church, and now to us, gathered in this place, on this day.

That is the doctrine this homily intends to open. Not merely the mechanics of what we do at the Table, but the meaning of it, the weight of it, and the claim it makes upon our lives. The Lord's Supper is the Church's act of remembrance, reception, discernment, and proclamation. Let us take each of those in turn, because together they form a complete picture of what God is doing when bread is broken and the cup is poured.

The First Movement: Remembrance

"Do this in remembrance of me." Luke records these words twice in the space of a few verses, once over the bread and once over the cup. The repetition is not accidental. Jesus is pressing something into his disciples that he does not want them to lose. And the word remembrance in the Greek of the New Testament, anamnesis, carries a meaning somewhat richer than our ordinary English word suggests. It does not mean simply to recall a past event the way one might recall a birthday or a date in history. It means to make present, to bring before the community the living reality of what was accomplished.

When Israel kept the Passover, they were not merely commemorating an ancient rescue. They were, in the language of their own tradition, participating in it. The Passover made the exodus present and real for every generation. Jesus, at that last supper with his disciples, takes the Passover meal and reinterprets it entirely around himself. He is the Lamb. His body is the bread. His blood is the new covenant. The rescue he is about to accomplish on the cross is the new and greater exodus, the liberation not from one empire but from sin and death themselves.

So when we come to this Table and we hear the words of institution, we are not rehearsing a memory the way one might page through an old photograph. We are placing ourselves before the cross. We are saying, this is what was done for us. This is the body broken. This is the blood shed. We remember Christ, and in that remembering, Christ is present among us by his Spirit, making real to us what he accomplished once for all.

This is why the Book of Common Prayer calls this a holy mystery. Not because it is irrational, but because it is inexhaustible. No single celebration of the Eucharist, no single homily, no single lifetime of receiving the sacrament will ever exhaust what Christ has done and what he continues to do for his people at this Table.

The Second Movement: Reception

But remembrance is not passive. It leads immediately to reception. Paul writes that the Lord took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it. There is a movement of giving throughout the entire account. God gives. We receive. That is the grammar of grace.

The Lord's Supper is, at its heart, a sacrament of the gospel. The same grace that comes to us in the proclaimed word comes to us here in a different form, a visible, tangible, physical form. The theologians of the Anglican tradition have spoken of the sacraments as visible words, outward signs of inward and spiritual grace. The bread and the cup do not merely represent something absent. They are means by which the risen Christ nourishes his people. We receive bread, and by faith we receive him. We drink from the cup, and by faith we receive the benefits of his shed blood, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace with God, and the life of the age to come already beginning in us now.

This is not magic. It is not mechanical. The grace is real, but it is received through faith. That is why Paul is so careful in his letter to Corinth. The sacrament is not a guarantee that operates regardless of how we approach it. It is an encounter with the living Christ, and like every encounter with the living Christ, it demands something of us. It demands faith. It demands honesty. It demands what Paul calls discernment.

The Third Movement: Discernment

Here the passage becomes searching. Paul writes, "So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup."

These are serious words, and they have sometimes frightened people away from the Table altogether. That is not Paul's intention. His intention is not to keep people away but to call them to self-examination before they draw near. The unworthy manner he is describing in the Corinthian context was specific and troubling. Some members of that congregation were eating and drinking without regard for the poorer members of the community, treating the Lord's Supper as a private meal, leaving others hungry and humiliated. They were failing to discern the body.

Discerning the body means two things held together. It means recognizing the real presence of Christ in the sacrament and treating it with reverence. But it also means recognizing the body of Christ in the people gathered at the Table. You cannot truly receive the Lord's Supper while holding contempt for the brother or sister beside you. You cannot honor Christ in the bread and dishonor Christ in the poor. The Table is the place where those two recognitions must come together.

For us, the examination Paul calls for is not a reason for paralysis or despair. It is an invitation to honesty. Before we come forward, we are invited to ask: Am I carrying unconfessed sin? Am I harboring resentment toward someone in this community? Am I approaching this Table with faith, or merely out of habit? The Prayer of Humble Access in the Book of Common Prayer has guided Anglican Christians in this examination for centuries, and its words remain true. We do not presume to come to this Table trusting in our own righteousness, but in God's manifold and great mercies. That is precisely the right posture. Not self-condemnation, but honest humility. Not staying away, but drawing near with a penitent and believing heart.

The Table is not for the perfect. It is for the forgiven. It is not for those who have no need of grace. It is for those who know they cannot live without it.

The Fourth Movement: Proclamation

Paul closes the passage with a sentence that reframes everything. "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

Every celebration of the Lord's Supper is an act of proclamation. It is a sermon preached not only in words but in bread and cup, in the gathering of a community around a Table, in the act of receiving what we could never earn. When the world looks at the Church gathered at the Eucharist, it should see something that cannot be explained by ordinary human logic. It should see people of every background and condition coming to the same Table, receiving the same grace, confessing the same Lord. That is a proclamation. It says: there is a death that matters more than any other death in history. There is a resurrection that has changed the terms of human existence. There is a Lord who is coming again.

Until he comes. Those three words are the horizon of every Eucharist. We live between the first coming and the second. We live in the time of the Church, the time of the Spirit, the time of mission. And every time we gather at this Table, we are declaring that this time is not endless, that history is moving toward a conclusion, that the Lord who gave himself for us will one day return in glory. The Lord's Supper is therefore not only a backward-looking act of memory. It is a forward-looking act of hope.

We remember what he has done. We receive what he gives. We examine ourselves honestly before him. And we proclaim, to one another and to the watching world, that Jesus Christ died, that he rose, and that he is coming again.

A Charge To The Congregation

As we prepare to come to this Table today, let these four movements shape the way we approach it. Come with memory, not vague sentiment, but the deliberate act of placing yourself before the cross and saying, this was for me. Come with openness to receive, not trusting your own worthiness, but trusting his inexhaustible grace. Come with honesty, having examined your heart, having named what needs to be named before God, and having received the absolution that the liturgy offers. And come with the awareness that your presence here is itself a proclamation. You are telling the truth about the world by being at this Table.

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread. He gave thanks. He broke it. He gave it. He does the same for us now, through the ministry of his Church, by the power of his Spirit. Come, then, for all things are ready.

Sources Consulted

Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. 1 Corinthians 11:23-29; Luke 22:14-20.

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Church Publishing, 1979. The Holy Eucharist: Rite II; The Prayer of Humble Access.

Gordon D. Fee. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

N. T. Wright. Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

Richard Hooker. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V. Edited by W. Speed Hill. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977.

Joel B. Green. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.