How Often Should We Celebrate Communion?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11, Acts 2

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--how-often-should-we-celebrate-communion
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
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well first of all let me say that communion is a very important doctrine of the church and I think sometimes we don't emphasize it as much as we should now there are two extremes that I think we should avoid on the one hand the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the the elements of the bread and the fruit of the vine actually turn into the physical body and blood of Jesus so that when they celebrate what they call the mass it's actually a new sacrifice of Jesus and in fact after the priest says the prayer of consecration that people are to actually worship those elements as Jesus they're to adore and worship these elements because they're no longer elements that's Jesus well I think that is as clearly false one example would be when when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper he says this is my body this is my blood and so that's how the Catholic Church says well literally this is but when he said that to his disciples his body was standing before them his blood was still coursing through his veins so they obviously knew no that's not his physical body and blood but he's saying this represents my body that's going to be broken for you and my blood that's going to be shed for you the opposite extreme would be to say it's merely a symbol while that is symbolic as I've just described it it's not merely a symbol and here's why not I think when we participate the Lord comes spiritually in a special way he honors our faith now this is not the only way the Lord comes obviously anytime we pray we can have the presence of the Lord but when we contemplate Christ's sacrifice for us and we seek to apply the benefits of his sacrifice to our lives and then we celebrate his second coming because part of that communion is uh as as the Apostle Paul explained in First Corinthians 11 we do show or re-represent the Lord's death until he comes and Jesus when he ensued the Lord's Supper said I'm not going to drink of this with you again until I do it in the kingdom of God so even Jesus said this is pointing towards the second coming so it looks back it looks back to the Cross but it looks forward to the second coming so therefore we can expect whenever we have that intensity of thinking of Christ's sacrifice applied to our lives and thinking about his coming again looking forward to that and we have faith then Christ comes in a very real and personal way spiritually and that's why we should take advantage of this opportunity for forgiveness for healing for delivering reference and so we believe Christ is spiritually present now given all that I think the the the Lord's Supper should be celebrated as a in a prominent way in our churches now if you try to identify how often I would say that the Bible doesn't say specifically in fact again First Corinthians 11 Paul simply says as often as you do it so he doesn't say how often but if you think of the Lord's Supper being based on the Passover the Passover was celebrated once a year so that I think a minimum should be once a year now uh Catholics and other some Protestants celebrate every week it's the central part of their service because at least for the Catholics they look at it as an ongoing sacrifice it helps you with your sins so naturally they want to do it every time so I think that's too often I think that turns it into either a false concept as if it is the most important element of the service um and it also may be trivializes it because if you don't take that serious of a view and you say it's symbolic well then it just becomes a ritual that you repeat over and over it loses its significance so my concern about having it every week would be diminishing the significance or turning it into a ritual or a ceremony displacing other elements we want to have plenty of time for worship preaching prayer and and not just let this the the service become a ritual so in other words I would say somewhere in the middle now if you look at Acts chapter 2 it indicates that they celebrated quite frequently of course when they talk about breaking a bread I think it could mean both the Lord's supper and fellowship meals so you don't always know if they're talking about one or the other or both but they didn't know it would be at least 2 000 years before the Lord come back they probably were expecting to come back in a few weeks so they're probably celebrating quite frequently whereas from our perspective we realize well it's probably not meant to be every week or two because the Lord isn't coming at least from a historical perspective he wasn't planning to come back in a month or two um so as a pastor what I usually did was celebrate three or four times a year uh that to me that was frequent enough to keep the the importance and the blessing uh but not so often that it just became a ceremonial ritual and I also try to consider not everybody can be at every service so if you only have it once a year and somebody is sick or out of town they might go two years and that's that's not good so if you have it three or four times a year um and so once a quarter would be easy or a lot of times I would do it towards the beginning of the year kind of as a Consecration and then do it around Easter because that naturally lends itself to contemplating Christ's death and then in the fall as we began the school year again a good time of renewal or you know heading to the Future consecration uh sometimes we had a watch Night Service and we would have communion in Fort washing at that time so I do believe that several times a year is is generally good but there's no hard and fast rule I think it should be at least once a year uh maybe as much as once a quarter or once a month but this is just my opinion there's no absolute scripture if you get more than once a month I would be concerned that it becomes more of a ritual a ceremony with less meaning and displaces other things that need to be emphasized in the life of the church