On the Mutual Distribution of the Lord's Supper

This year at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, Overture 12 sought to limit the distribution of the Lord’s Supper to church officers (the minister, ruling elders, or deacons). I gave a speech against the overture, based on my interpretation of Luke 22:17. The overture failed, but, since we seem to be headed into a bit of a period of liturgical reform in the PCA, it seemed good to me to expand my reasoning into a blog post.

Overture 12 would have amended our Book of Church Order (BCO) 58-5 to add the italicized language: “Here the bread is to be distributed by the minister or to other officers for distribution…. While the minister is repeating these words, let him give the cup directly to the people or to the officers for distribution.”

As it stands, our BCO mentions “distribution” but says nothing about who should do this. In the committee report given in favor of the overture, there was a distinction made between “distribution,” where church officers bring the elements to the people, and mere “passing” from congregant to congregant. But no consideration was given, neither by the majority report for the overture nor the minority report against it, to the fact that “distribute” is biblical terminology which occurs in our Lord’s institution of the Supper. And the way that our Lord used the language of distribution at that first Supper suggests that it should not be restricted to some part of those communing, but should be done mutually by all.

καὶ δεξάμενος ποτήριον εὐχαριστήσας εἶπεν· Λάβετε τοῦτο καὶ διαμερίσατε εἰς ἑαυτούςLuke 22:17

And after taking a cup and giving thanks, he said, “Take this and distribute it to each other."

Only Luke records this cup, distributed before the bread, in distinction from the cup after supper, which is also recorded by Luke, and by Matthew, Mark, and Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. The distribution of multiple cups is in keeping with the practice of four cups at Passover, recorded in the Mishnah (m. Pesachim 10). The verb is diamerizō, “to divide, distribute.” The key point to notice is that the construction with “to each other” is mutual: those who distribute the cup are the same as those to whom the cup is distributed. All participants have a share in the cup by the action of all.

Jesus gives thanks for the elements, explains their meaning, and gives them to his disciples. In the Reformed tradition, we understand it to be the role of the minister to carry out this task in Christ’s stead (the administration of the Supper). But in contrast to the action of Christ in giving and instituting this sacrament, the act of distribution is to be carried out by all the disciples present, by Christ’s command.

Why does Christ give this command? Furthermore, what is Luke’s point in recording it? What are we supposed to understand from this? I argued that the mutual distribution of the elements is supposed to be a picture of the disciples’ mutual participation in the body and blood of the Lord. By calling them all to participate in distributing the cup, Jesus teaches his disciples that they have no participation in him without also having a participation with each other.

I find this to be the most likely reading of the verse in its own context, but this interpretation can be bolstered by comparisons with Luke’s use of the same verb in Acts 2, as well as parallels in Mishnah Pesachim 10:1 and First Corinthians.

In his description of the Jerusalem church in Acts 2, Luke uses the verb diamerizō twice.

καὶ ὤφθησαν αὐτοῖς διαμεριζόμεναι γλῶσσαι ὡσεὶ πυρός, καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐφ ἕνα ἕκαστον αὐτῶν, Acts 2:3

And tongues like fire, being distributed, appeared to them, and it settled upon each one of them.

The tongues like fire represent the Holy Spirit poured out upon the disciples and indwelling each one. The one who distributes in this case is of course God himself. But those to whom the Spirit is distributed include every believer present (“each one of them”), not a subset of apostles or elders. Also, this distribution of the Spirit empowers them as Christ’s witnesses to proclaim the gospel. The catholicity of this gift is further emphasized by Peter’s reference to Joel in 2:17-18 – “sons,” “daughters,” “young men,” “old men,” “male servants” and “female servants.” The Spirit is distributed across lines of gender, age, and social status, so that all prophesy.

⁴⁴πάντες δὲ οἱ πιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά, ⁴⁵καὶ τὰ κτήματα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεμέριζον αὐτὰ πᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν· Acts 2:44-45

⁴⁴Now, all who believed were in the same place, and they had everything in common, ⁴⁵property and possessions they sold, and distributed them to all according as any had need.

The first occurrence of diamerizō was a miraculous revelation of an invisible spiritual reality, this second occurrence refers to the tangible, material redistribution of goods. But of course, these realities ought to align: material fellowship is the proper expression of spiritual fellowship (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:1-7; James 2:15-16). The distribution here is mutual: all who believe distribute, and they distribute to any of their number who have need. There is no restriction to apostles or officers in the giving (though of course, the apostles do serve an administrative role overseeing this giving, and later the deacons take up this work).

What to make of this echo of the language of Jesus’ command to distribute the cup in the early church? Probably, these three uses of the term are to be connected back to a common idea of participation. Through their baptism by the Holy Spirit, all believers have participation in God, and they are given this gift so that God can manifest himself through each one (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7; Ephesians 4:15-16). The material side of this participation is experienced through the discipline of giving, to which all believers are called. This mutual participation is experienced throughout the life of the church – it is certainly not restricted to the Lord’s Supper. But the Lord’s Supper does express this mutual participation.

When Jesus tells his disciples to distribute the cup to each other, then, it is a ritual expression of their mutual participation in his life. This is not a participation that any one of them can have on their own, apart from the body, nor is it restricted to a special class of believers. This participation in Christ cannot be had without the body gathering together. Consequently, every participant of the Supper distributes, and every participant receives, since all participate together as one church in Christ.

Mishnah Pesachim offers some comments on the place of wealth and status in the Passover which may be helpful context for understanding Jesus’ command to his disciples. The tractate is largely taken up with matters of preparation for the Passover, but chapter 10 gives us details about the observance of the night itself.

עַרְבֵי פְסָחִים סָמוּךְ לַמִּנְחָה, לֹא יֹאכַל אָדָם עַד שֶׁתֶּחְשָׁךְ. וַאֲפִלּוּ עָנִי שֶׁבְּיִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יֹאכַל עַד שֶׁיָּסֵב. וְלֹא יִפְחֲתוּ לוֹ מֵאַרְבַּע כּוֹסוֹת שֶׁל יַיִן, וַאֲפִלּוּ מִן הַתַּמְחוּי:Mishnah Pesachim 10:1

The evening of the Passover, around the time of the Minchah offering, one should not eat until it is dark, and even the poor one in Israel should not eat until he reclines, and they are not even to withhold from him up to four cups of wine, even from the charity plate.

We should notice the focus on social equality in the observation of the Passover. Even the poor are to recline at table. Reclining at table was a sign of status in the Hellenistic world. To say that the poor are to recline, rather than simply the wealthy and powerful, is to forbid any marking out of power and wealth in seating posture. Perhaps this is because the Passover commemorates the release of God’s people from slavery in Egypt, so all are to be treated as free persons, and recognition of social status is inappropriate. Note that all the synoptic gospels mention that Jesus and his disciples followed this custom at the Supper (Matthew 26:20; Mark 14:18; Luke 22:14).

Alongside this recognition of social equality in seating posture, there is also to be social equality in the amount of wine provided: all must be able to participate in the four traditional cups, and charitable funds are to be expended to provide this to the poor. So issues of wealth, poverty, and charitable giving are front and center in the observation of the Passover, just as they were in Luke’s description of the early church in Acts 2. Problems of wealth and poverty will also come up with the practice of the Supper in Corinth – it is precisely the failure to provide the poor with enough that Paul will call out as a failure to discern the body.

With this background, we may wonder if it is a coincidence that Luke is the gospel writer who insists on including this command of Christ to distribute to each other. Is it not likely that this is connected to Luke’s concern for the poor? Since, as we have seen, this same verb diamerizō is used to describe the re-distribution of wealth in Acts 2, is this concern with social equality also behind Jesus’ command, as Luke understands it? In other words, Jesus intends for his disciples to see to it that the cup is shared with all. This includes a duty of provision for those who cannot provide for themselves. As in Acts 2, this would be a mutual responsibility – every participant in the Supper must see to it that he shares what he has with his neighbor, so that none go wanting, and must put his own wealth on the line to make this happen, if necessary.

Similar points are at issue in Paul’s teaching about the Supper in First Corinthians.

¹⁶τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας ὃ εὐλογοῦμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία ἐστὶν τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ; τὸν ἄρτον ὃν κλῶμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστιν; ¹⁷ὅτι εἷς ἄρτος, ἓν σῶμα οἱ πολλοί ἐσμεν, οἱ γὰρ πάντες ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἄρτου μετέχομεν. 1 Corinthians 10:16-17

¹⁶The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? ¹⁷Because it is one bread, we the many are one body, for we all share from the one bread.

Note that the participation described here has a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension – it connects us to Christ, even as it connects us with other believers in one body. Paul goes on in 10:18 to compare this situation to the priests, whose participation in the altar is expressed in their common right to eat of the sacrifices. In this analogy, every member of the body is a priest – despite the fact that Paul has used the same analogy in 9:13-14 specifically for full-time gospel preachers! Special priestly analogies for gospel ministers does not rule out a priesthood of all believers, and it is in discussing the Lord’s Supper that Paul emphasizes this.

Similar themes re-emerge in 1 Corinthians 11. The Lord’s Supper requires that the church gather together in the same place (11:20), and more than this, it requires that participants see to it that all have enough to eat, rather than just seeing to their own private meal (11:21-22). Those who eat and drink “proclaim the death of the Lord” by doing so (11:26) – Paul here applies to the whole assembly a verb restricted to full-time gospel-preachers elsewhere in the New Testament. For this reason, eating and drinking are a serious business, which require prior self-examination (11:27-28). While it is of course appropriate for church leaders to take all this language very seriously in their oversight of the Supper, Paul directs all his imperatives here in the first instance to each individual believer.

We are left, then, with the sense that a communicants’ participation in the Supper is an active participation. Responsibility is placed on each member to discern the body. This might be given a range of applications, but the nearest one in the context is that they should ensure that their neighbor has enough to eat and drink in the Supper. Most especially, they should refrain from flaunting their wealth while others are left in want. Paul’s focus on the problems of wealth in the Supper coheres with Mishnah Pesachim 10:1 as well as the echo of Luke 22:17 in Acts 2:45 to make a strong case for the importance of social equality in how we observe the Supper. Likewise, the strong emphasis on mutual participation of every believer in the Supper strengthens the reading of Luke 22:17 given above. The distribution of the cup to each other recorded by Luke is a ritual expression of the reality of the participation of the whole church in Christ explored by Paul’s teaching.

A fellow commissioner to the General Assembly suggested an objection to me: the participants at the first Supper were only the twelve apostles. So might Jesus’ command to distribute actually be a commission to them in their capacity as officers of the church to distribute the cup? If so, then Luke 22:17 might actually be a proof-text supporting distribution only by officers.

So, are those who received Christ’s command to be considered simply in their capacity as participants in the first Supper? Or are they addressed according to their capacity as church officers? I think we have to take them merely as participants, based on the language of the command. Christ says to “distribute to each other.” The reflexivity of the construction means that those who distribute are the same as those who receive. This is not a command for a sub-group to distribute to others, but a mutual distribution by all participants.

In the debate on the floor, a commissioner responded to my exegesis by raising the question of whether this verse should be taken as descriptive or prescriptive. I think this is a fair question, since we don’t insist that every detail of our observance of the Supper matches that first occasion.

A good example of this is that we do not recline at a table when we partake, even though all three synoptic gospels record that Jesus and his disciples followed this custom (also recorded in Mishnah Pesachim 10:1). This custom was based on a particular cultural meaning of reclining in Hellenistic society, a meaning it does not have in contemporary America. Still, this does not mean that the reclining of the disciples has no bearing on how we should celebrate the Supper today. It communicates a value of social equality in seating arrangements for the Supper. Practices such as allowing wealthy congregants to rent the best pews or racial segregation are especially suspect at the Lord’s Table, as violations of this principle. It is a matter of understanding the theological principle about the Supper communicated in the descriptive narrative and doing relevant cultural application from their day to ours.

Determining which Scripture texts are merely descriptive and which prescriptive can be a difficult and debatable matter. Still, the direct imperatives of Jesus in the words of institution are strong candidates to be prescriptive. In 1 Corinthians 11:23-25, Paul recites a description of the Lord’s Supper in a similar form as we find in the synoptic gospels. But Paul does not treat it as merely descriptive. He treats it as a tradition passed on to govern the church’s practice. In the following verses, he draws application from Christ’s commands directly to the Corinthian’s situation. He treats the words Jesus spoke on that occasion as direct commands to the church. This is probably how we should read the accounts of the institution of the Supper in the synoptic gospels. They don’t just record Jesus’ commands to the disciples on that occasion, but present him as instituting a ritual meal to be continued in obedience to this command after his death and resurrection.

But Jesus’ command to distribute to each other is only found in one gospel, Luke. If Matthew, Mark, and Paul omit it, perhaps it is not prescriptive? Indeed, if Jesus and his disciples celebrated a full Passover meal, much of it must have been omitted in the re-telling, including the consumption of the lamb and bitter herbs, and if Mishnah Pesachim 10 reflects the practice of Jesus’ time, the distribution of up to four cups of wine. Presumably these omissions mean that such practices are not essential to the ongoing practice of the Supper, even if we want to historically reconstruct their presence at its first celebration. Indeed, to follow our text of Luke’s gospel rigidly, we would have to include two cups of wine in our celebration of the Supper.

I don’t suggest we follow Luke so rigidly. Still, Luke must have decided to include Jesus’ saying here for a reason (and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit). Luke includes a direct imperative regarding the cup, placed alongside other direct imperatives in the account of the institution which he must have been aware was repeated in early Christian communities as binding commands of the Lord. I find it difficult to take Luke’s intent as not prescriptive here. Due to his concern for social equality, he is careful to pass on Jesus’ command about the mutual distribution of the cup in the Supper.

One need not agree with me, though, to find an important application from this text. Even if it is merely descriptive, one still needs to ask what it teaches in principle about the Supper. Especially alongside Paul’s emphasis on every believer taking responsibility for social equality in how the Supper is celebrated, the principle would be that the Supper expresses a mutual participation of the every member of the church. If the practice of mutual distribution, as a ritual depiction of this reality, is not absolutely commanded for our observance of the Supper, it is hard to see how we can rule it out as inappropriate, when Jesus himself did it at the first Supper. Rather, mutual distribution is a fitting expression of the theological principle that the Supper itself is an act of mutual participation in Christ by his Spirit.

This holds similarly for the echoes in Acts 2. The miraculous vision of tongues of fire is a one-time only redemptive historical event, but the invisible baptism with the Spirit it reveals is ongoing. The ideal of (voluntary!) re-distribution of believers’ wealth continues, but it definitely changes as the church grows in the complexity of its administration (the appointment of deacons to oversee it) and out to multiple locations (the practice of taking a collection across multiple cities for the church struggling in one location). Elements of these accounts are occasional, but the theological principle of the mutual participation of believers is not. Insofar as the verbal parallel reflects that Luke is drawing on the same doctrine of participation in Luke 22:17 as in Acts 2, his understanding of the theological principles at work in the Supper must govern our understanding as the revelation of the Spirit’s own interpretation of the Supper through Luke.

I don’t think anything I have argued here actually prevents us from giving a special role to elders or deacons in the Supper. I won’t repeat all the deliberation from the floor on this issue, but elders’ possession of the keys suggests it is fitting for them to exercise their authority in overseeing the distribution, whereas deacons’ role in service of the material needs of the congregation suggests it is fitting for them to have a role in serving the church at table.

I confess I am of the opinion that this is a fitting role for officers but not a necessary one – it may be often prudent, but is not strictly required by good and necessary consequence. Certain prudential factors may weigh against it. Most obviously, sufficient officers may not be available, especially in church plants. But there could be other reasons. I admit that I am a bit alarmed by what I perceive as some clericalist language that has emerged in this debate, elevating ministers and other officers far above other congregants as priestly figures. The balance here is admittedly tricky – the New Testament teaches a priesthood of all believers as well as using quasi-priestly analogies for church officers (as we saw Paul do above in the space of only two chapters). These must be balanced in our ecclesiology. If a Session was concerned about a sacerdotalist attitude in their particular context, calling for a re-emphasis of the priesthood of all believers, they might have good prudential grounds to give average congregants a more prominent role in the distribution. Of course, the opposite also holds: in anti-authoritarian contexts, it may be fitting to re-emphasize the authority of elders. I’m sure a lot of us would agree our culture is broadly anti-authoritarian, but of course there can be reactionary micro-contexts where the danger pulls in the opposite direction. Sessions are best positioned to make this judgment for their particular context!

What I think we may not do is to restrict the distribution of the elements to church officers, rather than every participant. Perhaps this appears to be merely a semantic issue – we could distinguish “distribution” in the technical sense of our constitution from “division/distribution” in these Lukan instances. But I’ve not been convinced by the debate so far that there is a deeply developed technical conception of “distribution” in our tradition – I think some are trying to create and develop it even now. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if we are going to nail down our language about distribution, I’d prefer to do it in line with the biblical language, and restrict the language of distribution to the role played by every member. The activity of church officers might be labelled as “overseeing the distribution,” “taking a lead in the distribution,” “serving the elements,” or whatever else might be appropriate. Perhaps one might suggest that we say the elders and deacons “take a part in the administration” of the Supper, but the obvious issue here is that the Westminster Standards reserve this language only for ministers, in distinction from ruling elders. In some of the floor speeches, proof-texts usually reserved to ministers administering the sacraments were applied to other church officers (e.g., 1 Corinthians 4:1). This tends towards the view that ruling elders (and deacons?) may administer the sacraments, which to be clear, contradicts our Standards and would require a reform of them if true! A bit of a theological tightrope must be walked: one would have to leave alone texts and principles that grant authority to administer the sacraments, and focus only on what is common to ministers and elders (and deacons?). Given the diversity of two and three office views in the PCA, we are unlikely to come to a consensus of precisely what that is!

As a guy who leans two office, I’m actually pretty open to these sorts of arguments (though I am unlikely to be convinced that a ruling elder or deacon’s role in the Supper is necessary, rather than merely fitting). If the will of the brethren is that it is indeed always prudent to have officers lead in the distribution, I might be able to get on board with that. But I’d very much disagree with restricting the language of distribution to church officers, as contrary to Luke 22:17 as well as the deeper principle of the mutuality of participation in the Supper. In fact, if such a measure does come before us again, why not affirm both sides of the question? Why not affirm the role of all believers in distribution while also clarifying whatever leading role for church officers is appropriate? We might thus achieve a balance between sacerdotalism and anti-authoritarianism. Such an overture would be a stronger candidate for passing – at least in my opinion!