Why a Common Cup?
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” 1 Corinthians 10:16.
My dear flock,
Jesus already asked His disciples, “Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?” (Matt. 20:22). On the night He was betrayed, He had already looked in it. In a few short hours, the Son would fall on His face in the garden and cry, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). The Father’s answer? He tipped that cup towards His lips, to drink the dregs of wrath against sin (Jn. 18:11), for the love God has lost sinners. “It pleased the LORD to bruise him” (Isa. 53). The sweetness in our cup, was made by the bitterness of His. Our cup is the cup of blessing. His, the cup of wrath.
I have had this on my mind for some time now, not knowing how to bring it out. For generations our cup went around the table from one to the next. Since the pandemic we have drank from a common chalice instead. Yes, we all still drink from the same blessed vessel, I know (because I suggested it), but it no longer travels from hand to hand the way it once did. I find I miss that. I wonder if you do too?
Our Catechism has an old word for what takes place at the Table. In answer 75, the believer is assured that Christ’s blood was shed for him as certainly as he sees “the cup communicated to me.” Communicated. Meaning: handed across, or given from one to the other. Mitgeteilt in German, medegedeeld in Dutch. Our Instructors knew very well what they were saying. The cup comes from somewhere, and goes somewhere else, as it did with the disciples around their table.
Paul’s argument runs thusly. Right after our text, “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (v. 17). One bread is easy because of the one loaf. We parcel it our amongst us. The wine is different. Out of “many grapes” says our Form, one wine flows. So where is the unity among the diversity? It is in the cup. Four verses later Paul leans on the table hard: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils.” The Corinthians wanted two cups. Paul tells them the cup of blessing, binds. To drink from it is to drink to the exclusion of all other cups. Drinking from it publicizes, “I belong to Christ…”
But it equally says, “and to all who drinks from it.”
None of us sit at a literal table built for idols. But a soul can bring something nearly as dark to the Lord’s Table. He fosters a little flame against the brother three seats down. The one who said that thing at the congregational meeting several years ago. And he keeps warm by that fire through the sermon and the Form and the prayer. Then, completely ignoring it, he takes the cup out of that brother’s hand and drinks. I think Paul would ask him from which cup he imagines he’s drinking.
Some of you have real wrongs between you, and ignoring them will heal none of them. The Lord heals them the way He heals anything, by confession without excuse, and scoreless forgiveness. Did our Savior not say, “leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother” (Matthew 5:24)? If that work is still undone today, go and do it. If advice is needed before the Lord’s Day, come and talk with an elder.
Then look at the one who handed you the cup. You know him, his family, his occupation, something of his personality. Yet of his heart you know very little. You may know this and that about him, but he may have argued with himself all the way to the table, about whether he had any divine right to come. You don’t know. Either way, the wine that was in his hand is now at your lips. What it says is, this is the only blood that has ever washed either of you. From where I sit at the table I have watched that cup go round for years, and I have never once seen it pass to someone who needed it less than I did, or more. We all need the same thing. We drink from the same cup.
Pray for each other while it passes, as you pray for your own soul. Could you do that? Nothing elaborate. “Lord, make Thy promise sure.” The Lord answers selfless prayers swiftly, and I suspect He is pleased most with them.
So, here is where I come out on the question I raised. I would be glad to see the cup passed among us again, because it puts into our hands what our Lord, Paul, and the Catechism teach. Whether and when that happens is for the consistory to weigh. In the meantime, when I lift the chalice up, and pray, “The cup of blessing which we bless”, remember what Jesus drank so that you might drink, and remember who drinks it with you.
Your friend and pastor,
J Lewis