Lord's Supper and the Mission of the Church

I find this thought from Wolfhart Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 290-3) about the Lord's Supper and what it says about the church a challenging one. As he sees it, the church is the fellowship that celebrates the Lord’s Supper. I think he makes a very important point for the church today, especially the denominations that have a long organizational history. The supper of the Lord is a reminder that the church has its existence outside itself, prior to its organizational forms as a fellowship that is constituted in specific ways. By the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the church renews its fellowship by representing and repeating its grounding in the supper of the Lord. For him, these are the far-reaching implications of the constitutive significance of the supper of Jesus for the church. To stress it again, prior to any organizational form, the church celebrated the supper of the Lord, which is a sign of the fellowship with Jesus Christ that each Christian receives in the form of bread and wine and unites all Christians for fellowship with each other in the unity of the body of Christ. To apply this thought in my own way, the supper of the Lord is a reminder to us today that denominational history and their distinguishing characteristics are not the heart of the fellowship. The supper of the Lord is a reminder that fellowship with Christ as the risen Lord and fellowship with each other is the heart of the church.