How the Lord’s Supper Heals Church Hurt

In my church tradition, we never share Communion without first “passing the peace.” This is a moment in the service when we celebrate God’s forgiveness by extending it to each other. By grace, we enjoy peace with God. This reality then compels us to seek peace with each other. Usually on Sundays, passing the peace feels more like a halftime stretch break than anything else: The extroverts among us shake as many hands as possible, and the introverts sneak off to the bathroom.

But this ancient practice is more than a liturgical palate cleanser; it is essential preparation for the Lord’s Supper. In the early church, Christians who were at odds with each other were expected to reconcile before receiving the Eucharist.

They understood this as obedience to Jesus’ teaching that our relationship with God is connected to our relationship with others: “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23–24, ESV throughout).

Sharing table fellowship with Christ means being ready to share that same fellowship with his people, including those who have offended us. It also means that if we want to commune with Jesus, we don’t get to do that apart from our brothers and sisters. As Fleming Rutledge said, “There is no other way to be a disciple of Jesus than to be in communion with other disciples of Jesus.” He invites us to a family table. Even though it might feel a lot less complicated, there is no option for a “just Jesus and me” Christianity.

At the same time, coming to the family table does not imply that we excuse or deny sin for the sake of our fellowship. Passing the peace allows us to name our disillusionment with each other as part of our worship. And it prevents us from papering over conflict or wrongdoing, because it reminds us that reconciliation costs something. It requires that we recognize how we have failed each other, and it requires that we forgive.

Of course, some sinful behaviors are so grievous that forgiveness can only happen from a safe distance. In cases of abuse or chronic mistreatment, when it becomes clear that the larger community is either unable or unwilling to address the wrongdoing, the godliest thing to do might be to leave one church and worship somewhere else. This, too, can be an outworking of God’s peace.

After we’ve done all that depends on us in pursuit of restoration, we are free to find a different community where healthier relationships can take place. Whatever shape it takes, passing the peace is hard work. It takes courage to name offenses and seek reconciliation. It takes humility to apologize and ask forgiveness. It takes discernment and grit to leave a church we’ve loved and open our hearts to a new one. It’s much easier to sweep our grievances under the rug—or to walk away from church altogether.

But Jesus’ own example shows us a different way. In righteous anger against religious corruption, he flipped tables in the temple. He was unafraid to tell the truth about sin even when it made a scene. Despite what we often see in Christian circles today, Jesus never concealed or even downplayed his peoples’ wrongdoing. If anything, he called attention to it—for the sake of their healing and growth. And then, before ascending to heaven, he promised to never leave or forsake them.

Throughout the church’s history, Jesus hasn’t left. He has stayed present among us—without condoning our sin. This is the legacy we are each learning to follow, in small and big ways. We will never do it perfectly; we are apprentices of grace and truth. Our fellowship will be fraught as long as sin remains.

But in this way our life together is an expression of the gospel. We fall short, we discover grace, and we are reconciled—to God and to each other. Confessing our sin and passing the peace are requisite practices for Christians—whether we enact them liturgically on Sundays or not—because none of us will ever graduate from needing grace.

The reality is that, from top to bottom, the church is a family full of fledgling, wayward children. And it raises the question: What if the people leading us in confession and peace are also the ones who are committing sins against their people and are unwilling to recognize it? What if the whole process of reconciliation breaks down because those with religious authority refuse to be held accountable?

As a leader in the church, I am haunted by this question. And I am challenged by the fact that God has baked accountability into the meal I serve his people.

In the very earliest description we have of the Lord’s Supper being celebrated in church, the apostle Paul warns those who partake of the bread and wine to examine themselves and “[discern] the body”—to ensure that they are treating each member of the community with the same respect they would give Jesus’ own body—lest they eat and drink judgment on themselves (1 Cor. 11:17–34).

In the Corinthian church that Paul was addressing, there was a pattern of inequity between the wealthy and poor members of the congregation: Those who had plenty to bring to the eucharistic celebration ate in excess, while the poor members of the church who had nothing to contribute to the feast went hungry. Paul condemns this as antithetical to the example of Jesus, who gave up what he had—his very body—for others.

As Jesus’ followers, we must come to the Table with the same spirit of self-giving love for our brothers and sisters. We must be ready to acknowledge where we’ve fallen short of this and to repent. To fail to do so is to eat the Supper in an “unworthy manner” (v. 27) and to be guilty concerning the body Jesus gave up for us.

This means, as Methodist theologian Laurence Stookey wrote, that “at the Table of the Lord the church is both judged and strengthened by Christ, the Host. The assurance of forgiveness, so often associated with the Eucharist, is legitimate only when we know that forgiveness is for the penitent, and penitence is literally a ‘turn-around’ that involves change.”

Without repentance, the bread we break is not to our comfort. It is to our chastisement (Heb. 12:5–6; 1 Cor. 11:32). I don’t understand exactly what it means to eat and drink judgment on myself. But I know that as a church leader, I am not exempt from it. Pastors and leaders who refuse to see their sins against Christ’s body will still be held accountable for them—whether we witness it in our lifetimes or not. Jesus himself has promised to do this.

For those who have been harmed by Christians without apology, this is a strange consolation. Regardless of the cost, Jesus will do right by his body. Each time we come to the Table, we are called to do the same.

As I’ve grown in my appreciation for the Lord’s Supper over the years, I’ve become aware of another aspect of the church’s failure to experience it as God intended: In our denominational divisions, we have failed to remain in communion with each other at one shared table.

Growing up Baptist in the South, I didn’t think much about different denominations. But after high school, two of my siblings converted to Roman Catholicism. Suddenly, the Protestant Reformation was being relitigated in my family. During the first few years that we worshiped in different traditions, I became painfully aware of the fact that we could no longer take Communion together. Since then, I’ve come to know and love other Roman Catholic Christians, whose tradition restricts them from celebrating Communion with Protestants. And I’ve witnessed church divisions within Protestantism that have created deep relational rifts between Christians with differing convictions.

Even when separation happens for important reasons, it remains something to lament. Whenever and however Jesus’ family is divided, we fail to experience the unity and fellowship that he died to give us. His body, already broken for our sins, is further torn apart by infighting and schism. There aren’t easy answers to this. But in my own life, I might not have even become aware of the problem if I had not been in relationship with Christians from different theological traditions.

Though I cannot share Communion with all of them, I can learn to love them as my brothers and sisters, and I can pray for the day when all divisions will end. Despite my disappointment with the church’s sins, despite my disillusionment with myself as a Christian and a leader, I remain grateful to belong to Jesus’ family. And as I come to terms with our dysfunction, I begin to understand what it is to profess, as the ancient creeds do, I believe in the church.

Some of us have named grievances with Christian siblings in search of true peace and had our concerns dismissed as inordinate or imagined. Some of us have fought to stay in churches that pushed us out through their unwillingness to pursue truth or protect the vulnerable. Some of us have worked tirelessly for leadership reform, seeking to correct the abuses of the previous generation, only to witness a new expression of corruption take root during our tenure. Some of us have courageously called attention to problems in our midst, speaking out against patterns that are destroying us from the inside—and have been labeled as naysayers or saboteurs. Some of us struggle every Sunday to trust pastors or church leaders because of past hurts that were never acknowledged.

Because of unacknowledged harm, unreconciled relationships, or unprocessed disillusionment, many of us live with a deep ambivalence about what it means to belong to God’s family. As beautiful as the church is, it remains dysfunctional and broken. Sometimes the cognitive dissonance this creates is more than we can hold, so we self-exile—longing to share the family meal but choosing to stay hidden from view. Or we remain with the majority of the fellowship but live with a vague sense of regret about those estranged siblings who’ve come and gone from our sight.

One day, Jesus will gather up his broken body into one communion where all divisions are healed and all relationships are restored. On that day, we will feast at the longest table in the world, in the presence of peace himself. Until then, we take and eat in anticipation.

In an ancient collection of church teachings called the Didache, there’s a prayer that looks forward to this once-and-future unity of God’s people: “As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and after it had been brought together became one, so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth unto thy kingdom; for thine is the glory, and the power, through Jesus Christ, for ever.”

For the first Christians, this prayer largely anticipated the evangelistic work of the church in calling all nations to follow Jesus as Lord. They knew the Good News belonged to the whole world and their fellowship would one day reflect that. But for modern Christians who have only ever known a fractured church, splintered by schism and fraught with corruption and conflict, this ancient prayer also speaks to a future reunification and healing for God’s people.

Sometimes, when I celebrate the Lord’s Supper, I think of those relationships in my own life that remain broken and seem unresolvable. I think of my father, whose death robbed him and others of greater reconciliation and wholeness in this life. I think of members in my family and my faith family, some of my closest Christian friends who cannot receive Communion from me or with me. I think of people I know who love Jesus but have left the church or who are struggling to feel safe within it.

Presiding at this Table reminds me of the myriad ways we are not okay and don’t know how to fix it. Then I break the bread, putting my trust again in the one who has allowed himself to be torn apart so that he might somehow put us back together.

Hannah Miller King is a priest and writer in the Anglican Church in North America. She is associate rector of The Vine Anglican Church and author of Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness.