We take the Lord's Supper every Sunday because the Christians in the New Testament did. Luke describes the church meeting "on the first day of the week" to break bread (Acts 20:7), and that day is Sunday. So every time Sunday comes around, we do what they did.
A Few Quiet Minutes on Main Street
Picture a Sunday morning with us in Honesdale. You've parked behind the building on Main Street and come in the back, and worship started at 10am. Partway through, the room settles. One of the men gives thanks for the bread, and it's passed along the rows. Then thanks for the cup, and it's passed too.
Nobody's talking. Some people close their eyes. Some have a Bible open on their knee. For a few minutes the whole room is thinking about the same thing, which is Jesus dying on a cross, and it happens next Sunday too, and the Sunday after that.
If you grew up with communion a few times a year, that last part may catch you off guard. Here's why we do it that way.
Where the Weekly Habit Comes From
Luke traveled with Paul and wrote about a Sunday in the city of Troas: "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them" (Acts 20:7). Most likely, "to break bread" in that verse points to the Lord's Supper. Look at the reason Luke gives for the gathering. Paul preached until midnight, yet Luke doesn't say they met for the sermon. They met to break bread.
A note on the Greek: "to break bread" in Acts 20:7 is klasai arton, an infinitive of purpose. It gives the reason the church was gathered: "gathered together in order to break bread." Luke names the Supper as the purpose of the meeting, and the preaching happened while they were there.
Look at the verse just before it, too. Paul and his companions arrived in Troas "where we stayed for seven days" (Acts 20:6). Paul was in a hurry, eager to reach Jerusalem by Pentecost (Acts 20:16). Still, he stayed a full week, met with the church on the first day, and left the next morning. It reads like a man who waited so he could be at the Lord's table with those Christians before he moved on.
That's how it had been from the beginning. The first Christians "devoted themselves" to the breaking of bread, right alongside the apostles' teaching and prayer (Acts 2:42). And when Paul corrected the church in Corinth, the Supper was the reason they came together in the first place (1 Corinthians 11:20, 33).
Someone may point out that a few verses later the Jerusalem church was "breaking bread in their homes" day by day (Acts 2:46). Read the rest of that sentence: "they received their food with glad and generous hearts." That's Christians sharing ordinary meals around the table. In Acts 2:42 Luke lists "the breaking of the bread" (with the definite article in Greek, tē klasei tou artou) among the devoted practices of worship, next to teaching, fellowship, and "the prayers." Those are two different things, and Luke keeps them apart.
Why Sunday, of All Days?
Because it's the day He came out of the tomb. All four Gospels place the resurrection on "the first day of the week" (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). Christians gathered on that day to remember the death of the One who didn't stay dead.
A note on the Greek: The New Testament uses the adjective kyriakos, "belonging to the Lord," only twice. Paul uses it for the Lord's Supper (kyriakon deipnon, 1 Corinthians 11:20), and John uses it for the Lord's day (tē kyriakē hēmera, Revelation 1:10). One word ties the meal and the day together: the Lord's supper, eaten on the Lord's day.
One Day, Every Week
Every week has a first day. Paul told that same Corinthian church, "On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper" (1 Corinthians 16:2). Every week, then.
A note on the Greek: "on the first day of every week" is kata mian sabbatou. The preposition kata used this way is distributive. It means each one in turn, the way kat' hēmeran means "day by day." Paul wasn't naming one particular Sunday. He meant every one of them.
Israel heard its own weekly day the same way: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). The Sabbath law isn't something Christians live under (Colossians 2:16). Still, no Israelite ever asked which Sabbaths God had in mind. All of them.
We won't pretend there's a verse reading "take the Lord's Supper every Sunday." There isn't. What the New Testament gives us is an example the apostles took part in and approved, and it's the only one it gives. We can't find a yearly Supper there, or a monthly one, or the Supper held on a different day. We'd rather keep the pattern God left than draw up a calendar of our own, because the Scriptures are enough to equip us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and we want what we do in worship to rest on the Lord's authority (Colossians 3:17).
History bears out that this is how the early Christians understood it. The Didache, a short Christian manual from around the end of the first century, told believers, "On the Lord's own day, gather together and break bread and give thanks" (Didache 14:1). About fifty years later, Justin Martyr described Christian worship for a Roman emperor. "On the day called Sunday," he wrote, believers gathered, the Scriptures were read, and bread and wine were brought, blessed, and shared (First Apology 67). Neither writing is Scripture, and we don't lean on them as if they were. They do show that the Christians who came right after the apostles understood the pattern the way we read it.
We should also say who's speaking. We're one independent congregation with no denomination over us and no headquarters to consult, so we can only tell you what we read and what we practice here.
Won't It Get Old?
Maybe you're thinking what plenty of people think. Anything done that often has to go stale eventually, right?
It can go stale, and we won't deny it. The church in Corinth let the Supper become careless and selfish (1 Corinthians 11:20-22, 27). Yet Paul never told them to cut it back to a few times a year. He sent them inward: "Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup" (1 Corinthians 11:28). The trouble was in their hearts, not on their calendar.
Rarity was never where the meaning came from anyway. "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26). As often as. Paul expected Christians to do this over and over, and each time, the bread and the cup tell the same good news: He died, and He's coming back.
A note on the Greek: When Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24-25), the verb poieite is a present imperative. It describes an ongoing practice ("keep doing this"), not a single act. Paul's "as often as" (hosakis ean, 1 Corinthians 11:25-26) is followed by present-tense verbs too, describing something repeated. The Lord gave His church something to come back to again and again.
It isn't only a memory, either. Paul asked, "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). The word is koinōnia: sharing, fellowship, communion. Every Sunday, the same small room full of people shares in the same Lord at the same moment. People don't tire of that any more than a family tires of sitting down at the table together.
Think of the kind of old couple who still hold hands on every walk, fifty years in. Nobody watching them concludes the habit has emptied it out.
If You're Visiting
You don't have to take anything. Let the trays pass you by, and nobody will think twice about it.
The Supper is a meal for Christians, those who have been baptized into Christ, and Paul asks each one to examine himself before he eats (1 Corinthians 11:28). If you aren't sure where you stand, it's completely fine to sit quietly and watch. And if it raises questions, we'd genuinely enjoy talking about them after worship.
Come Take a Seat With Us
If you'd like to see all this for yourself, or talk it over first, we'd be glad to open Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians 11 with you, at whatever pace suits you. You can set up a free Bible study, learn a little about who we are, or drop us a line before Sunday.
Our schedule:
Our door is at 416 Main Street, Suite D, Honesdale, PA 18431, around the back: park at the rear of the building and come in that way.