On the Lord's Supper

Reading Bishop J.C. Ryle during Lent was a fruitful enterprise. His thoughts on John's presentation of the events in the "upper room" (John 13) are especially interesting in light of the fact that he was the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool:

Concerning the omission of the Lord's Supper [by St. John in his Gospel], I venture the following conjecture. I think it was especially intended to be a witness forever against the growing tendency of Christians to make an idol of the sacraments. Even from the beginning there seems to have been a disposition in the Church to make Christianity a religion of forms and ceremonies rather than of the heart, and to exalt outward ordinances to a place which God never meant them to fill. Against this teaching St. John was raised up to testify. The mere fact that in his Gospel he leaves out the Lord's Supper altogether, and does not even name it, is strong proof that the Lord's Supper cannot be, as many tell us, the first, foremost, chief, and principal thing in Christianity. Its perfect silence about it can never be reconciled with this favourite theory. It is a most conspicuous silence, which the modern advocates of the so-called sacramental system, can never get over or explain away. If the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper really is the first and chief thing in Christianity, why does St. John tell us nothing about it? To that question I can only see one answer: it is because it is not a primary, but a secondary thing in Christ's religion. The reason assigned for the omission by many commentators, viz., that St. John thought it needless to repeat the account of the institution after it had been recorded by three evangelists and St. Paul, appears to me entirely insufficient.

Something to think about this week as we prepare to share Communion.