Eucharist and Lord's Supper

58 THE SHAPE OF THE LITURGY
quite certainly repeat from time to time without any command from Him
---:less often tha~ the breaking of bread at the beginning of the meal, but
~tl1l frequently III any case. (Wine was cheap and easy to get; there is no
Illsta~~e of a c~abilrah meal without at least this one cup of it, and no
rabblllic ~eg~latlon as to what is to be done in its absence.)!
Bu~ thIS tIm.e part, at least, of His new meaning must have been quite
shockmgly plam to the apostles at the first hearing of the words. He has
just been thanking God in their name in the Thanksgiving over the cup
'for Thy Covenant which Thou hast sealed in our flesh', and all the tremendous
things that meant for the jew-the very essence of all his religion.
And now, whenever this particular chabilrah meets again for all time to
come-'This cup is the New Covenant' sealed 'in My Blood. Whenever
you drink (the cup of blessing in My chabilrah) do so for the re-calling of
Me'. 'And when' like every chaburah at the close of its meeting 'they had
sung a psalm, they went out' (Mark xiv. 26)2.
What our Lord did at the last supper, then, was not to establish any new
rite. He attached to the two corporate acts which were sure to be done when
His disciples met in the future-the only two things which He could be sure
they would do together regularly in any case-a quite new meaning, which
had a special connection with His own impending death (exactly what, we
need not now enquire).
The double institution in bread and wine has a vital bearing on the whole
1 It is puzzling to account for Lietzmann's statement that the early Jerusalem
church 'very seldom' used wine at its chabiirah meals in later years (op. cit. p. 250)
because our Lord in His wanderings through the land had habitually taught them
to use water. To say the least of it, this consorts singularly badly with the accusation,
'Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber!' (Luke vii. 34). Lietzmann is, of course,
making out a case, essential to his theory of eucharistic origins, that S. Paul is
chiefly responsible for the regular addition of the cup to the original Jerusalem rite
of the 'breaking of bread' only. But that it seems unnecessary to take such special
pleading seriously, I would undertake to produce at least ten pieces of evidence that
wine was commonly procurable even by the poorest in first century Palestine, and
that abstinence from it was regarded as the mark of professional ascetics like the
Essenes and the Baptist, from whom our Lord always dissociated Himself.
• I leave this interpretation of the last supper as it stood (but for one readjustment
where I was plainly wrong) in my draft before I came on the very similar explanation
given by Dr. Cirlot, The Early Eucharist, p. 155 sq. I am much reassured to
tind that his fuller discussion reaches substantially the same conclusions from a
somewhat different basis. We seem to have read much the same ancient and modern
literature, but so far as I remember my own starting points were two: the remark of
Sanday, Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, ii. 637a: 'The institution of the Eucharist
appears to have connexions both backwards and forwards-backwards with other
meals which our Lord ate together with His disciples, forwards with those common
meals which very early came into existence in the Apostolic Church'; and side by
side with that, this from Dr. Oesterley (Jewish Background, etc., p. 172): 'The circle
of friends formed by Christ and the Apostles constituted a chabUrah. According to
John xv. 14 our Lord refers to this in the words, Ye are my friends (chaberim) ifye
do the things which I command you'. Given those two broad hints and a certain
knowledge of chaburah customs, the explanation above seems to arise straight out
of the N.T. facts; though it has escaped the notice of all New Testament scholars
among us until Dr. Cirlot. Myown debt to him in the rest of this chapter is considerable,
but difficult to assess exactly.