A Sermon for Baptist Communion Service
King's College London, Strand Chapel,
27 November 2024
Exodus 16.13-21
1 Corinthians 10.14-17
For our sermon today I’m going to offer some reflections
on what makes a Baptist-style communion service distinctive,
what is might be that is particularly ‘Baptist-ish’
about the way Baptists such as myself structure a communion service,
and particularly the way we share bread and wine
in obedience to the command of Jesus.
As a guiding idea for this, I want offer simple question,
and it’s this: ‘Where’s Jesus?’
If we were in a Catholic church, you might point to the crucifix.
If we were in a high Anglican church you might point to the reserved host.
As we’re in a College Chapel, you might point
to the bread and wine on the table over there.
And all of these are good, ecumenically valid answers.
But they aren’t the answer that a Baptist would give.
I’ll come back to that.
But first, I need to give you a little bit of Baptist history.
The Baptists came into being in the very early 17th century,
and it was really all an argument about religious liberty.
At that point, in England, it was basically illegal
to be anything other than CofE.
However a group who became known as ‘dissenters’
came to believe that religion should be a matter of choice,
not state imposition.
One key thing they wanted was freedom to worship
in their own congregations, rather than in the local parish church.
Quite a few of these dissenters were actually Anglican priests themselves,
but that’s a story for another day.
In search of religious liberty, they took themselves to Amsterdam
where, then as now, things were a bit more liberal.
And it was whilst they were there
that they came to some important conclusions.
Firstly, they concluded that each Christian believer
could read scripture and pray directly to God in the name of Jesus;
no-one needed a priest to do it for them.
And secondly, they said that baptism
administered to a child at birth wasn’t valid,
because it denied that child freedom of choice;
rather they said that baptism should be freely chosen,
and administered upon a person’s profession of faith.
In these conclusions you can see the influence
of individualistic enlightenment thinking,
and also the rising availability of the Bible in languages other than Latin.
Anyway, whilst in Amsterdam in 1609,
the two founders of the English Baptists,
John Smyth and Thomas Helwys,
baptised each other in the river,
having come to the rather startling conclusion
that the true church had died out in all the world,
and that it was their responsibility to re-start it.
Smyth died in Amsterdam,
but Helwys came back to England a couple of years later,
and wrote to King James.
What he wrote has come to be regarded
as the first plea for religious liberty in the English language,
because he argued for freedom not only for himself,
but also for the Jew, the Muslim, and the atheist.
His conviction that freedom for one must be freedom for all
is of course echoed in the theology
of that great Baptist preacher of the 20th century, Martin Luther King Jr,
who said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Incidentally, Martin Luther King Jr preached his first sermon in the UK
at my own church on Shaftesbury Avenue in 1961.
But what has all this to do with Communion,
you may be wondering…
Well, several things.
Firstly, if the church is gathered rather than geographical,
if it is made up of those who have chosen baptism and discipleship,
rather than those who live in a parish,
then the meal that sustains the church is not, in fact, for everyone.
The early Baptists therefore had communion
as a separate service to their main worship service.
They would meet for singing, praying, and preaching,
and then close the service.
All the non-baptised would be asked to leave,
and only the baptised would stay
for breaking of bread and sharing of wine.
In these days of ecumenical respect and trust,
most Baptists no longer exclude from communion
those who have been baptised in other traditions
– and certainly in my church all are welcome to the Lord’s Table.
In fact, Bloomsbury Baptist was founded
as an ‘open communion’ church in 1848
– something that was quite unusual in those days.
But there is still an echo of the two services model in Baptist practice.
We only celebrate communion once a month,
on the first Sunday of each month,
and when we do the service is about 15 minutes longer,
with communion tagged on the end.
This pattern takes us right back to those early years
when the un-baptised would be asked to leave.
Actually, my church did take a decision
to exclude people from the Communion service
just a few years after it was founded,
but not on the basis of their baptism.
It was 1851, the year of Prince Albert’s great exhibition in London,
and lots of American Baptists were coming to London.
The church took an advert in the Times
welcoming visiting Americans to the church,
but then stating that if any visitors were supportive of the Fugitive Slave Law,
they would be denied access to the Lord’s table.
This was a law that returned enslaved people
who had escaped to the free north
back to their masters in the south.
So, within three years of opening,
my church was excommunicating fellow Baptists
on an issue of racist exclusion.
But let’s come back now to the question of where Jesus is to be found
in a Baptist communion service.
If he’s not in the bread and wine, where is he?
And what’s the point of the bread and wine?
The theology of being a gathered church is important again here.
Because for Baptists, the central idea of communion
isn’t the presence of the body Christ
in the elements of the bread and wine
Rather, it’s the recognition that Jesus is present in the community itself
—the gathered people of God who share in the meal.
As we heard earlier, in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, Paul writes:
"The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break, is it not a sharing 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."
Notice that Paul doesn’t focus here
on the physical properties of the bread or wine
but on their symbolic function within the body of believers.
The bread we break and the cup we share
are outward signs of our shared participation in Christ
and our unity as one body.
For Baptists, this means that communion
is less about encountering Christ in the elements
and more about encountering Christ in one another.
This is why we are served the bread and wine our places,
because Christ comes to us as we are, where we are.
As we break bread and share wine together,
we acknowledge the presence of Jesus
in the relationships we share, in our collective witness,
and in our mutual commitment to love and serve the world in his name.
This is why the Baptist tradition
places such a strong emphasis on the gathered church.
Communion isn’t something that happens
in isolation or mediated through a priest.
It happens when the people of God come together
—each person equal before God,
each voice part of the song of praise,
each life a testimony to God’s grace.
In this sense, the bread and wine
function as signs pointing us to Jesus,
but they don’t contain him.
Instead, they remind us of his ongoing presence
with us through the Spirit
and his call for us to be his body in the world.
The bread and wine, like the manna in the wilderness from Exodus 16,
are gifts of sustenance for the journey.
They feed us because they nourish our faith
and remind us that Christ is the one who unites and sustains us.
So, where’s Jesus in a Baptist communion service?
He’s here in the gathered community
—where two or three are met in his name,
where the bread is broken, the cup is shared,
and the people of God are sent out to live and love in his name.
This understanding doesn’t deny the significance of the elements;
it transforms it.
The bread and wine are holy because of what they represent:
Christ’s sacrifice, our unity,
and God’s abundant provision for the life of the church.
But their holiness points us beyond themselves
to the deeper reality of Christ’s presence among us,
in the body of believers, empowered by the Spirit.
And this is what makes a Baptist communion service distinctive.
When we gather at the Lord’s table in obedience to Christ’s command,
the risen Christ is sacramentally present with us, and among us.
As we remember him,
we are re-membered into the body of Christ which is the church.
The Baptist communion service
is therefore a celebration of the church gathered
and a commissioning of the church sent out.
When we leave the table, we carry Christ with us
—not in our hands, or our stomachs, but in our hearts,
as we live out the gospel in our daily lives.
So, as we gather around the table today,
let us give thanks for the bread and wine,
for the Spirit who draws us together,
and for the presence of Jesus in the midst of his people.
Amen.
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