Book of Common Prayer
We have great spiritual privileges: let us live up to them
14-15 The lesson we must learn, my brothers, is at all costs to avoid worshipping a false god. I am speaking to you as intelligent men: think over what I am saying.
16-18 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a very sharing in the blood of Christ? When we break the bread do we not actually share in the body of Christ? The very fact that we all share one bread makes us all one body. Look at the Jews of our own day. Isn’t there a fellowship between all those who eat the altar sacrifices?
26-27 This can only mean that whenever you eat this bread or drink of this cup, you are proclaiming that the Lord has died for you, and you will do that until he comes again. So that, whoever eats the bread or drinks the wine without due thought is making himself like one of those who allowed the Lord to be put to death without discerning who he was.
28-29 No, a man should thoroughly examine himself, and only then should he eat the bread or drink of the cup. He that eats and drinks carelessly is eating and drinking a judgment on himself, for he is blind to the presence of the Lord’s body.
Careless communion means spiritual weakness: let us take due care
30 It is this careless participation which is the reason for many feeble and sickly Christians in your church, and the explanation of the fact that many of you are spiritually asleep.
31-32 If we were closely to examine ourselves beforehand, we should avoid the judgment of God. But when God does judge us, he disciplines us as his own sons, that we may not be involved in the general condemnation of the world.
The Passover-supper prepared
12 On the first day of unleavened bread, the day when the Passover was sacrificed, Jesus’ disciples said, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?”
13-15 Jesus sent off two of them with these instructions, “Go into the town and you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him and say to the owner of the house to which he goes, ‘The Master says, where is the room for me to eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upstairs room all ready with the furnishings that we need. That is the place where you are to make our preparations.”
16 So the disciples set off and went into the town, found everything as he had told them, and prepared for the Passover.
The last supper together: the mysterious bread and wine
17-18 Late in the evening he arrived with the twelve. And while they were sitting there, right in the middle of the meal, Jesus remarked, “Believe me, one of you is going to betray me—someone who is now having his supper with me.”
19 This shocked and distressed them and one after another they began to say to him, “Surely, I’m not the one?”
20-21 “It is one of the twelve,” Jesus told them, “a man who is dipping his hand into the dish with me. It is true that the Son of Man will follow the road foretold by the scriptures, but alas for the man through whom he is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had never been born.”
22 And while they were still eating Jesus took a loaf, blessed it and broke it and gave it to them with the words, “Take this, it is my body.”
23-25 Then he took a cup, and after thanking God, he gave it to them, and they drank from it, and he said to them “This is my blood which is shed for many in the new agreement. I tell you truly I will drink no more wine until the day comes when I drink it fresh in the kingdom of God!”
The New Testament in Modern English by J.B Phillips copyright © 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by Permission.