Weekly Communion Weakens its Significance

Reported By: Anika Perry

Illustrated By: Sydney Simmons

The act of sipping grape juice (sometimes wine if we’re lucky) and eating a cracker that tastes like cardboard each Sunday at church is supposed to remind me that Jesus broke His body and shed His blood for my sins. However, instead of feeling gratitude for Jesus’ death, I find myself more worried about spilling the juice on myself or making too much noise as I remove the wrapper of my wafer. 

Instead of worrying about those things, I should be more concerned with what communion actually represents. But performing communion the same way every Sunday weakens the ritual’s significance. 

When I was younger, my family would perform communion at the dinner table once a week. We took a break from that tradition for a few years, but I was reintroduced to doing communion weekly when I started attending local churches around George Fox University (GFU).

Whoever leads communion usually recites the same spiel as they guide churchgoers through communion. What follows is a collective crunch from everyone chomping their communion crumb at once. Then everyone gets to take a shot of a teaspoon of grape juice. They usually finish their spiel with the iconic line “do so in remembrance of me.”

While communion does not have to involve the breaking of a nice french baguette or sipping expensive red wine, it does need to be sacred. It should be done with a mindset of gratitude. Doing communion every single week in the same manner weakens its significance because nothing new is being added to the ritual.

This section of Valley Bible Church's website brings up a counter argument: If we have the mindset of doing communion less frequently, does that mean we should read the Bible less often or avoid praying too much? Those acts do not lose their significance each time we do it. 

While I agree with this statement, the mindset you go about those activities is what affects the significance. If you go into reading the Bible or praying with a lazy attitude, then naturally, its significance is weakened because you are not ready to absorb what the Word has to say or what you want to say to God.

The same could be said for communion. If you go into it with an ungrateful attitude, you are not going to get much out of it. However, unlike reading the Bible, the frequency of communion contributes to the lack of an enthusiastic mindset. This is because the same spiel is said every time and the same motions are done.

I came across this TikTok  where a woman talks about intimacy in our relationship with God. She mentions that if we have the same “meal” with God or essentially only discuss the same topics or talk to Him at the same time and same place, the intimacy in the relationship can be lost.

This same logic can be applied to communion. If our only exposure to the ritual of communion is during church every Sunday with the same spiel and reciting of scripture, there is not much more we can get out of it. This is disappointing when the whole point of communion is to remember that Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.

So while the significance of communion itself does not necessarily weaken each time it is done, the importance and priority of it in our hearts diminishes because we are being told nothing new.

Moving forward, I would love to see pastors quote other verses about communion, because there are plenty. Maybe even surprise your church and splurge on some real bread. Encourage your congregation to sit in the moment, visualize Jesus on the cross, and find something new for which to be grateful.

While the act of Jesus giving His life on the cross is enough by itself, I think we can find greater meaning in communion than just remembering by learning from and acting on the truth of His sacrifice.