What do you call yours?

What’s in a name? And what do you call it?

Perhaps the most usual Reformed title for what we are about to do is “The Lord’s Supper”.

It is “the Lord’s”. Jesus established it. He owns and governs it. The King of Kings is the host. The Bread of Life is the food. The Friend of Sinners invites us and feeds us. We are fed with the Great Shepherd of the Sheep.

It is a “supper”, a meal. We are welcomed and fed and nourished here. We eat as friends, as family. We are literally “companions” of the Lord as he shares bread with us.

The meal is also commonly called “Holy Communion”.

It is “holy”: special, set apart, sanctified. We have bread and wine, not burger and chips. This is no ordinary supper. It is for God’s special people and sets us apart.

It is communion: we share it together and participate in fellowship in Christ with one another.

And it is “Eucharist”. We eat it with thanksgiving and joy. The whole mark of our attitude is gratitude for a gift received.

Finally, the Lord’s Supper has often been called “The Mass”. People who call it that have sometimes got the meaning of the Supper disastrously wrong, but there’s nothing wrong with the title, “The Mass” in itself. In fact, it could remind us of something very important about the Supper.

The term, “The Mass” comes from the Latin word “missa”, meaning dismissal, which was used in the concluding formula of the service: “Ite, missa est” (“Go, the dismissal is made").

The words remind us that God sends us out from this meal to serve his purposes in the world. The Supper is our nourishment to build us up for the mission on which God sends us in this coming week.