“Juice & Crackers”

Friday, August 28, 2020

     I greet you with peace brother(s) in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  My question is: according to the Scriptures, shouldn't we be breaking the bread (off of the loaf) instead of using crackers?  Also, should we be sharing one cup as the Word speaks of?  I know this is an issue amongst the brotherhood; however, I wanted to know your thoughts.  Thank you.

Sincerely,
Supper Stumped

Dear Supper Stumped,

Let’s address the ‘one cup’ issue first.  We should only use one cup… unless the Scriptures give us a reason to think that the one cup was an unimportant detail – which they do.  Jesus stated that what is in the cup matters, not the cup itself (Matt 26:29).  When Jesus took the cup, He gave thanks for the grape juice inside of the cup (Mk 14:23-24).  The grape juice represents Christ’s blood; the cup does not.  In fact, Jesus told the apostles to divide the juice among themselves (Lk 22:17).  We don’t know how the apostles went about doing that.  They may very well have poured the juice from Jesus’ cup into twelve other individual cups.  When we use multiple cups to distribute the fruit of the vine for the Lord’s Supper, we are doing what Christ did… dividing the juice among all the believers who are going to remember Christ’s death.

As far as breaking the bread, good brethren are divided over whether or not it is an important detail to physically break the unleavened loaf.  Unleavened bread is flat because it doesn’t have the yeast to make it rise – like a cracker.  Some brethren think it is required to break the bread; other folks point to Scriptures that use the term “break the bread” as a colloquialism to generically refer to any meal.  It is best not to be too dogmatic because there is no way to know definitively.

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