If the church today is to have the same theology of the Lord's Supper as the apostolic church, then we simply cannot ignore the pattern which they gave us to exemplify that theology, the pattern of using one loaf of bread and one cup in the Lord's Supper also called the Love Feast. Although today we see a great distinction between the Love Feast and the Lord's Supper (usually contending that the latter is binding while the former is optional or even a thing of the past which is best not practiced today), the apostolic church saw no such distinction.

There is no way a bread-and-cup communion in a church sanctuary can pass itself off as "table fellowship." What it can, without difficulty, pass itself off as is a bit of priestly temple ritual. Under that model, of course, it makes no difference whether the participants (better: recipients) know one another--or even want to know one another. But how we can claim to be commemorating and perpetuating the table fellowship of Jesus (calling it "the Lord's Supper"), when our practice retains not so much as one point of likeness with his? There is one apparent difference between Passover and the Lord's Supper we ought to address: Passover is celebrated annually; the Lord's Supper with much greater frequency. How can the one be called an equivalent of the other? Easy. Particularly in light of the Deuteronomic command to teach the story of the Lord to your children diligently, when you sit, when you rise, etc.--in light of this command it seems clear that every instance of Jewish family-table fellowship is meant to be a miniature Passover. The annual, big Feast of Passover is simply the climactic prototype of what was supposed to be transpiring year-round. Equivalently then, it seems clear that, regarding the earliest Christians, as often as any number of them gathered for the honest purpose of eating together because they were hungry--this common meal was in fact also a Lord's Supper. It was supposed to be a conscious extension of his table fellowship and a bread-and-cup remembering of his story. Both Passover and the Lord's Supper are meant to be integral strands in the religious fabric of everyday family life.

The participation in a meal by the body of Christ not only offers an opportunity to share material goods with each other (and especially with the poor who have nothing), but is also symbolic of the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb (Mt 26:29; Mk 14:25; see esp. Lk 22:16-18, "I shall never eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God").