Commenting on the Lord’s Supper and its reception in early Christianity, including its relationship to their eschatological expectations, Oscar Cullmann wrote:
The early Christians when they prayed Maranatha, did not think at all of a coming Christ in the species of bread and wine. The prayers of the Didache contain not the slightest allusion to the “elements” of the Eucharist any more than to the Last Supper or the death of Jesus. It is to the credit of A. Schweitzer, following F. Spitta, to have emphasized the eschatological significance of the Lord’s Supper; but, in my opinion, he is mistaken in the belief that he can explain the Messianic character of the Lord’s Supper, as celebrated by the early Christians, by the sole means of Jesus’ Last Supper. It should be noted that in the Lord’s Supper, as observed by the primitive community, there is not the slightest trace of the essential ideas expressed by Jesus on that occasion, and we must therefore recognize that the Messianic expectation, which is revealed in the eucharistic prayers of the early Church, is to be derived directly from both the recollection of the Risen One’s appearance on Easter Day during a meal and the cultic experience, constantly renewed since then, of the Lord’s presence in the midst of the faithful assembled for the brotherly love-feast. On the basis of these two facts, Christians must have had the conviction that Christ would come in the same manner for the joyful Messianic Banquet at the time of the Parousia, at the end of the ages. The invocation “Marantha” thus had both a contemporary and an eschatological significance, G.P. Wetter in his study of ancient liturgies attempts to show how, in the later ones, the idea of a cultic epiphany and the Messianic expectation are combined. So, in the Byzantine liturgy, the prayer uttered at the elevation has in view the coming of Christ, not just in the elements but quite simply His coming in itself: “Come, Thou who art seated on high with the Father, and who art invisibly present among us,” ελθε . . . ο ανω τω πατρι σθνκαθιζομενος και ωδε ημιν αορατως παντων (G.P. Wetter, Altchristliche Liturgien, 1921, pp. 8 ff.). Similarly, the liturgical greeting: “The Lord be with you”, signifies nothing else but the Maranatha of the early Christians. In the Mozarabic Mass we read, after the Trisagion: “Adesto, adesto, Jesu, bone pontifex, in medio nostro, sicut fuisti in medio discipulorum tuorum.” It is evident that all these statements were eventually associated with the species of bread and wine.
Whatever the primitive meaning of these passages from the later liturgies, the meaning of the Lord’s Supper as celebrated by the early Christians was not more complex; Christ is not yet regarded as descending into the elements, but His coming, His presence, is none the less “real”, to employ a dogmatic term. It is realized immediately but apart from the elements. Christ comes to eat with the community of believers, and His presence is understood to be as real as possible. He comes to participate in the meal and not to serve as food. Hence, in the early Church, the Lord’s Supper involved the presence of Christ in its threefold relation with Easter, with the cult and with the Parousia.
Alternatively expressed, this presence is at one and the same time that of Christ risen, of Christ living, and of Christ who is to come. (Oscar Cullmann, "The Breaking of Bread and the Resurrection Appearances" in Oscar Cullmann and F.J. Leenhardt, Essays on the Lord's Supper [Ecumenical Studies in Worship no. 1; Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1958], 8-16, here, pp. 14-15)
For more on the Eucharist, see, for instance, the series of articles at:
