Protestants are often charged with unleashing the social solvents of individualism on the world. The Reformers didn’t see things that way. In fact, they claimed to be standing for community against the corrosive individualism of the medieval Mass.

Hence Calvin writes ( Institutes 4.18.7). He begins with “The Supper itself is a gift of God” and halfway through the paragraph complains that the Supper is not distributed in the Catholic church to the people to bind them together. Then this: “The sacrifice of the mass dissolves this community and pulls it apart. For after the error came to prevail that there had to be priests to sacrifice in the place of the people, as though the Supper had been turned over to them, it ceased to be communicated to the church of believers as the Lord commanded. The door was opened to private masses, which suggest a kind of excommunication rather than the community established by the Lord. For when the little sacrificer is about to devour his victim by himself, he segregates himself from the entire company of believers.”

The Lord’s Banquet is a community-creating gift of God.