1 Corinthians 11:26

'For as often as you eat this bread, and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he come.'

And in their participation of Him in this way they should also recognise that they were proclaiming His death, in which they were participating, something they would continue to do until His coming again. This feast would go on and on being celebrated and would never cease until His return at His second coming. Through it they would continue to proclaim the Lord's death, and all that it signified, until that coming again. Thus the Lord's Supper was to be both a looking back to His death and resurrection (a proclaiming of His death and a recognition that we have been crucified and raised with Him - Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 2:6), a present participation in His death (reckoning ourselves daily as having died with Him and having risen again - Romans 6:11), and a looking forward to the final fruits of His death and resurrection when He would come in glory to be revealed as Lord of all (chapter 15). And it was an expression of His total oneness together with His people.

'You proclaim the Lord's death till he come.' Some see this as signifying that the proclaiming is not in the act of the meal, but a proclaiming that takes place while the meal is going on. But both are surely part of each other. The meal certainly proclaims His death, and no doubt verbal proclamation also took place. But it does emphasise that central to both is the proclamation of Jesus Christ and Him the crucified One (1 Corinthians 1:17; 1 Corinthians 2:2). It may be that some of the Corinthians were seeing other symbols from the meal than that of Jesus Christ in His death for them, possibly in terms of a magical reception of divine power and enlightenment. So Paul again emphasises the centrality of 'the word of the cross' (1 Corinthians 1:18).