Bread & Wine

From the time I was able to participate in “big church,” I have regularly taken communion once a month as part of the service. In my childhood church, I would wait patiently as the unusually thin wafers, which tasted like cardboard, were passed around, followed by the unusually small glasses of grape juice. My parents taught me to spend a few moments in reflection before eating the “bread” and the “wine” to confess my sins and remember the work of Christ on the cross. Then the preacher would generally repeat the verses about Christ and the last supper and as a congregation we would partake of the “meal.”

In the church I’ve attended since college, a communion table is set up at the front of the chapel and during the final worship songs, the congregation can walk to the front as they please and dip their less-thin wafer in the still-grape juice and take communion on their own.

Both churches I’ve attended have been Protestant and therefore do not believe in transubstantiation. I guess we believe that the bread and wine are symbols of Christ’s body, but certainly not that they become his actual flesh and blood. I’ve always agreed with the Protestant view, and although I enjoy the time of communion as a time to remember what was accomplished on the cross, I feel like my view of the Lord’s Supper has been limited, as though I’ve never really flushed out what Christ meant when he commanded us to eat bread and wine in remembrance of him. “This is my body…” he said.

I feel like recently, however, my eyes have been opened to a new possible way of interpreting communion, and it came through hearing a pagan belief. Beautiful. I love that reminder that God has been revealing truths of himself to peoples from all over the world since the beginning of time. Anyhow, back to the pagan story. In class last week, Dr. Redick spoke about Native Americans and their view of eating the animals around them. For them, eating is a sacred energy exchange. By eating the buffalo, for example, they ensure that the animal's life goes on.

When he said that last sentence, I was immediately struck with the comparisons one could make to communion. Eating as a sacred energy exchange? Ensuring that life goes on? What if that is how we view communion? By eating Christ’s body and blood, we are engaging in a sacred energy exchange with God. By consuming his body, we are ensuring that His life goes on! So each time I partake of communion, I am accepting a part of the holy God in me, and am ensuring that the life of Christ continues to shine upon the earth.

A few months ago, I came to a new understanding of what it could mean to live for Christ, and I think it fits perfectly with this new view of communion. I imagined that someone I knew voluntarily died in order to save me, and wondered what I would do in return. The only way to honor her, I reasoned, would be to LIVE my life for her in return, but what would that mean? I would have to live my life in a way that would please her, and give my time and money to causes she cared about, and would have spent her life helping, if she didn’t end it to save me. I then realized that implications of this thought in regards to Jesus. He DID voluntarily give himself up for us, and so the best way to “live for him” (a phrase Christians so easily throw around) would be to live in a way that pleases him (follow his commands of love) and spend our lives helping those he came to help. He gave up the chance to further spread his divine message of hope and salvation when he died, so we can honor him by taking up where he left.

When we partake of the bread and the wine, we have the potential to ensure his life goes on by allowing his spirit to enter us and cause us to live in such a way that would continue to share Christ’s message of love and peace to a hurting world. Wow. What power that brings to a ritual we often perform so thoughtlessly with wafers and grape juice.

eks