In this post, we get to explore one of the most ancient practices of Christianity: the Eucharist. If you have been in a church for any amount of time, you have probably witnessed or even participated in an act of receiving bread and juice to remember the saving work of Jesus Christ. This action holds many names: the Lord’s Supper, Communion, the Table, Common Meal, the Sacrament, and Eucharist. I will use the term “Eucharist” in this post, because it is the closest to the Greek word that Paul uses when talking about this action (eūcharistéo). The Greek word literally means, “thanksgiving.” But at the heart of the word is the hidden the word charis, which is Greek for “grace.” This week, I suggest that participating in weekly communion is the ongoing part of the baptized life - which serves as a constant and tangible reminder of God’s grace. Perhaps…it is even an invitation to live in a new way.
If baptism is the on-ramp to being conformed to Christlikeness, communion is the ongoing component of baptism. The eucharist finds its root metaphor in the Jewish Passover feast, which remembers and embodies God’s saving of Israel from slavery in Egypt. On the night Jesus was betrayed, he transformed the meaning of the Passover meal to be the crux of the mystery of his death and resurrection. Through bread and wine, Jesus’s disciples did (and still actively) remember and participate in his life. In the early Church, Christians used the word anamnesis to describe the action of “remembering” Christ through the Eucharist. Anamnesis is not a memorialization of a Christ’s death as if we were at a funeral, but a participating in it as if it happens in the here-and-now. In this way, communion communicates that being saved by Christ is not a one-time event, but a constant event; not “I once was made new,” but “I am being made new.”
Such constant renewal can only happen because of Christ’s own self-emptying. In Philippians 2, Paul writes of Christ “pouring himself out,” relinquishing his autonomously divine authority to become human. One facet of Christ’s institution of the sacrament of eucharist is a call for his followers to participate in self-emptying with him; in other words, humans are all called to constantly empty themselves and participate in Christ’s death and new life. Dying to self is an extension of, an inseparable participation in, the self-emptying of Christ. Therefore, becoming more like Christ is never complete but always in process.
For centuries, many Christians have missed the point of the Eucharist, instead debating about what happens to the physical elements of bread and wine that make it true that they become the actual body and blood of Jesus. While much can be said about these debates and their merit in Christian history, it is not the physical means of bread and wine that undergo an identity transformation, but the people who take them into their bodies. Therefore, we say that in communion two things are transformed: (1) the bread and wine and (2) the community gathered. The bread and wine can only become the body and blood of Christ when they are taken in by those who are conformed to his image through baptism. For this reason, John Calvin states, “I rather experience than understand it.”
Christ himself instituted the sacraments of eucharist and baptism, making them cosmically and ordinarily significant. In Christ, baptism is instituted as a mode of initiation that transforms human identity. The transformation of identity is not yet material, but cosmic. When Christ returns, the cosmic identity change will be made evident in physical resurrected bodies. Beth Felker Jones writes, “His body was and is extremely important to what God is doing in the world. And so are our bodies.” Human bodies, however, are substantially different than Christ’s body. Human bodies are on an inevitable, liminal journey toward death. The sacraments communicate this aspect of humanity throughout all of life. Sacraments at once remind Christians of life and death. In this way, the destination is not the most important part of Christian sacraments and identity; the journey is. Take this bread, drink this wine; Jesus left them to us so that we would take them into our physical bodies so that our spiritual hearts and minds would become more like his.
Remember what Feuerbach famously claimed?
“You are what you eat.”