Come and Dine – Flesh and Blood
Come and Dine – Flesh and Blood.
“So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover meal… While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it He broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ Then He took the cup and after giving thanks He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Matt. 26:19, 26-29).
FOOD: Any nutritious substance that people eat or drink in order to maintain life and enable growth. Any substance that provides nourishment for survival and nutrition for maintenance of life. Food is consumed in order to keep oneself alive and healthy.
Eucharist: (also known as Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, Breaking the Bread, the Table of the Lord); the Greek word for “thanksgiving,” containing the word for grace, “charis.” The bread and wine of this sacrament is considered spiritual food, necessary for our life and growth in the Christian faith. It can be described as a physical point of contact with spiritual reality, or material matter that is a channel of God’s grace to the believer. In this great mystery, the bread and wine are offered to God, and the Holy Spirit transforms those elements to the presence of Jesus, His flesh and blood. The outer, visible substance of the bread and wine are unchanged, but the inner reality, the “essence,” is transformed into the spiritual substance of the glorified Christ. Physical food is transformed into spiritual food. The Eucharist is a celebration instituted by Christ at His last Supper, and Christians have been instructed to “remember” His death in this way in the Church. Eucharist is a memorial to remember in the biblical sense, which is “to make present,” to literally participate in the memory that is being represented. To partake of the elements in this way requires faith in the words of Jesus and early Christian tradition, because the believer is unable to perceive the natural elements literally changing into spiritual matter. The mystery of the Eucharist defies the laws of nature and so cannot be fully understood. The bread and wine are the physical channels of God’s grace and blessing to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink, real food and real drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. The one who eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53-58). What a wonderful mystery of mysteries… The life that the Father gives to the Son passes to us through the Eucharist! The mystery of the mutual indwelling… We have Christ in us, and we are in Christ. A Holy Communion.
A Biblical Backstory to the Eucharist. For the most part, the disciples were not all that surprised when Jesus raised the importance of bread and wine in the story of redemption. They were probably expecting something like this with the Messiah. They were no doubt well aware of the bright red thread of bread and wine all through the Hebrew Bible in anticipation of the Messiah. Once again, Jesus completes and fulfills the Jewish Scriptures. The Eucharist is deeply rooted in the Jewish faith.
Melchizedek. Back in the early days of the patriarch Abraham, a mysterious and unknown king/priest of Salem (later to become Jerusalem) named Melchizedek came to Abram representing El-Elyon, God Most High. He and Abram shared a communion meal of bread and wine. This has been considered by Christian believers to be a messianic prophecy, because David mentioned it in his Psalm 110:4… The messiah would be “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” Yes, the messiah was expected to bring bread and wine to a communion celebration when He came to the Chosen People in the fullness of time. (Genesis 14:17-20; refer to Hebrews 7:1-3).
Passover. The Last Supper in which Jesus instituted the Eucharist was in the context of the Passover meal. This ritual meal in Judaism celebrates and remembers the escape from Egypt of the Israelites under Moses. (Exodus). The last plague visited on Pharaoh and the Egyptians involved the death of the first born in each family. The Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a lamb and brush its blood over the doorposts of each Jewish home. In this way, the angel of death would pass over that home and rescue its residents from judgment. It was the lamb’s slain blood that delivered the Israelites from the plague of death. The Israelites escaped by crossing the Red Sea, and after forty years of wandering in the wilderness they arrived at their Promised Land. The Passover meal is central to Judaism and is celebrated to this day in the homes of observant Jews. The Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was indeed sacrificed for the life of the world in order to escape the threat of judgment. The Eucharist is celebrated as a fulfillment of the Passover deliverance, and is known as the New Passover, celebrating the New Exodus of God’s people by the forgiveness of their sins. As the Anglican liturgy declares in their Communion liturgy, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us! Therefore, let us keep the Feast!” (BCP).
The Offering of Todah. In the Law of Moses there was a ritual thanks offering called the Todah. When someone wanted to show gratitude to God for a deliverance from a mortal danger, whether through a healing or a rescue of some sort, this person was instructed to initiate a todah ritual with the priests in the Tabernacle, consisting of a lamb, and bread and wine. The person was to deliver the lamb to the Tabernacle for the priest to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and then the person asks the priest to consecrate, to place a sacred blessing, on the bread and wine. The grateful worshipper then returned home with the blessed bread and wine and hosts a big celebration of thanksgiving with the family and friends. The Hebrew word Todah is equivalent to the Greek word eucharist, both words meaning thanksgiving. The early Christians thought the Last Supper was in fact a Todah reference that was completed in the sacrifice of Christ as the lamb. The Todah sacrifice points directly to the celebration of Holy Communion, the Old Covenant becoming the New. In fact, the earliest Eucharistic prayers were directly taken from the traditional Jewish prayers of Thanksgiving in the Todah sacrifice. So in many ways, one of the central sacraments of the Christian believers is a direct descendant of the greatest thanks offering in the Hebrew Bible. One final confirmation of the Todah, the Psalm during Jesus’ time that was recited during the Todah ritual was Psalm 22, which was the very Psalm recited by Jesus on the Cross.
The Lord’s Table in the Tabernacle. There were specific instructions given to Moses regarding a special Table in the sanctuary. Often called the Shewbread Table, it was the first holy object one would see upon entering the Holy Place. On the Table were placed twelve loaves of unleavened bread and golden goblets of wine. The bread represented Israel with its twelve tribes, and the wine would represent the blood of the Covenant between Yahweh and His Chosen People. The bread and wine were to be consumed by the priests, and celebrated as an important time of communion between the priests and Yahweh. The shewbread, or showbread, was also known as the Bread of Presence, or more literally the Bread of the Face. The Table was an ongoing sacred act of fellowship with the Lord, a time of thanksgiving when the bread and wine reminded the people of their dependence on God for their very survival. Once again, bread and wine are the centerpiece, and we see Jesus fulfilling the Law of Moses as the Bread of Life and the blood of the New Covenant. Jesus completes the Law with bread and wine, and so the disciples would not have been at all shocked to see the central use of bread and wine in their New Passover meal.
The Didache. This ancient document from the first century AD was the first written manual for the Christian Life. Didache means “teaching,” and tradition holds that the Apostles were the authors of this important handbook of the Christian Faith. It was written before many of the New Testament books, perhaps as early as 50 AD. It was probably completed around 70 AD. In the Didache there were two teachings on how to celebrate the Eucharist, including very specific prayers and protocol on how to conduct the sacrament in the church. It’s clear from the Didache that the Eucharist was established very early in Christian history as a central part of the Faith. This is confirmed in the book of Acts in the New Testament when the very early church was in the habit of the “breaking of the bread”, or celebration of the Eucharist (Acts 2:42, 20:7). Holy Communion is not a new innovation in the church, and was there at the very beginning of Christianity, with many roots in the Hebrew Bible.
Emmaus. After a supernatural Bible Study on the road after the Resurrection, Jesus was still with these two unnamed disciples as they neared their destination, the village of Emmaus. He pretended, for some reason, that He was going to continue on past Emmaus, but the disciples asked Jesus to remain with them in their house for the night. Good Jewish hospitality at its best. The disciples used beautiful, picturesque biblical language in the way they implored Him to stay… “Abide with us.” Jesus agreed to remain with them, and they sat down soon to eat at the dining table. Jesus promptly took the bread and blessed it, probably reciting the traditional Jewish blessing: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who brings forth bread from the earth.” As Jesus was breaking the bread, their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus. In His glorified body, without earthly physical limitations, Jesus then simply disappeared. Much has been said about the appearance of Jesus at the table in Emmaus as being a foretaste of the Eucharist, Holy Communion. “When the two disciples urged Jesus to stay with them, Jesus afterwards responded by giving them a way to stay in Him, by entering into a profound communion with Jesus through the sacrament of the Eucharist.” John Paul 2 (Luke 24:13-35). It is still prayed in a Eucharist liturgy that Jesus will open our eyes during Eucharist to His mystical Presence as He did to those two disciples at Emmaus.
Saint Paul. In 1 Corinthians 11:23-30, Paul wrote down for all of us what the early church was instructed to do when celebrating Eucharist. The Christian church has pretty much followed Paul’s instructions ever since, recognizing that this protocol for Communion was directly given to Paul by the Lord Himself. “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when He had given thanks (eucharist), He broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way He took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” (1 Cor. 11:23-26).
The Messianic Banquet. The Eucharist is often described as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, the Supper of the Lamb. The Wedding Supper in heaven continues to be inaugurated in the Eucharist, reminding us of that glorious meal awaiting all those who believe in Him. Based on Isaiah 25, all Jews then and now expect and yearn for a messianic banquet at the coming of God’s kingdom. “And the Lord of Hosts, Yahweh Sabaoth, will prepare a lavish banquet of rich food for all peoples on this mountain; a delicious banquet of aged wine, succulent food with choice meat, and well-strained wines. He will swallow up death for all time. And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces. And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; for Yahweh has spoken; And it will be said in the day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6-9). The deep spiritual meanings of all earthly marriages are now made clear. God has revealed what Scripture has been pointing toward, and what the angels have been anticipating… the spiritual romance of Groom and Bride, the union of the Lamb and the Church (Revelation 19:6-9). The Lord has been yearning for this eternal union to be spiritually consummated. He has desired this fulfillment of spiritual intimacy. After coming to the Bride’s house on earth, the Groom has now led the wedding party to the house of the Father, the home of the Groom, for the marriage celebration. This is the time prophesied by Jesus at the Last Supper, when He said, “I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.” (Mark 14:25). It is now time for the Groom to lift the cup of new wine.
Hidden Manna, A Final Thought. When Jesus talked about offering hidden manna in Rev. 2:17, He was no doubt offering Himself as the Bread from heaven, His own body and blood. Unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we don’t have His life in us. In John 6, Jesus seemed to be foreshadowing His Last Supper. He is referring to the Eucharist in both John 6 and Rev. 2:17. The manna comes down from heaven in the sacramental Communion in which Jesus is, in a sense, hiding. Christ is spiritually hidden in the physical bread and wine. His Holy Spirit is intimately interconnected within the bread and wine. The elements are fused with the Spirit. The Hidden Manna is offered to believers as the living Bread to be spiritually consumed and digested in the innermost being. The mystical Presence, the Real Presence, within the Hidden Manna. The Eucharist is spiritual food available to all who believe in the Living Bread. To receive the power of God and the life of Christ, His flesh and blood must be accepted as spiritual nourishment hidden in the physical elements. Jesus Christ, the Hidden Manna, for the life of the world.
A Postcommunion Prayer. “Almighty God, we thank you that in your great love you have fed us with the spiritual food and drink of the Body and Blood of your Son, Jesus Christ, and have given to us a foretaste of your heavenly banquet. Grant that this Sacrament may be for us a comfort in affliction, and a pledge of our inheritance in that kingdom where there is no death, neither sorrow nor crying, but the fullness of joy with all your saints; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. (BCP).