When Jesus said that the bread and wine were his body and blood, the early church believed that through faith it really was the body and blood of Christ. They believed it to be part of the mystery of God, not to be explained. In the third century, Christian thinker Plotinus adapted the philosophical system of Plato and set out to explain what Christians before him accepted as mystery. Over the next few generations, and the establishment of the Church as a Roman religion, the Lord’s Supper moved from a small, shared meal, to a more organized corporate event for a larger congregation. Other thinkers continued Plotinus’s explanation of how the bread and wine were transferred, or transformed, within the Mass into the body and blood of Christ, and the term “transubstantiation” was coined by the 12th century. The changing of the bread and wine into the “literal” body and blood of Jesus led to gross superstition throughout the Middle Ages.
I hope I haven’t lost you at this point because I do have a reason for sharing all of this! When the Reformers (predominantly Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin) addressed the issue of Christ being present at the Lord’s Table in the bread and wine, they were responding to the superstitions of their day. While all three of these Reformers rejected the teaching of “transubstantiation,” Luther and Calvin sought new ways to explain how Christ was present at the Table. Zwingli, on the other hand, found no satisfactory way to explain Christ’s presence and concluded that the Lord’s Supper is only a memorial, reminding us of what Jesus did for us on the cross. You may have heard the Lord’s Supper called a memorial before. We got that from Zwingli, not the Bible.
When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” we hear, through the ears of Zwingli, to recall the events of Jesus’s death for our sins. When the early church heard the word, we translate as “remembrance,” they understood it as remembering through reenactment. This gets to the heart of Paul’s message in 1 Cor 10:16, “Is not the cup…the bread…a participation in the blood and body of Christ” (my paraphrase). A brief example is that if you were to ask the early church to “remember” their graduation, they would put on their cap and gown, symbolically walk across a stage, and throw a celebration for the event. We see this kind of remembrance in how the Jews reenact their festivals each year.
When we are invited to the Lord’s Table, it is Christ who offers the invitation. He is present with us because he is host. When we are invited, Jesus asks us to bring what we have as an offering. Jesus uses simple but significant elements for the Lord’s Supper: bread and wine. He could have used something even simpler though that is provided for us in nature. Since we purchase the elements in bulk, we miss this significance. God gives us wheat and grapes. We take those things from nature to make the bread and wine used at the feast. Offering them back to God, he makes them into the body and blood of Christ. God gives us gifts, that when we offer them back to him, he transforms them into the spiritual nourishment the church and the world needs.
This participation in the elements of the Lord’s Supper is where our individual stories are baptized into God’s story. Each time we come to the table, we bring something to hand to God in faith that he can transform it into the nourishment of the church and the world. I may not be able to see how my small gifts can be used but I faithfully bring them to God. When I submit them at his table, he makes them the body and blood of Christ.
With this view of the Lord’s Supper in mind, go and read 1 Corinthians 12 with the context that Paul was calling the church to unity through the Lord’s Supper in chapter 11. We have all been given gifts for the building up of the church. Who am I to say that someone else’s gift cannot be used for the building up of the church when the gift is given through the Spirit?
John 6:1-15 is our focus passage for this Sunday. If you read each Gospel account closely, you’ll notice that the Gospel of John does not have the traditional institution of the Lord’s Supper like the other Gospels. There are some scholars who view the entire book through the lens of the Lord’s Supper and many agree that this story in John 6 utilizes the “words of institution” for the Lord’s Supper. When given bread and fish, “Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed…” (v.11). The imagery of this story is that Jesus takes a small offering and provides abundance at his table. You keep reading in this chapter and you quickly get to the section on Jesus being the “Bread of Life” (v25-59), where Jesus offers his body and blood to be consumed as the source of eternal life (v53-56).
What do you see as insignificant in your story that, when handed to Jesus, can nourish multitudes?
What areas of your life do you need to let go of to allow God to do his work?
What do you see in someone else that is a gift from God? Take a moment to tell them this week.