Becoming Bread and Wine

While we consider the significance of the bread and cup, it’s important to remember the communal aspect of communion. Just as with natural food, digestion improves when our meal takes place around a family table.

If sharing bread and wine reminds us to consume His word and drink in His life (see Part 1 and Part 2 of this series), the table itself should remind us not to eat alone.

Mealtime in Jesus’s day traditionally included a discussion of the scriptures. Understanding Bible passages well enough to converse about them can be tricky. Each of our life experiences, personality quirks, strengths and weaknesses create filters which color what we “see” in God’s Word. Unconscious errors in our thinking can cause some Scripture to stick in our craw like tiny fishbones hidden in our meal. The back and forth nature of loving conversation can bring these choke points into light, giving us an opportunity to pluck them out.

We can benefit from one another’s perspectives when studying God’s Word as we encourage each other to chew carefully on those tricky bites. We can’t do someone else’s tasting or chewing or swallowing, but we can help one another to discover the delicious and steer away from the indigestible.

Nourished and transformed

Natural food not only maintains the cells in our bodies, it supplies the building blocks for their regular replacement. Cell by cell, we are renewed. Christ’s nourishment likewise not only give us life, it continually reforms and transforms us on the inside—in our thoughts, deeds, and even in our reflexes.

His word somehow becomes flesh in us while His life becomes our own. How that happens is a bit of a mystery, but I think it’s similar to Jesus’s description in Mark 4:26-29.

“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head” (NKJV).

The farmer is capable of planting and watering and weeding, but it’s God who gives the increase. We do the tasting and chewing and swallowing of God’s Word, but it’s the Lord who makes it grow until we become like the bread we have eaten.

If we’re to be like Him, we must do what He did with His bread. In the Old Testament, the people brought their grain offering and the priest blessed it then shared it with the people. In the New Testament, Jesus similarly blessed His bread then distributed it to His disciples.

Let’s go and do likewise, then, using the sustenance He develops in us to bring nourishment and refreshment to others.

How about you? How have you been bread or wine for someone else? I’d love to hear your stories.