Not “Just” Bread and Wine: The Vision of Christ in Eucharist
One of my parishioners texted me recently: “Isn’t Communion just a wafer and wine? I don’t get the ‘something more’ idea.” To paraphrase Shakespeare: “What’s in a name? A wafer by any other name still tastes like cardboard.” If it looks like bread and juice, and tastes like bread and juice, it’s probably not exactly Jesus, right? I certainly don’t feel more spiritual in drinking it. And if I did, might not that become idolatry, where we worshiped the Communion bread and wine instead of worshiping Christ Himself? These are legitimate questions.
During their last meal together, Jesus took the bread in front of Him and said something extraordinary about it to His disciples: “Take, eat; this is my body.” He raised a glass of wine and declared: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Matt. 26:26–28). Within hours, Roman soldiers would brutalize His body and spill His blood. But given His words the night before, we know He was in fact giving His body and pouring His own blood, for us, in love. He was the perfect spotless Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world. Since that fateful day, billions of people have been made right with God through His sacrifice. In response, they have commemorated His death and celebrated their forgiveness in a Communion meal. But what exactly is the relationship between His body and the bread, or His blood and the wine (or watered down grape juice)?
Some say that Communion is simply a remembrance. Jesus isn’t present in any special way when Christians take it. Others contend that Jesus is present in an unseen spiritual way to people taking the meal. Yet still others believe that in addition to His spiritual presence, Christ is present physically in the bread and the wine, which become His literal blood and body. But is the bread really Jesus? Much blood and ink has been spilled in debate of this issue.
Whatever your perspective on the Lord’s Supper, what it is or isn’t, I wonder if you’d be willing to do a thought experiment with me. Let’s say you worked hard to make something beautiful or delicious or useful and designed it to express your love to someone you cared about. You poured your heart and soul into making this a special gift. Now imagine presenting your carefully prepared meal, drawing, bookshelf, poem, or rosebush to a friend, family member, or significant other. “Here it is! Isn’t it beautiful (or delicious, or useful)?”
What if, in response, they shrugged their shoulders and said, “Well, it’s just hot food on a plate.” Or “Thanks, but isn’t this just a scramble of words on a page?” Or “What’s the fuss? It’s just some wood and paint.”
How deflating would that be? Rather than seeing the love and meaning you invested in your gift, what if all they saw was the bare visible properties? It would seem they had missed you and your love for them entirely, and maybe the most painful word in their response is the word just.
Theologian Hans Boersma once observed that the word just refuses to acknowledge the true depth and meaning of our world. When the word just escapes our mouth, it betrays our true view of reality: cut off from mystery, without love, meaning, or intention, available to be exploited or discarded.
What if we took the word just and applied it to everything the Lord Jesus has given us, not just His Communion meal? The baby growing inside your womb? Just a clump of cells.
The nature preserve with trees and wetlands? Just dirt and water, ripe for a developer.
The employees who work for us? Just cogs in our machine.
The attractive young man or woman walking by? Just a body. And I’m just enjoying the view.
If these things have no purpose, no Creator, and no loving intention, they are “just” raw material to use or discard. This view of reality is more pervasive than you might assume. I wonder if we have a deeper problem than minimizing the Lord’s Supper.
Consider the fictional example of Saruman, the turncoat wizard from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Instead of seeing Middle Earth as an enchanted world with purpose, he saw it as just raw material for the expansion of his powers. In Saruman’s estimation, hobbits are just halflings, of no value besides access to the Ring of Power (and their Longbottom Leaf pipe-weed, let’s not forget). The Fangorn Forest was just fuel for his ever-churning factory. And people were just pawns to be manipulated in his war. In the words of Treebeard, the wise tree-leader who was once his friend: “He [Saruman] has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.” The result was devastation and despair for anything Saruman touched.
Saruman missed the point of creation. Through his actions he was essentially saying, “It’s just stuff for me to use, wreck, and discard!” To be honest, I’ve said the same thing through my own choices. Maybe you have too. “This thing has no meaning, but that it gives me pleasure, profit, or power.” After using the thing, we toss it on the ground, or burn it, or cancel it altogether. And the trash heap piles higher and higher.
Can we see that matter matters?
Let’s return to the Lord’s Supper. What is it? If we took a microscope to the bread and the wine, the microscope would not reveal Jesus Christ. Microscopes don’t reveal Jesus, per se, though they can reveal the brilliance of His creation. The Scriptures and the Holy Spirit, however, reveal Jesus Christ, especially when the body of Christ is gathered in His name. The Scriptures and the Spirit direct us to draw near to Jesus Christ as we celebrate Communion. At the very least, we remember His death for us: “This is my body, which is for you. . . . This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24–25). So let us remember Him. Let us see Him. Let us taste Him. Rather than focusing on the physical elements of bread and wine, we can let the bread and the wine focus our attention on Jesus: His love, His words, and His promises. He’s with us, upon us, in us, in ways we cannot fully comprehend.
He’s even closer to us than the bread and wine in our mouth as we chew and swallow. As we receive the presence of Christ, we see that despite our flaws and insecurities, we too were made by the Most High.
For all those who have lost sight of the true depth of creation, the Communion bread and the wine can become corrective lenses. As we ask the Lord to set them apart for His purposes, and show simple reverence in relationship to them, we let them train us for how to treat the rest of creation. The Lord’s Supper can give us the Lord’s sight: creation is bursting with the glory of God.
“I am Saruman, one might also say, Saruman as he should have been,” said the wizard Gandalf after his resurrection in The Two Towers. Gandalf shows us what Saruman might have become were he to see Middle Earth as it really was. Gandalf knew the material of Middle Earth had a harmonious, musical logic to it. He treated the most mundane creatures, whether hobbits or trees, with great respect. Gandalf knew they contained a goodness, hidden at first, that transcended their usefulness to him personally. The result of Gandalf’s reverence was the healing of Middle Earth: the creatures under his care blossomed and fulfilled their purpose in the story.
In a sense, all of us come to the Lord’s Table as Sarumans and leave as Gandalfs. We are pardoned for the destruction in our wake. We are commissioned with new sight, a deeper reverence for the world we inhabit. We are filled with the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead and will renew the face of the Earth. Thus, we are Saruman as he should have been—regarding even the lowliest of creatures with reverence, whether pre-born babies or immigrants. We bring to life what others have trashed, whether run-down apartment buildings or overused farming land. Because it’s not just stuff, and we’re not just pawns. The story of Jesus Christ is the logic of our lives. And the Eucharist, rightly celebrated, helps us see this rightly.
Adapted from Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding Life in Liturgy, Sacraments, and Other Ancient Practices of the Church by Aaron Damiani (© 2022). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
Aaron Damiani (MA, Biblical Exegesis) serves as the lead pastor of Immanuel Anglican Church in Chicago and is the author of The Good of Giving Up: Discovering the Freedom of Lent and Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding Life in Liturgy, Sacraments and other Ancient Practices of the Church. Aaron writes and speaks regularly about spiritual formation, leadership, and recovering the gifts of the ancient church for today’s challenges. Aaron and his wife Laura live with their four kids in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood.