
Mark 14.22-25 KWL - 22 As they ate, Jesus took bread; blessed, broke, and gave it to the students,
- and said, “Take it. This is my body.”
- 23 Taking a cup, giving a blessing, Jesus gave it to the students, and all drank from it.
- 24 Jesus told them, “This is the blood of my relationship, poured out for many.
- 25 Amen! I promise you I might never drink the product of the vineyard again
- —till that day I drink it new in God’s kingdom.”
Roughly we do the same thing. There’s bread, wafers, matzo, saltines, oyster crackers, or those little Chiclet-size pills of flour you can buy by the case; there’s wine, non-alcoholic wine, grape juice, grape-flavored juice (made with 10 percent juice, which I like to call “10 percent Jesus”), or grape drink; Christians ritually eat it ’cause it represents Jesus’s self-sacrificial death. And we’re to do it till
Holy communion is more of a Protestant term. Orthodox and Catholic Christians call it
But communion emphasizes the fact we’re connected to Jesus. And to one another, through our relationship with him. For a lot of Christians, that’s why we do holy communion: It’s a reminder we’re Christ’s body,
Well, not literally ate him.
Well… some Christians are entirely sure we do literally eat him.
The rest of us are pretty sure Jesus was using a metaphor, although Christians vary as to how far the metaphor goes. Martin Luther figured Jesus is spiritually (maybe sorta physically too?—but it’s debatable) with the bread and wine, but of course they don’t literally change into Jesus. But for most Protestants they’re just symbols which represent Jesus.
I gotta say, though: If your church is using stale bread and cheap juice to represent Jesus, you’re doing a pathetic job of representing him. Put some effort into it, Christians! Yeesh.