Are the communion elements literally Jesus?

TRANSUBSTANTIATE træn.(t)səb'stæn.(t)ʃi.eɪt verb. Substantially convert into the literal body and blood of Christ Jesus. Used to describe the elements of bread and wine during the Christian ritual of holy communion or Eucharist.

2. Change something’s form or substance into something wholly different.

[Transubstantiation træn.(t)səb.stæn.(t)ʃi'eɪ.ʃən noun.]

Since I’ve been writing about the living bread in John 6, passages Roman Catholics love to use to back up their doctrine of transubstantiation—particularly Jesus’s bit about eating and drinking him—I figured I’d write about that idea in a little bit more detail.

As you can tell from the vocabulary word I provided up top, transubstantiate, Catholics take John 6 literally and claim the elements of holy communion—the wafers and wine they use—literally become Jesus. They don’t merely represent Jesus, as many Protestants have come to believe. Jesus, Catholics insist, wasn’t being metaphorical, wasn’t using hyperbole, when he said,

John 6.53-58 NABRE

53B“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 55For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

When Jesus says, “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink,” he’s not mincing words: We’re literally meant to eat him.

The Galileans he spoke to when he said this, and his students, had no clue at the time exactly what Jesus meant by this. He hadn’t yet taught his followers about holy communion; wouldn’t for a few more years. So it was still a mystery—but one which freaked out the Galileans. In contrast Jesus’s kids had trusted him this far, so they stuck around long enough to watch him ultimately fulfill it, which he did at his last supper. (Nevermind that he didn’t do holy communion at all in the gospel of John. The author was aware of the other gospels, and didn’t feel the need to repeat them.)

So when Jesus did this at his last supper, it triggered the memory of when he talked about the living bread:

Mark 14.22-25 NABRE

22While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” 23Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. 25Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Again, Catholics insist, Jesus wasn’t using metaphor. That was his body. That was his blood.

If it’s not, why did Paul and Sosthenes have to warn the Corinthians against practicing holy communion without acknowledging it’s Jesus’s body?

1 Corinthians 11.27-32 NABRE

27Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. 28A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. 29For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying. 31If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment; 32but since we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

This is why Catholics won’t let non-Catholics partake of Eucharist. Unlike other Christians, who figure if you’re Christian of course you can worship Jesus along with them, they don’t want people ignorantly eating and drinking judgment upon themselves. After all, those elements aren’t merely wafers and wine: They’re Jesus. It’s why Eucharist is the central part of the Catholic worship service—it’s when Jesus enters the building. It’s a big, big deal.

Do we perform sacraments or ordinances?

ORDINANCE 'ɔr.dɪ.nəns, 'ɔrd.nəns noun. Authoritative order or decree.

2. Religious ritual; particularly one ordained by Christ.

3. What Evangelical Christians call sacraments.

When I talk about certain Christian rituals, I call them sacraments. And you’re gonna find many Evangelicals really don’t like this word.

These folks think of “sacraments” as a Roman Catholic word… and some of them are a bit anti-Catholic… and some of ’em are extremely anti-Catholic. They still got a lot of hard feelings about the Catholics, dating all the way back to the original Protestant spats with Roman Catholicism. To them, “sacrament” has a lot of bothersome Catholic baggage attached… so they refuse to use it.

What do they call Christian rituals then? Well Evangelicals could just call ’em rituals, but for some reason we never really wanted to; it makes us think of dead rituals, or dead religion, which they’re not. Somehow the word “ordinances” caught on. Or “holy ordinances.” ’Cause Jesus ordained them.

The two ordinances which Evangelicals tend to single out, are holy communion 1Co 11.23-26 and baptism. Mt 28.19 Some of us also recognize Jesus also mandated foot-washing, Jn 13.14-15 but not every Evangelical lists it as an ordiance. Probably because they don’t wanna wash feet, which sorta merits its own article.

Anyway. Communion and baptism are definitely ordinances… and you’ll find Evangelicals tend to also practice all the other sacraments the Catholics do. They just won’t call them sacraments. Or ordinances, ’cause they figure Jesus didn’t ordain them. Although often the apostles did.

CATHOLIC SACRAMENT	EVANGELICAL EQUIVALENT	WHO ORDAINED IT
Baptism	Baptism	Jesus
Confirmation	Confession of faith at baptism	Peter
Eucharist	Holy communion	Jesus
Penance	Counseling, confession, and intercession	James
Anointing the sick	Anointing the sick	James
Holy orders	Laying hands on people for ministry	The LORD, to Moses
Matrimony	Wedding ceremonies	9th-century Christians

As you notice, Evangelicals still anoint and pray for the sick. Still lay hands on people they’re sending out to do ministry. Still perform wedding ceremonies, funerals, and baby dedications. Still counsel and intercede for people. It’s just they won’t call these other things “ordinances” because they’re not the three ordinances Jesus gave us… and they’ll still try to avoid the word “ritual,” even though it’s precisely what we’re doing.

It’s all about “not doing as Catholics do,” even though we’re totally doing as Catholics do.

Baptizing babies, versus baptizing believers.

As I wrote yesterday, when I was a baby I was baptized. My grandparents’ church believed in the practice of baptizing babies. The formal term for this is pedobaptism, although frequently—even among Americans!—you’re gonna see the British spelling and pronunciation, paedobaptism 'pi.doʊ.bæp.tɪ.zəm Mainly because, I suspect, when you talk about pedo– anything, people immediately think of pedophilia, and we’re not going there. But paedo– stuff reminds people of pediatricians, and they’re okay! So let’s talk paedobaptism then.

Baby baptism, or infant baptism, is the standard in older churches. They figure we, as Christians, have a covenant with God. And exactly like the ancient Israelis, part of that covenant obligates us to make sure our descendants grow up to follow God. The Israelis (and the Jews today) ritually circumcised their baby boys as their way of declaring, “This kid’s gonna grow up to follow God,” so paedobaptists baptize their baby boys and girls as a way of declaring the very same thing.

It took a few centuries for baby baptism to become the standard, but it’s locked in now. Orthodox, Catholics, and Ethiopians do it; Lutherans, Anglicans, and Moravians do it; and some Presbyterians, Methodists, Nazarenes, and Congregationalists do it—it’s become a controversy in their churches. The reason for the controversy is the Anabaptist movement. The ana– prefix means “re–,” because all the first Anabaptists were originally baptized as babies, figured that didn’t count, and got re-baptized.

The Anabaptists started in the early 1500s: A number of central European churches decided one shouldn’t be baptized until we make a conscious decision to follow Jesus. It’s a view which kinda makes sense—why baptize a baby who may grow up to never follow Jesus? I mean, your parents might intend to raise you Christian, but you have other ideas… and for that matter, your parents might change their minds and raise you as nothing whatsoever, much as some of my Christian family members have.

Perhaps you’ve encountered this phenomenon—I certainly have—where people don’t follow Jesus at all, yet imagine they’re Christian because their parents had ’em baptized. So if you ask ’em, they’ll tell you, “Oh, I believe in Jesus”—but they don’t know what he teaches, don’t produce good fruit, aren’t religious at all, and aren’t even good people. In what way are they Christian? Well they were baptized.

Anabaptist churches still exist, but the Anabaptist idea of believer baptism (or if you wanna use the formal term, credobaptism) was adopted by lots of Protestant churches. Namely the Baptists. And like I said, it’s become a controversy among some Protestants: Some of the churches which still do baby baptism have a noisy faction which wants ’em to stop it. Presbyterian churches especially; Jean Calvin believed in baby baptism, but a whole lot of Presbyterians have adopted the Anabaptist view.

I was baptized Catholic, but I was raised in believer-baptism churches, and still go to those churches. So my custom is believer baptism. The Anabaptist view is what I was taught, it’s what I’m pretty sure the scriptures encourage, and I think it makes way more sense.

But honestly… I read Calvin’s Institutes. I can see the point of view of those Christians who prefer baby baptism. And if there’s deliberately a later ritual in which those people who were baptized as babies can confirm they really do intend to follow Jesus… I don’t really have a problem with it. The important thing is you’re following Jesus. If you’re not, neither type of baptism matters, ’cause you’re not Christian!

I know, I know; it’s a controversy, so people are gonna demand I take sides, and preferably theirs. And demand I get enraged at the folks on the other side. Nope! Follow Jesus either way, and I don’t have a problem. Escalate this debate into a holy war, and I have a big problem—with you.

Rebaptism: Getting wet again.

When I was a baby, I was baptized. My grandparents were Roman Catholic; not good Catholics, but Catholic enough to want their first grandchild baptized. So I was.

Mom later became Christian. She doesn’t count her Catholic upbringing, ’cause she doesn’t feel she committed herself to Jesus till adulthood. I became Christian soon after. And our church was having a baptismal service, so the two of us decided to get baptized—her at 28, and me at 7.

Had we been in a Catholic church, we’d’ve learned about their sacrament of confirmation: You confess your faith in Christ Jesus, your bishop anoints you with oil (representing the Holy Spirit, who comes to indwell you when you believe in Jesus), and now your baptism counts. Now you’re Christian.

But of course I didn’t know any of that stuff. I only knew what my Protestant church taught me: When you come to Jesus, get baptized! So I did. Got rebaptized.

Lots of Christians get rebaptized. I’ve watched many of ’em do it:

• People who were baptized as infants into the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Presbyterian church, who later decide infant baptism doesn’t count; they wanna be baptized as believers.
• People who were baptized, but later slid away from Jesus, and wanna get devout and rededicate themselves to him, so they figure they oughta be baptized again.
• People who leave a heretic church, and figure that church’s baptisms don’t count, so they want a baptism which does count.
• People who just wanna. Their kids are getting baptized, so they wanna be baptized too as a good example. Or someone’s holding a baptism at a cool location, like the Jordan River in Israel, and they want the memory of getting baptized there.

For these and all sorts of other reasons, people get rebaptized.

Yeah, there are certain Christians who think this is completely unnecessary. I’m one of them. But at the same time, I also think it’s harmless. You wanna be baptized again?—go ahead and get baptized again! Doesn’t offend God; doesn’t hurt anyone.

(That is, unless you take a wired microphone into the baptismal with you, which’ll kill you, so don’t do that. But otherwise, go right ahead.)

Baptism: Get saved, get wet.

BAPTISM 'bæp.tɪz.əm noun. Religious ritual of sprinkling water on a person’s forehead, or immersing them in water, symbolizing purification, regeneration, and admission to Christ Jesus’s church.

[Baptist 'bæp.təst noun, baptizand 'bæp.tɪ.zænd noun, baptismal bæp'tɪz.məl adjective.]

Whenever the ancient Hebrews did something ritually unclean, they had to ritually clean themselves before they went to temple. How they did this was to simply immerse themselves in water, then wait till sundown—after which point they were ritually clean.

Since they were only required to go to temple thrice a year, they really didn’t have to do a whole lot of ritual cleansing. That is, till Pharisees decided every form of worship required people to be ritually clean. So if you went to synagogue—whether daily, or just Friday nights for Sabbath services—you needed to be ritually clean. Gotta wash!

How Pharisees (and today’s Orthodox Jews) did so was to create a מִקְֶֶוה/mikvéh, “collection [of water].” Basically a vat or pool large enough so a person could stand upright underwater. It had to consist of “living water,” by which they meant running water—and because Pharisees were big on loopholes, any kind of running would count. Water could be dripping into it and dripping out of it; that’d count. You stepped into the mikvéh fully clothed, then walked out. Then awaited sundown.

This ritual washing, they called βάπτισμα/váptisma, “immersion.” Yep, it’s where we get our word baptism.

If you were a new Pharisee, your very first baptism would be when you joined the synagogue. And that’s where John the baptist got the idea for his form of baptism: If you were repentant, and wanted to turn from your sins to follow God, start with baptism.

Since Jesus (though he personally had no sins to repent of) submitted to John’s baptism, and instructed his students to baptize any new students, Mt 28.19 baptism has thereby become the rite of Christian initiation. You’ve decided to follow Jesus? Great! Now get baptized in water. Get forgiven. Receive the Holy Spirit. Ac 2.38

There’s another form of baptism, called baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I discuss elsewhere.

Like every sacrament, we Christians get obsessed with doing it “properly,” and believing all the correct things about it. Sacraments, you recall, represent something God’s doing. Not so much us. We do the ritual, but God does the spiritual reality behind it, and that’s the relevant part. Still, you know how self-centered we humans get: “Oh, if you did it that way, it doesn’t count.” As if God’s not gonna embrace a new follower because we used a bottle of water instead of the nearest river.

Holy communion: Regularly eating and drinking Jesus.

The Christian ritual of holy communion, or “communion” for short, repeats and cemmemorates what Jesus did during his last Passover meal with his students:

Mark 14.22-25 NRSVue

22While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. 24He said to them, “This is my blood of theo covenant, which is poured out for many. 25Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Roughly we do the same thing. There’s bread, wafers, matzo, saltines, oyster crackers, or those little Chiclet-size pills of flour you can purchase 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”), grape drink, or even plain water; Christians ritually eat it ’cause it represents Jesus’s self-sacrificial death. And we’re to do it till he officially comes back. 1Co 11.26

Holy communion is more of a Protestant term. Orthodox and Catholic Christians call it eucharist, from the Greek εὐχαριστέω/evharistéo, “to bless” or “to give thanks,” like Jesus did when he blessed the bread and wine. Christians also call it “the Lord’s supper,” “the Lord’s table,” “the divine service,” “the breaking of bread,” and for a lot of Catholics just “the sacrament”—the one they do all the time, as opposed to the other sacraments.

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, 1Co 12.27 which is why we just eat a little bit of him.

Well, not literally eat him.

Well… some Christians are entirely sure we do literally eat him. ’Cause they take the bible literally, so when Jesus said, “This is my body,” they figure he’s not kidding: It is his body. He turned it into his body. He still turns it into his body; as soon as the bread gets blessed for holy communion, hocus pocus (or in the original Latin, hoc est enim corpus meum, “this is my body,”) and now it’s Jesus. All the bread’s atoms got swapped with Jesus’s atoms.

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.

Getting baptized.

My nieces got baptized last month. Part of their church’s vacation bible school (if you’re not familiar with the phenomenon, it’s a weeklong church program meant to evangelize kids) to of course to get kids to choose Jesus. And of course after such decisions naturally comes baptism.

The girls had chosen to follow Jesus some time before. But one of the things about the Evangelical subculture—kind of a peeve of mine—is how it can sometimes takes years before new Christians finally bother to get baptized. We’re meant to do one right after the other, ’cause we’re supposed to make a solid mental connection between the two. Get saved, get baptized, ’cause baptism represents salvation. But many Evangelicals turn the sinner’s prayer into that thing we’re meant to mentally connect to salvation: “Did you ask Jesus into your heart? Okay, you’re saved.” Hence baptism becomes way less of a priority. Once you’ve confessed Christ, evangelists tell you to get plugged into a church, to read your bible, maybe attend a bible study; it’s not so often “Let’s get you baptized.” They do want you to get around to it someday, as a nice way to publicly declare your faith. But Evangelicals often figure it can wait. And the wait can turn into a long time.

For me there was a three-year gap between when I became Christian in 1975, and when I finally got baptized in 1978. Partly ’cause I had been baptized already.

See, my mom’s parents were Roman Catholic. Mom was lapsed and Dad was atheist, but the grandparents insisted I be baptized. Otherwise if I died unexpectedly, I’d go to limbo.

No, this has nothing to do with the under-the-bar dance, which is named for how limber you have to be to participate. Supposedly limbo is a state which is neither heaven nor hell; it’s on the limbus/“border,” hence the name. It’s a popular myth in Catholicism; few other Christians believe in it.

And not even all Catholics. The official teaching of Catholicism is grace: When unbaptized babies die, all things being equal, God graciously takes ’em to heaven. But limbo’s the unofficial teaching, and old-timey Catholics grew up hearing horror stories of parents who never baptized their babies, and now the kids are in limbo, if not burning in hell.

I should mention: I read Dante’s Inferno. According to him, limbo’s the first circle of hell. The nice part of hell, if any part of hell can be said to be nice. In it are all the pagans you kinda thought should go to heaven, but since they didn’t care for Jesus (or didn’t know about him; Dante was kinda unforgiving that way), they didn’t. So they spend eternity not in heaven, kinda bummed about their bad fortune. And apparently they get squalling unbaptized babies dumped on them on the regular. Maybe that’s what makes it hell.

Regardless, the grandparents wanted me baptized. So Mom shrugged and let ’em get me baptized.

This is why I’ve joked ever since that I’m Catholic. But a really lousy Catholic, ’cause I keep going to Protestant churches. Still, I’m just as Catholic as my so-called “Catholic” friends and acquaintances who never got confirmed, never go to Mass, and figure baptism means God’s gotta grant ’em heaven. Not wise to take God’s grace for granted like that, but they do.

Sacraments: Our Christian rituals. Gotta do ’em.

SACRAMENT 'søk.rə.mənt noun. Religious ritual which represents a spiritual reality, or represents an act of God’s grace.

2. [“the sacrament”] Holy communion.

[Sacramental søk.rə'mɛn(t).əl adjective, sacramentalist søk.rə'mɛn(t).əl.ist noun.]

God does many things in our lives. Some we see. Some we don’t.

When God cures me of an illness, it’s nice and obvious: Everybody, even skeptics, can see I’m well. They’ll totally disagree about how I got well. If they don’t believe in God (or don’t believe he still does miracles) they’ll doubt God was involved in the cure. Might even doubt I was truly ill to begin with. But they otherwise agree I’m well. That part’s visible enough.

Now, when God forgives me of sin… what’s visible?

I mean I know I’m forgiven; Jesus told us we’re given most everything. Mk 3.28 I put my faith in Jesus, so I trust when he says I’m forgiven, I am. But was there anything visible? Anything we could’ve experienced? Did I hear God’s audible voice: “Behold thou art made whole: Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee”? Jn 5.14 KJV Did I experience happy feelings which I’ve come to associate with forgiveness? Was God cursing me in some way, and now he’s not? Do (as the prosperity gospel folks insist is true) I suddenly find myself flush with cash?

In fact no: Most of the time we don’t see anything. Don’t see most of the things God does “behind the scenes,” as we put it—which is inaccurate, ’cause God’s not hiding a thing. He told us what he’s up to, He 1.1 and still tells us when we bother to ask. Am 3.7 It’s just we don’t bother to ask. Or we assume it’s part of some secret evil plan he’s up to.

But God understands how we humans tick: We want experiences. We wanna have something we’ve lived through, which we can point back to and say, “That’s when God did [something profound]. There’s the date and time.” Something to jog our memory, to remind us how and when God did something for us. Like a holiday which reminds us Jesus died for our sins at around 2:30 PM, 3 April 33. Or a handy, easy-to-repeat ritual.

And that’s why God ordained such rituals for us Christians to perform. Things we can do which represent what he did, what he’s doing, what he’ll do later. We call ’em sacraments, which literally means “sacred acts.” Or (if we think “sacrament” is too Catholic a word) ordinances—’cause God did ordain ’em.

The reason God ordained sacraments is to make his grace visible. ’Cause it’s not always. Miracles are visible, obvious forms of grace. Forgiveness… well, what’s obvious is the way we respond to God forgiving us. (If we respond to him; some of us are ingrates.) Some of us think we oughta feel something when that happens, so we psyche ourselves into imagining God’s presence, into feeling stuff, even into seeing stuff. You know, contorting our brains in all sorts of unhealthy ways. Things that’ll just get in the way once real visions happen.

In comparison God keeps it simple. Get dunked in water. Eat bread and drink wine. Set up a rock pile. Wash feet. Celebrate a holiday. Make promises. Say certain words. These rituals represent the reality. Do them and remember the reality. 1Co 11.24-25 Remember God’s grace.