Holy Communion is a way that Christians commemorate the night before Jesus was crucified, when Jesus gave final instructions to his closest followers. We call this the Last Supper because it was the last time that Jesus ate a meal with these followers. After supper, Jesus (again) shared bread and wine with his followers, and commanded that all Christians celebrate this moment in the same way. We follow these instructions by ritually eating bread and drinking wine while recalling the story of the Last Supper.
We call this ritual the Eucharist or Holy Communion. The word Eucharist relates to the gratitude we feel toward God for the gift of Jesus. The word Communion refers to how celebrating the Last Supper brings us into the presence of God and other Christians. These words are pretty much interchangeable, and I’ll use Communion to mean either one. There is much more in celebrating the Last Supper that unites than divides Christians. But the two words hint at the rifts Christians sometimes have.
Most of us don’t think that differences in church communion practices have any deep theological meanings. But we do follow Jesus’ teachings in many ways. Some churches only allow their own members to take communion; others open it to anybody who believes in God. Some churches think that bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus; others think that bread and wine are symbols of God. Many churches serve little thin bread tablets (sometimes called “fish food” because they often have a picture of a fish on them) and some tear off chunks of baked bread. Some people drink wine while others drink unfermented grape juice. Most churches feel that a specially trained priest is the only person who can lead the ceremony, but a few think that everybody is empowered to celebrate this act of worship. But it’s all pretty much the same thing, no matter what rules you use.
There are two different stories of the Last Supper in the Holy Bible. These stories can be found * in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and in the first letter of Saint Paul to the church in Corinth. According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus describes how his body is made up of the bread and wine of earth. Jesus commanded that his followers remember him when we eat and drink of the goodness of God’s creation.
Luke and St. Paul wrote that Jesus said certain blessed bread and wine are the same as his body and blood. That may be a bit of a stretch from the actual words, but that’s what many Christians read the words to mean. Other Christians soften this a bit by saying Jesus was using bread as a symbol of his flesh and wine as a metaphor for his life. Either way, it gives a preview to the horror of Jesus’ impending death; breaking bread is the same as the broken body of Jesus on the cross and wine is the same as Jesus’ life blood poured out. According to this interpretation of the scriptures, anyone who believes that Jesus was human is getting Jesus’ invitation to cannibalism.
There is a wonderful science fiction short story about radiation-poisoned survivors of a nuclear war who flee to an untouched island. The natives treat the survivors as gods because they arrive in gleaming metal boxes from the sky. Their awe is doubled that night when they see an aura of nuclear glow around the survivors. The natives want the power to travel across the sky and to glow in the dark, so they butcher and eat the survivors. They gain no flying powers, but soon they do begin to emit a faint glow.
This story is a rough analogy of the Communion story in Luke and Corinthians. Some of us so much want to have the powers of God that we believe God wants us to eat him.
Sympathetic magic runs rampant through the heart of ancient and modern societies. A long time ago, names were considered to be store-houses of power. You could gain power over your enemy by learning his name. Many Jews consider it as hubris (attempting to take the power of God) to speak the name of God or even to write it on paper. Many Christians believe that we gain power by saying the name of Jesus; we sing songs about
• take the name of Jesus with you,
• there’s something about that name, and
• all hail the power of Jesus’ name.
It’s not hard to see why there’s a little belief in the sympathetic magic of cannibalism left in the world today.
I’ve heard explanations that God is trying to shock Christians with cannibalism – we won’t take Holy Communion lightly if we are a little horrified at what we are doing. I’m not so sure about this. At the time of the Last Supper, Jesus was less than a day away from dieing miserably from asphyxiation and torture. The meeting with the followers was the last good time they would spend with Jesus, and Jesus was trying hard not to spoil the meal with too many premonitions of his impending death.
Let’s return to the Last Supper accounts as recorded in Matthew and Mark. Remember that in a way these stories are almost the opposite of Luke and Paul, who claim that the bread and wine is Jesus. Matthew and Mark state that Jesus’ body is like bread and his blood is like wine. As with us, Jesus was the product of the things he ate and drank; he was totally human and really from earth. So when he says to eat the bread, he commands us to be like him. God never intended for people to eat the actual flesh of Jesus. But Jesus did say that his sacrificed blood is the source of a new covenant that God forms with mankind. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, God breaks through to us.
Matthew and Mark contain the Bible stories that make most sense to me. As I think about the meaning of Communion with God and with all Christians, it seems that eating God is an act of extreme hubris, yet eating the same foods that Jesus ate is an act of humility. I won’t try to say that Luke and Paul were wrong, because there is such a subtle shade of difference between all these stories. It’s probably we Christians who read wrong things into Luke and Paul; maybe these writers only want to point out that bread and wine become Jesus because Jesus ate and digested them. Anyway, with Matthew and Mark there is less room for interpretation – to me these scriptures succinctly explain the love of God.
There’s one other thing. Some Christians believe that Jesus was telling us to remember him every time we eat and drink. This makes a certain amount of sense because every bite reminds us that Jesus was much like us. Many Christians therefore pray to God at every meal time. But we reserve an extra special time of Holy Communion to remember that God uses Jesus’ humanity to show us that God is like the spiritual side of Jesus.
To summarize Matthew and Mark:
• Jesus says that he eats the same food as all humans,
• Therefore Jesus is human (as far as we can tell),
• God uses the brokenness of Jesus’ body to rescue humans from sin,
• We celebrate God’s gift through Holy Communion,
• Holy Communion helps us draw close to God and to other Christians.
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* Matthew chapter 26, verses 26 through 29
Mark chapter 14, verses 22 through 25
Luke chapter 22, verses 19 and 20
First Corinthians chapter 11, verses 23 through 27
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