SundaySchoolCourses<\/a>)<\/p>\nJesus does this elsewhere.\u00a0 In John 6:35, He calls Himself \u201cthe bread of life.\u201d\u00a0 Needless to say, this is not the typical designation leaders take upon themselves\u2013\u201cI AM BREAD!\u00a0 Hear me roar\u201d\u2013but it is evocative.\u00a0 I would love to look more into the cultural and historical significance of this statement, but at just the plainest level, it tells us something huge.\u00a0 Jesus is the bread we need.\u00a0 He is the wine we must have.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this sounds obvious.\u00a0 It is obvious.\u00a0 I\u2019m not telling you I have some massive insight here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t.\u00a0 I have merely the plain truth in mind: Jesus is of such basic importance to our lives that He is bread.\u00a0 He is drink.\u00a0 He is the fullness of the sustenance we need.\u00a0 To have Him is to have nourishment.\u00a0 To not have Him is not merely to not have bread, but to have no food\u00a0at all.<\/p>\n
So this illuminates what communion is.\u00a0 If we\u2019re honest, we modern evangelicals, mostly severed\u00a0in our religious lives from rituals and traditions, can admit that the Lord\u2019s Supper can be a slightly odd experience.\u00a0 We\u2019re not always exactly sure how to feel about it.\u00a0 Because we\u2019re used to informal services largely devoid of the formal style so common to the Christian heritage, the sacred rite can feel strange.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Track with me\u2013we\u2019re in the middle of the service, trying to calm our kids down or take notes or ignore our hungry stomachs.\u00a0 Suddenly, this rite pops up and we\u2019re supposed to suddenly feel really spiritual, really connected to Christ.\u00a0 We look around and other people are praying and crying and generally seeming to be very close to God.\u00a0 We, on the other hand, are trying not to think about movies or basketball or paninis.\u00a0 As the ceremony unfolds, we eat little crackers and drink grape juice and sometimes, if we\u2019re honest, feel disconnected from the symbolism of the event.\u00a0 We\u2019re supposed to be thinking about Christ\u2019s death, but instead we\u2019re drawn to wonder why communion crackers are always so weird.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s much more we could say about all of this\u2013about how we and our churches could prepare us better for communion, about how we could better approach the Sunday service itself, about whether we low-churchers may have lost something in stripping our services of all trace of formalism.\u00a0 We could think more about all of this stuff, and we probably should.\u00a0 But for now, the point of the matter is this: communion is not, most fundamentally, about achieving an evangelical high.\u00a0 It is not necessarily about tears on your face.\u00a0 It is not about spiritual levitation away from the realities of life.\u00a0 It is about receiving Jesus Christ of Nazareth as the bread of life.\u00a0 It is acknowledging in the midst of life\u2019s realities\u2013as the kids wiggle or the neighbors distract us\u2013that Jesus is Savior and Lord.<\/p>\n
If this is true, then communion is most fundamentally not spiritual levitation.\u00a0 Communion is fundamentally an acknowledgement to God, the church, the world, and ourselves that we take Jesus Christ as the bread of life.\u00a0 While the world starves itself, choosing to wander through life without food or drink, we are those whom God has chosen to feed on Christ.\u00a0 We live\u2013literally, we survive\u2013and we experience fullness and nourishment because of the God-man.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we do in communion.<\/p>\n
Communion, then, is\u00a0a confession.\u00a0 It is a remembrance, but it is an ongoing confession to the principalities and powers that we are Christ\u2019s.\u00a0 It is not merely a personal zen moment in the midst of the corporate gathering, but is a gathered confession by 10 or 25 or 100 or 500 or 1000 or 5000 or 10000 people that they eat the bread of life.\u00a0 It is a galactic press release to the watching angels and the lurking demons that we love and live by Jesus the Messiah.\u00a0 This is what communion is; this is what we do in taking it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been a little punchy here in trying to think this all through.\u00a0 The Lord\u2019s Supper often draws tears from my own eyes; I often perceive the grace of God mediated through remembrance of the broken body of Christ in powerful ways during the sacred rite.\u00a0 I have absolutely no problem with those who do the same and in fact hope that my fellow believers do experience special closeness to God in taking communion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I am aware that the Supper shows two key things that I often forget or just don\u2019t think about: 1) that I feed on Jesus Christ as bread every day that I live, and 2) that communion is fundamentally a corporate confession of the called-out saints of God that they have been bought with a price.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Every time we take communion, whether in an old run-down church building in the country, a high school gymnasium,\u00a0or a slick and sparkling building in the middle of the city, we are together proclaiming to the powers and principalities of darkness and light that we no longer starve in the desert, but now feed on the body and blood of Jesus Christ the Lord.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From 1 Corinthians 11:23-26\u2013 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, \u201cThis is my body which is for\u00a0you. Do this in remembrance of me.\u201d\u00a0In the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[683,923,1674,1890],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotional-thoughts","tag-bread-of-life","tag-communion","tag-jesus-is-the-bread-of-life","tag-lords-supper"],"yoast_head":"\n
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From 1 Corinthians 11:23-26\u2013<\/p>\n