Tag: Eucharist

by Fr Chris Borah

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He took bread. He blessed it. “Take, eat,” Jesus said. “This is my body.”

And then he took a cup. After giving thanks, he said, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant.”

Along with the command to baptize (Mt 28:19), these are the ordinances of Jesus–he said, “Do this, do this, do this.” The bread, the wine, and the water, three physical acts, two “visible signs of grace.” These are the Sacraments ordained by Jesus, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Article XXV of our 39 Articles of Religion explains our Sacraments like this:

“Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him.”

BCP, p. 781

Sacraments are not about what we do, they are about what God has done to us and for us. They are not our “badges” or simply “tokens of [our] profession.” They are grace. Gifts given to us by God. Sacraments give physical strength. Sacraments “confirm” our capital “F” Faith in Jesus.

An Extravagant Show

Article XXV later goes on to say that the Sacraments are not empty rituals intended to be “gazed upon” or “carried about,” clearly referring to the “superstitious” use of the Lord’s Supper in the late middle ages. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The Mass had become a daily performance, when wicked ministers of the gospel flaunted the bread and the wine before the watching laity.

And very often, that’s all the laity did–they watched. “Look, don’t touch.” By the sixteenth century, it had become common practice for lay persons to receive only a morsel of bread (cf 1 Cor 11:21). And all too often, they were not allowed to drink from the common cup. But even amidst this idolatrous pageantry, anyone who came to the Supper with faith and repentance were nourished by God (see Article XXVI).

Physical and Spiritual Eating

The Lord’s Supper was given that “we should duly use” it, not to be gazed upon or carried about.

“The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner… [it is eaten by] Faith.”

XXVIII, BCP, p. 783

Every Sunday, we give thanks to God for the “spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood” that we have just consumed. The Anglican Church has long recognized that the doctrine of “transubstantiation… is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture” (BCP, p. 783), but “spiritual food” must be physically eaten.

Following the Church Fathers, Bishop Thomas Cranmer describes the mystery of the bread and wine that we eat becoming… us! As Fr Ben Sharpe always says, “We are what we eat!” Through the miracle of digestion, bread molecules become a part of me, wine is joined to my body.

“[T]he bread and wine which we do eat be turned into our flesh and blood and be made our very flesh and our very blood, and so be joined and mixed with our flesh and blood that they be made one whole body together, even so be all faithful Christians spiritually turned into the body of Christ, and so be joined unto Christ, and also together among themselves.”

Bp Thomas Cranmer, quoted from, Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers, p. 213

Martin Luther said that Christ “is not digested or transformed but ceaselessly he transforms us.” Luther continues: “[T]he mouth, the throat, the body, which eats Christ’s body, will also have its benefit in that it will live forever and arise on the Last Day to eternal salvation. This is the secret power and benefit which flows from the body of Christ in the Supper into our body.”

With characteristic pastoral sensitivity, John Calvin writes, “[T]his mystery of Christ’s secret union with the devout is by nature incomprehensible, he shows its figure and image in visible signs best adapted to our small capacity… For this very familiar comparison penetrates into even the dullest minds: just as bread and wine sustain physical life, so are souls fed by Christ.” (Kreglinger, The Spirituality of Wine, p. 69)

As St. Paul said, when we eat from the “one bread” and we drink from the “one cup,” we become “one body” (1 Cor 10:16-21). This is spiritual. This is physical. It is mystical. Bp Cranmer concludes,

“[O]ne loaf is given among many men… likewise one cup of wine is distributed unto many persons, whereof every one is partaker, even so our Saviour Christ (whose flesh and blood be represented by the mystical bread and wine of the Lord’s supper) doth give Himself unto all His true members, spiritually to feed them, nourish them, and to give them continual life by Him. And as the branches of a tree or members of a body, if they be dead or cut off, they neither live nor receive any nourishment or sustenance of the body or tree.”

Hughes, Ibid., p. 213

Why Bread and Wine?

In the Christian West, it has long been articulated that Christ cannot be divided in the Sacrament. We receive all of Christ in the bread. We receive all of Christ in the wine. The Sacrament is not half and half–it’s whole and whole. For pastoral reasons (such as gluten allergies or alcoholism), the Church said that communicants who only received in one kind (either only bread or only wine) received the whole Christ (this is the doctrine of concomitance).

But, as so often happens in the history of the church, this theological distinction quickly became a justification for foolish practice. Along with the rest of the Magisterial Reformers, Bp Cranmer gave special attention to the common practice of withholding the Cup of the Lord from the laity in his day.

“The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.”

Article XXX, BCP, p. 784

“Because Jesus said so.” Underneath the authority of Holy Scripture, Bp Cranmer requires that all baptized followers of Jesus be offered both bread to eat and wine to drink. Bread and wine emphasize different and complementary aspects of the gospel.

Eating the bread by Faith, eating the Body of Christ, brings together so much of the story of redemption accomplished in Christ. The fields of grain in the Garden, the bread of Melchizedek, the manna in the wilderness, Jesus the living bread that comes down from heaven, the one loaf is broken, just as Jesus’ body was broken for us. All of this rich biblical imagery and fulfillment in Christ (and so much more) is digested as we eat the bread.

Drink The Cup of the Lord

Likewise, the wine that we bless, the Cup of Salvation that we drink brings together even more of Christ’s redemptive work on our behalf.

The fruit of the Garden (in both feasting and judgment), Noah’s vineyard and his drunkenness, and Melchizedek’s feast with Abram of bread and wine. Wine recalls the “blood of the grape” (Gen 49:11; cfDeut 32:14), Pharaoh’s blood-red river, the Passover lamb’s blood over the doorpost, the countless blood sacrifices in the wilderness tabernacle, and the dried blood caked upon the corners of the altar in the temple.

Wine brings together joy and feasting (Ps 104:15) with sacrifice and atonement. The Nazarite vow in Numbers 6–where both men and women were invited to separate themselves to the Lord–this vow brings these two themes of sacrifice and joy together beautifully.

“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the LORD, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins.”

Numbers 6:2–4

First, the Lord says, “Don’t drink wine.” Then the Lord gave Moses instructions for the Nazarite to not cut his hair, not go near a dead body, and then detailed instructions for bringing his sacrifice to the tent of meeting: a blood sacrifice, a bread sacrifice, and a wine sacrifice. First, the Nazarite brings his firstfruits to the Lord, and after the rite is complete… the Lord gives wine back to him so that he can feast and give thanks!

“They are a holy portion for the priest, together with the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed. And after that the Nazirite may drink wine.”

Numbers 6:20

Esther’s Purim “feasts of wine” (Esther 5:6, 7:8) overthrow Ahasuerus’ banquet (1:7-8). In the ancient world, the cup represented the authority of a king and his judgment. Kings pour out their cup in judgment. Drinking Pharaoh’s cup was damnation. Drinking unjust Ahasuerus’ cup brought judgment upon you. His wine of un-righteousness intoxicates and makes you stumble (Prov 31:2-9). Unjust kings judge with a cup in their hand. But the Lord judges justlywhen he pours out his cup. Peter Leithart explains, according to Jeremiah (49:12), that all these pagan kings “‘will not be acquitted, but you will certainly drink’ from Yahweh’s cup” (Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry, p. 105). This is the “cup of the wine of wrath” of God’s righteous judgment against rebellious sinners (Jer 25:27-28). We either drink the cup of Babylon’s judgment and die (Rev 18), or we drink the cup of the Lamb’s judgment and live (Rev 19).

Jesus, the Nazarene, came to fast and then to feast. He came to die and then to rise again. “When I am with you, we feast!” He drank the cup of the righteous judgment and wrath of God for us, and after he made atonement for sins once for all upon the cross, then he gives us His Cup.

“[T]he drinking of wine in the Lord’s Supper draws us into the world of sacrifice… As we sip from the eucharistic cup, we remember that Christ took upon himself God’s judgment on the world. He stepped into the divine winepress and bore the sins and injustices of the world in order that all people might be reconciled with God.”

Kreglinger, Ibid., p. 75

Why line up and eat from one plate of food? What is the deal with drinking from a cup?

Jesus said, “Eat.”
Jesus said, “Drink.”

We eat because Jesus told us to eat. Likewise, we drink because he told us to drink. These two separate actions (in the one Sacrament of Holy Communion) bring together the fullness of what Jesus accomplished for his beloved. Every Lord’s Day, you are invited to eat and to drink, because Jesus invites us to eat and to drink. Before we come to the table, we pray in the Prayer for Humble Access, that eating “the flesh” of our dear Jesus makes “our sinful bodies… clean by his body.” And we “drink his blood,” so that “our souls [are] washed through his most precious blood.” Bodies made whole by eating. Souls made clean by drinking.

We invite all baptized followers to come and eat and drink. But the Sacrament of Unity is not life-giving for us because “we do it right.”

Everyone who comes forward to receive only the bread, or they eat bread and drink wine, or they only drink the wine, or they come to receive the Body dipped into the Blood (intinction) – everyone who comes with faith and repentance receives all of God’s grace in the Sacrament. Whether you sip or you dip, sinful bodies are made clean by eating bread, and dirty souls are washed by drinking his precious blood. All of God’s grace is available to those who come with faith and repentance. We dwell in him and he in us. There are no class distinctions. We are all on level ground at the foot of the cross.

Leithart perfectly describes the redemption of Christ that we are invited to participate in when we come to the Cup of the Lord.

“We can rise from the table either gladdened or staggering. And we would all fall but for the fact that Jesus Himself has drunk His Father’s cup to its dregs: “If possible, let this cup pass from Me.” But it was not possible, and so He took your portion, staggered, and fell. He drained the cup that the King had given to us and now gives us to drink of His cup, a cup of joy.”

Leithart, Ibid., p. 106

“Jesus Bread is for Bad Guys”

In the famous words of our five year old saint Barnabas, “Jesus bread is for bad guys.” We must come to the table. If we come withouthumility, the cup that we drink will bring condemnation, division, and death. But if we come with humility, the cup that we drink will bring judgment–the judgment of Jesus’s righteousness for our sin, his purity for our filth, his holiness for our disordered loves. Redemption and unity can only be found in Christ, where branches are grafted into the vine–married, redeemed, restored together to feast with everlasting joy.

“The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” With these words, the celebrant has the great joy of offering bread to eat. “The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” The deacon has the honor to offer the wine to drink. Every part of the story of God comes together at the table. Every broken member is healed together in one body. Every staggering soul is washed in the blood.

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A Concluding Reflection from Fr Chris

I have loved writing these Eucharistic reflections. With every book I’ve read and re-read, with every prayer, with every story and every theme that I have traced through Holy Scripture, with every conversation with all of you–in all these things I have been nourished. But every word still feels “feeble and insufficient” (Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 209).

Union with Christ is an unsearchable mystery. The grace of the Sacrament of Unity is as deep as the ocean. Because of the cross of Christ, we can find life in Him, we can ascend with Him into heavenly places, and we can share the koinonia of our King on earth as it is in heaven. But we can never simply know all of this. We must eat it. We must drink it to the dregs.

“Though the Eucharist does not bypass the mind and conscious reflection, the effect it has is more in the realm of acquiring a skill than in the realm of learning a new set of facts; the effect is more a matter of “training” than “teaching.” At the Supper, we eat bread and drink wine together with thanksgiving not merely to show the way things really ought to be but to practice the way things really ought to be.”

Leithart, Ibid., p. 184

“Jesus bread is for bad guys.” All baptized followers of our Lord Jesus Christ who come with faith in Jesus and repentance for sin are welcome at His Table. Don’t delay. Gather on the Lord’s Day to feast. Everlasting joy, purchased by blood, is prepared for you. Come to the table. Come and eat. Come and drink, and live. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

by Fr Chris Borah

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“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.”

Genesis 1:29

In the beginning, God told man to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth with goodness and beauty and life and loving rule. People, like God, are called to lovingly reign as kings and priests to God.

Immediately following this “creation mandate,” God does not teach Adam a lesson on kingship. He doesn’t list the laws of serving in the temple-garden. He doesn’t even teach Adam how to pray. God gives Adam a meal. “You shall have them for food.”

In the beginning, God set a table to commune with him, a table filled with grain and fruit. Fr Alexander Schmemman says it simply, “[In the beginning] divine love made food.” In the wilderness, food is either miraculous or it is simple and bland. But when you are at peace in the land, in the garden of the Lord, food is rich–grain is transfigured into bread, fruit into wine.

But from the beginning, we have sought to satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst at the tables of famished gods. We serve the creation rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25). And rather than give us life-giving food, these gods always devour us. Like Adam and Eve at the tree, our god is our belly (Phil 3:19). We turn from our father’s bountiful feast and we wander, perpetually unsatisfied with all our prodigal meals.

Hunger isn’t bad. God created us hungry. What’s more, man was not made to eat alone. God created us with a thirst for intimate relationship: Adam groaned for fellowship at the table (Gen 2:18). He made us to touch, to feel the pleasure of intimate and joyful conversation and embrace. Ask anyone who has lost their sense of taste because of an infection or neurological damage. It is not good. Our loving Father created us with about 10,000 taste buds, and every two weeks, our taste buds are made new. Our tastes literally change with age.

“Our lives are directed by our hungers,” Peter Leithart says, “and we find rest only when we hunger for the One who opens His hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing more than we hunger for the things in His hand.”

Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry, 20

The gospel renews and restores our deep longings to be satisfied, God in Christ quenches our thirst. The Spirit brings new life, he redirects our longings to find true satisfaction at his table, in the fellowship of the Holy Trinity and with all the saints. This was the edenic hope of the prophets fulfilled in Christ (Isa 49:10). Saints wearing white robes washed in red blood, gathered in the throne room of the Father and the Lamb, worshipping and feasting.

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation 7:16–17

We were made to hunger and thirst. Jesus did not come to heal your head and heart alone. He came for all of you. Your stomach is his (1 Cor 6:20). He came to redeem and restore your love for umami. He came to kill drunkenness and gluttony, and raise to life jovial feasting in his presence. Come ye disconsolate, earth has no pleasures heaven cannot heal.

A Wine of the Times

We, modern people, approach food merely as technology. A peace of bread is not simply “bread,” it is the sum of all it’s constituent parts (Nutritional Facts). We don’t buy wine or beer because of flavor or craftsmanship. We look at the price tag and the alcohol content and we consume. We live in a sad and delightless age. Our creed is “live longer, maximize pleasure, never feel pain.”

We use technology–medicine, food, machine learning, phones, etc–to achieve our goal, eternal pleasure. Fasting is no longer a spiritual discipline, it is the newest scientifically-proven health technology. Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft says that “technology has replaced religion at the center of our consciousness and our life. We have a new [highest good]–power–and a new means to it–technology, or technique” (Kreeft, C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium, 24).

The modern imagination is anemic. We choose either detached spirituality (gnosticism–only the spiritual matters) or soulless materialism (there is nothing transcendent–if I can’t touch it, then it’s not real). These are our only options. We desperately need a renewed biblical and historical imagination. To borrow an image from G. K. Chesterton, we need to be like a tree with roots firmly established on the earth (love and care for creation) and with branches always stretching to the heavens (always recognizing God as Creator and giver of every good gift).

The God of Bread and Wine

In the Old Testament, as in the garden, we should always bring our best animals, our best bread, and our best wine to restore joyful communion with God (Gen 4:1-8; Ex 29:40; Lev 23:12-13; Num 15:5). The Priest-King Melchizedek brought bread and wine to Abram to commune with God (Gen 14:18). Jesus too, the Priest-King after the order Melchizedek, brings bread and wine (Heb 6:20-8:13). Bread and wine are meant to be bring gladness and joy as a gift from the Creator: “wine gladdens life” (Eccl 10:19; see also Eccl 2:24, 8:15; Zech 10:7; Ps 4:7; Ps 104:14-15). King Lemuel says that wine is not a gift for kings and rulers (Prov 31:4-5; see also Prov 23:20-21; Eccl 10:17-19), but it is a gift to the downcast and distressed (Prov 31:6-7; see also 2 Sam 16:2). As God’s people ascend to worship, they sing:

“Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. The LORD bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children’s children! Peace be upon Israel!”

Psalm 128

Gisela Kreglinger says that in the Old Testament imagination, the “moderate enjoyment of wine in the context of family and community life can become a wonderful event for physical, emotional, and spiritual renewal” (Kreglinger, The Spirituality of Wine, 23). Wine is not necessary to experience this renewal. Indeed, if we use wine as the means to achieve happiness–if we grasp for the fruit of the vine, rather than receive it with an open hand–it always brings destruction (Gen 9:20-21; 1 Cor 11:29). This is why priests are commanded to not drink wine when they bring the sacrifice: God reconciles us first, then we feast (Lev 10:9-13). Wine isn’t required, but the image of flourishing in Holy Scripture–in the land, with family, and joy restored–this is nearly always accompanied by the fruit of the vine.

The New Covenant in My Blood

Jesus, the True Vine (Jn 15:5), talks about wine a lot. In his first miracle, he turns water to wine (Jn 2:1), and not just miraculously; Jesus demonstrates his awareness of how to make wine (Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22; Lk 5:37-38), indeed, aged wine is better than new wine (Lk 5:39). Jesus warns his disciples to stay awake for when he returns, don’t be dissipated and drunk or you’ll miss me (Lk 21:34). But neither does he list drunkenness as the deadliest of sins (Mt 15:19-20).

While Jews feasted for weeks multiple times a year, they were not known for drunkenness. They divided Passover wine into four separate cups to be drunk at for separate times throughout the feast (probably as a sign of temperance). Jesus was regularly accused of being a glutton and a drunkard (Mt 11:19; Lk 7:34), and this for eating and drinking with sinners (eating and drinking like a sinner).

The Apostle Paul, the minister to the Gentiles, started churches among people who drank excessively, especially in their pagan temples. So Paul regularly addressed the sin of drunkenness (Gal 5:19-21; Rom 13:13; 1 Tim 3:3). But his answer to drunkenness was not abstinence but Godward temperance (1 Cor 9-12). It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles someone (Mt 15:11-18). With Jesus, Paul says that wine is a gift (1 Tim 4:3-4), but we must never worship the gift.

A History of the Vine

We live in an age of excess–excess everything. Nearly everything we drink has a drug mixed in: sugar, caffeine, alcohol, you name it, we drink it. And not just a little bit. More energy–fructose becomes high fructose. Stay awake–coffee becomes espresso. Get drunk–beer becomes liquor–fifths become liters become boxes become kegs. We live in a world of gluttons and drunkards, and it’s no wonder that we disdain alcohol. What was once only the temptation of kings and queens of old, drinking excessive alcohol (Prov 31:4-5), is now the vice of every modern person (indeed, the poor are whom we think of first, how sad!). The gift has become a god, and it has destroyed kingdoms and families for generations.

But it was not always this way.

Fourth century church father, St John Chrysostom had a cheerful disposition to wine. He wrote,

“Wine was given to make us cheerful, not to make us behave shamefully; to make us laugh, not a laughing-stock; to make us healthy, not sick; to mend the weakness of the body, not to undermine the soul.”

Kreglinger, Ibid., 37

Chrysostom clearly acknowledges the negative use of wine, but he invites us to view wine not through the distorted lens of human sin, but with the open hands of a creature receiving from a loving Creator. A contemporary of Chrysostom, St Augustine points to the “necessity” of wine.

“In many instances wine is necessary for human beings. Wine strengthens the stomach, renews one’s energy, warms the body of the cold-blooded, poured onto wounds it brings healing. It chases away sadness and weariness of soul. Wine brings joy, and for companions it fuels one’s pleasure for conversations.”

Ibid., 43

Borrowing a metaphor from C. S. Lewis, we can no more go back to the fourth century (in both our medical understanding or our cultural milieu) than a divorcée can go back to virginity. But we can acknowledge, with Lewis, that our age is filled with misery and depression, we worship “the iron works of [our] own hands, cut off from Earth [our] mother and from the Father in heaven” (C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, chpt 13). Alcohol as technology is hellish. Alcohol as gift from the Creator is heavenly.

Fast-forwarding to the Reformation, John Calvin ponders,

“…God created food, we shall find that he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer… [God] bestows upon them as much as is sufficient for the ordinary purposes of life, but [he also]… in his goodness he deals still more bountifully with them by cheering their hearts with wine and oil.”

Luther delights that “by wine the hearts of men are gladdened, their strength recruited, and the whole man strengthened, so by the blood of our Lord the same benefits are received by our souls” (Ibid., 55-57). Even the Puritans were well known to regularly enjoy drinking wine and beer.

“John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day–rum. His brother, Charles Wesley, was known for the fine port, Madeira, and sherry he often served in his home; the journals of George Whitefield are filled with references to his enjoyment of alcohol.”

Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness, 32

It was not until the devastations of war, rapid industrialization, and the prevalence of distilled liquors in the earth 20th century that Christians became known teetotalers. It was this cultural excess and the rapid growth of wealth that led to the collapse of the American economy and the completely ineffective (and short) experiment of prohibition. Into this world,

“Thomas Welch, a Methodist minister turned dentist, discovered how to remove yeast bacteria in grape juice that naturally transforms grape juice into wine; that is, by removing or killing yeast bacteria, one can keep grape juice from fermenting.”

Kreglinger, Ibid., 63

Thousands of years of Christian cultivation of wine and beer was discarded in one generation. Comparing the Benedictine vision of the flourishing Christian life, that of working the land and tending to the fields and fruits God has given us to cultivate, Kreglinger concludes,

“… the emerging evangelical culture of the late nineteenth century focused on the salvation of the individual and the pursuit of one’s moral perfection. With the absence of wine from the Eucharist, the antiseptic effect of alcohol disappeared from the communion cup. As a consequence, and for hygienic reasons, grape juice began to be served in individual cups, which helped deepen the emphasis on the formation of the individual. Drinking from the common chalice emphasized the communal nature of the spiritual life and helped symbolize that the believers are one in Christ, and the individual grape juice cups could no longer capture this important aspect of the Lord’s Supper.”

Ibid., 63

From Somber Remembrance to Glad Celebration

Christians began art. Christians created music (as we know it today). Christians have always been new-creational cultivators, sub-creators working with the gifts of God and offering them back to him with thankfulness and worship. But you and I were born into a world that has conceded all of this rich Christian history (and biblical imagination) to the pagans. We have abandoned biblical and historic Christian teaching about food and drink to “health professionals,” beer commercials, and fearful ascetic spirituality.

Christ came to redeem our head, our hearts, our lips, our stomachs, our taste buds, our sexual pleasure, our hands, our feet, our eyes, all of us. Christ came to redeem his entire Creation, the heavens and the earth, field and forest, land and sea, the Lord’s table and our dinner tables, grain and fruit, bread and wine, all of it.

God created fields of grain and fruit trees out of nothing. We take his good creation, grain and fruit, and we re-create it into bread and wine. But we cannot stop there.

Bread and wine, the work of our hands, these gifts are meant to be given back to God as our shared sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. And by God’s grace, he gives our offering of bread and wine back to us! Such a marvelous and beautiful God we are invited to worship! We are welcomed in to share in the koinonia of Christ. We gather at His table, we eat his body and we drink his blood, “that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood.” And with the saints throughout time, we must respond, “Thanks be to God!”

by Fr Chris Borah

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There are many words and phrases we use to describe the Holy Eucharist.

• “Holy Eucharist” simply means “thanksgiving devoted to God.” 
• Holy Eucharist is also the “Lord’s Supper,” which points back to Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples (Mt 26, Mk 14, Lk 21), and points forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (with all his disciples from all time; Rev 19). 
• Holy Eucharist is the “Paschal Feast” (1 Cor 5:7), pointing us back to the Passover Meal (Ex 12) and to Jesus the Lamb of God setting a table that fulfills, completes, and transforms this ancient Jewish festival (Jn 1:29; Jn 6; Rev 19:7, 17).
• Holy Eucharist is also “Communion” or…

Koinonia

“Communion” (koinonia), points us to the fellowship of all the saints in heaven and on earth, to our participation in Christ, to the mutual indwelling of the members of the Body, because of Christ–“that he may dwell in us and we in him… by him, and with him, and in him”–we participate in the koinonia of the Holy Trinity because we are united to Christ the Son.

In the koinonia of Jesus, we share with someone (a person) in something (a shared, deeply personal participation)–it is both personal and affectionate–it is adoption into the Father’s family as sons and daughters because we share in Christ. We are made one in Christ (Gal 3:28), we are altogether the fullness of Christ (Eph 1:23), we are united to Christ in baptism (Col 2:12), we are raised to walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4), and we are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph 2:6). With him we die, and with him we rise. As he ascends, we ascend.

Koinonia Lifts Us Up

There are two broad movements in our worship service that always go together: (1) Word and (2) Sacrament. We begin our service with the Liturgy of the Word, and then we end with the Liturgy of the Table. The word “liturgy” comes straight from the Greek word in Acts 13:2, usually translated as “worship”–it’s a compound word for “people” and “work”–our worship is “the work of the people,” liturgy.

Our liturgy goes all the way back to the early church (see Justin Martyr in A.D. 155). In A.D. 215, in The Apostolic Tradition, Hippolytus described the call and response at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Table:

“The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give him thanks and praise.”

Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition

At the beginning of our Eucharistic liturgy, we “lift up our hearts” together into the heavenly courts where Jesus–in his physical, resurrected body–sits at the right hand of the Father. St. John Chrysostom exhorts us, “Let us beware that we do not remain on the earth.” Fr Alexander Schmemman explains:

“… if we remain on earth we have no place in this heavenly eucharist… [we must] turn our hearts on high… Thus, when we hear this ultimate summons let us ask ourselves: are our hearts turned to the Lord, is the ultimate treasure of our heart in God, in heaven? If so, then in spite of all our weakness, all our fallenness, we have been received into heaven, we behold now the light and glory of the kingdom.”

Schmemman, The Eucharist, 169

At the Lord’s table, we are lifted up in the Spirit like John (Rev 4:1) to sing praise to God and to the Lamb (Rev 5:8) with “Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing” the heavenly song, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Rev 4:8). Our worship is heaven-and-earth-united worship.

• lifted up, Rev 4:1;
• holy, holy, holy, Rev 4:8;
• altar, Rev 8:3;
• white robes, Rev 4:4;
• candles, Rev 1:12;
• incense, Rev 5:8;
• manna, Rev 2:17;
• I could keep going…

“The Eucharist [is] proof of a koinonia held out to humanity now… [and] a truly human participation in God must happen in a truly human way,” at a table, with the most basic of human acts: a shared meal (Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 160-61). Following Calvin, Canlis describes this movement of koinonia as our being…

“…drawn up to God rather than dragging him down to us – whether it be in the Lord’s Supper, idolatry, or carnal ways of conceiving of God. Yet it is not only that we must ascend to Christ (and not he to us), but that our whole lives are now reoriented and repersonalized by our communion [koinonia] with the Son of God.”

Ibid., 119

Calvin asks, “[H]ow could we aspire to what is on high, without Jesus Christ drawing us there?” We cannot unless we are united to Christ. Canlis concludes then that “the Christian life is not response to God but inclusion in God” (Ibid., 125-27).

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also… You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”

John 14:3, 28

Why did Christ come down to us? Christ descended…

“… that he might unite us to God; for until we have reached that point, we are, as it were, in the middle of the course. We too imagine to ourselves but a half-Christ, and a mutilated Christ, if he does not lead us to God… Let us therefore learn to behold Christ humbled in the flesh, so that he may conduct us to the fountain of a blessed immortality; for he was not appointed to be our guide, merely to raise us to the sphere of the moon or of the sun, but to make us one with God the Father.”

John Calvin; quoted in Canlis, Ibid., 126

Calvin says that we only have a “half-Christ” if we only imagine Christ as coming down to us. Christ descended so that we might ascend “by him, and with him, and in him” to be one with Father. Jesus is one with the Father. Christ came down to us not because of any want or need in himself (this is God’s aseity). Rather, Christ came down to us in order to display God’s loving character (for God is love), and he desires to multiply love and rejoicing in his presence. “Jesus Christ leads us there and raises us by the graces which He distributes” (Ibid., 130).

The physical, bodily resurrected Christ has ascended to the right hand of God the Father in heaven, and because we are united together in Christ, we are lifted up into his heavenly presence with the saints and the angels. Importantly, this heavenward movement is physically embodied at the Lord’s table, not as individuals having a personal spiritual experience, but as one body, united together with and in Christ. Canlis concludes:

“Communion [koinonia] in the Lord’s Supper is not a human activity but the Spirit’s means of grounding and reconstituting our very being. As such, the Eucharist is an extension of that all-radical, all-transforming communion we share, by invitation, with the Trinity. For communion with the risen Jesus can never be anything but material and mediated by creaturely things.”

Ibid., 171

Koinonia In The New Creation

Holy Scripture begins with Creation. The story begins in a garden, where heaven and earth overlap, where God and man are intimately together. God tells man to guard and keep this place (the work of a priest; Gen 2:15) and to cultivate seeds [bread] and fruit [wine] (Gen 1:12). But man took the fruit of the devil and destroyed this intimate space (Gen 3:6). Heaven and earth were separated. Man continued to plant vineyards (Gen 9:20), but like Adam, the fruit of the vine brought destruction (Gen 9:21).

Holy Scripture ends with New Creation. But before the end, those who live in the city of man, Babylon, drink the cup of destruction (Rev 16:19, 18:6). Their gluttonous feast is demonic and destructive.

“The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again!”

Revelation 18:14

But the story does not end there. The Lamb of God shed his blood (Rev 5:6), he drank the cup of wrath for us (Lk 22:42), and after this, he gives us a cup, not of judgment, but a cup of life in his kingdom (Mk 10:39). Holy Scripture ends with heaven and earth reunited at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). Heaven and earth restored, spiritual and physical united at the table of the everlasting feast.

When we gather at the Lord’s table, we are not simply looking back (at the Last Supper); we are not simply looking forward (to the Lamb’s Supper); we are participating in Jesus restoring heaven and earth right now. The end has come, heaven has come down in Christ and we are lifted up in Christ. The New Creation is breaking into the present at the table, and this is exactly what we pray before we receive the Supper: “Our Father… in heaven… thy kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven…give us this day our daily bread.”

“At the Lord’s table, we receive an initial taste of the final heavens and earth, but the Lord’s Supper is not merely a sign of the eschatological feast, as if the two were separate feasts. Instead, the Supper is the early stage of that very feast. Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are displaying in history a glimpse of the end of history and anticipating in this world the order of the world to come.”

Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry, 15

From beginning to end, Holy Scripture sets a physical table with bread and wine as the place where God and man meet: in the garden, in the tabernacle and the Temple, at the Passover, at the Last Supper, and at the Supper of the Lamb. “There is no room given to develop a spirituality that defies creation and the importance of the human body for spiritual formation” (Kreglinger, The Spirituality of Wine, 71).

The Lord’s table is the place where heaven and earth is being reunited now, where koinonia in Christ is created and renewed, where intimate and mutual indwelling happens on earth as it is in heaven. Let us therefore keep the feast!

by Fr Chris Borah

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Eucharist is just a fancy (Greek) word for thanksgiving. When we think about “the Holy Eucharist,” we generally rush straight to the table–to the meal on the table–to the bread and to the wine. In modern times, we go even smaller, talking about the atoms that make up the bread and the wine (this is the modern discussion about transubstantiation; read Article XXVIII in our BCP, p. 783). We will get to the bread and wine, but eucharist is so much bigger than that.

The Whole Picture

Read just a little bit of pre-modern eucharistic theology and you’ll find very little conversation about questions like “Is the bread bread?” or “grape juice or wine?” Why is that? Because the Lord’s table is a bigger picture. There is Someone seated at the Head of the table, there are many gathered around the table, and the bread is broken and the cup is passed to all to make them one at the table. We zoom in and focus on ourselves and upon the elements to our peril.

“When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.”

1 Corinthians 11:20–21

We focus on atoms and yeast bacteria and not on Jesus. We keep our heads down and make the meal about me and myself, when we should lift up our heads and see Jesus and all the saints gathered around the table as one. Eastern Orthodox theologian, Fr Alexander Schmemann laments our present age as being consumed with “utterly individualistic piety,” and this in the Orthodox Church (not the self-declared “independent” churches all around us)!

“The man who says, as is so often the case in our day, “I am deeply faithful, but my faith does not need the Church,” may possibly believe, and even deeply, but his faith is something other than that faith that from the first day of Christianity was the thirst for baptismal entry into the Church and the constant quenching of this thirst in the “unity of faith and love” at Christ’s table in his kingdom.”

Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 151

Before we start talking about our practice of drinking from one common cup, before we talk about the one loaf of bread and the Lord’s table–before we get into the smaller details–we must see the big picture, all of us together as one around the table. “In Christ Jesus” we are made “one… in his flesh,” in him we are “one new man,” reconciled together in “one body,” granted access to God in “one Spirit,” “in him” we are built into a single holy place. (Eph 2:13-22) “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16–17). Peter Leithart answers the Apostle Paul’s question (1 Cor 1:13),

““Has Christ been divided?” The answer is, in a sense, “Yes,” for at the table the bread is broken and distributed to the church, just as at the cross His body was torn for us. But this division of Christ has the goal of uniting the church. On the cross, Christ was broken in the process of breaking down the dividing wall separating Jew and Gentile; in the Supper, Christ is divided so that His one loaf can feed many.”

Peter Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry, p. 136

Schmemann perfectly sums up the fullness of the unity that God has accomplished in Christ:

“The miracle of the church assembly lies in that it is not the “sum” of the sinful and unworthy people who comprise it, but the body of Christ. How often do we say we are going to church…? We forget, meanwhile, that we are the Church, we make it up, that Christ abides in his members and that the Church does not exist outside us or above us, but we are in Christ and Christ is in us.”

Schmemann, Ibid., p. 23

At the beginning, we must get our heads up and see the unity that is pictured, and created, and renewed, and sealed at the Lord’s table. Holy Eucharist is the Sacrament of Unity. We do not go to church, we are the Church (Matt 18:20). We are made one in Christ as we partake of one bread. One Mediator. One Spirit. One loaf. One cup. One body.

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Right in the middle of our eucharistic prayer, the celebrant says these words: “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving [eucharist!], and we offer you these gifts.” (BCP p. 133) What we bring to God every Sunday is very little: our simple songs, our humble prayers, common bread, common wine, maybe a little bit of money–we bring our unified sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. And the miracle of the Eucharist is that he receives our childlike offerings and then he gives us himself in return. What an exchange!

Our offering of praise and thanksgiving culminates at the Lord’s table, but it begins way before that. On Saturday night, in homes scattered throughout the world, we pray looking forward to our shared eucharist: “Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven.” (A Collect for Sabbath Rest, BCP p. 24)

When we wake on Sunday morning, when we scramble to get semi-decent clothes on our children (and on ourselves!) and everyone in the car on time, we are waging war against the world, the flesh, and the devil in our pursuit of God in the assembly (that’s what the word “church” means). The early church called this the “sacrament of the assembly.” If we don’t gather, we are not part of the assembly. The work of preparation, the warfare of going to be the assembly (church!) is sacrifice. This is unseen praise. This is thanksgiving.

Jesus unites our voices together in harmony. He makes us alive together with his word. We proclaim one creed. Jesus makes us one on our knees in confession. He gives us peace. Jesus lifts up our hearts together as one at his table. We are “made one body with him, that he may dwell is us and we in him.” Heaven and earth are united together in one assembly in Christ, “with all your saints into the joy of your heavenly kingdom, where we shall see our Lord face to face.”

“All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ. By him, and with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. Amen.”