Worship Notes

Sacraments, part IV: The Bread of Holy Communion

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“What’s on the menu?” “What’s for dinner?” Up till recently, I would often “grab a burger” or skip lunch entirely. Now, I use lunchtime as an excuse to go home and throw a Frisbee or walk with Katy (our 6-month-old pup). Mealtimes ought to be more than sustenance. They ought to include the people, living and gone, the memories, the meanings and emotions evoked by the taste of ginger, the smell of baking bread, or the sight of a cinnamon and sugar-coated pie-crust. In the same way, our Lord’s Supper, is a complex meal of remembering, conversing and relating. Like suppertime, it is traditional, it is social and it is personal.

“The body of Christ,” is announced as the bread is given. This meal is not, however, a miming of cannibalism. In a way, it is an answer against such a notion, because this bread describes—not eating dead flesh—but accepting the living presence of Christ. Symbolic? Yes, but one that visually displays what is actually happening through, with, in and around the Meal: Christ gathering us, offering his forgiveness; and we receiving, swallowing and serving in response.

As Christianity spread, the bread of the Lord’s Supper was misunderstood to be some kind of magic-food. Instead of eating it at communion, a few people would hide the bread in their hands and take it home for a variety of superstitious purposes (healing, warding off evil, etc.) To prevent this from happening, clergy began to place the bread directly on the communicants’ tongues.

Biblically, bread draws us deep into Genesis after the fall, “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread” (3:19). Bread describes life on the edge; a crust of bread and sip of water may be the only thing that stands between life and starvation. Right now—when most of us can afford a luscious cake or an occasional crème brulée—instead basic bread is rationed out in meager portions to the whole congregation. We are reminded that, when it comes to God’s grace, we are all beggars for each morsel.

But each small piece of bread is drenched with incredible promise: “For the forgiveness of sin, given for you.” When you are handed the bread during communion, allow it to be placed into the palm of your hand; the bread and promise are not taken by you, but “given for you.” Each time those words are heard, this old ritual is made to speak astonishingly new grace—from Christ’s lips, into our lives—“for you.”

(Next month, The Sacraments, Part V: The Wine of Holy Communion.)

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