Eucharist. Remixed. Perhaps.

Why do we practice communion? Was Jesus some sort of cannibalistic nut job? Is all this symbolic? Is there something more?

“In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God. He was in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn't make. Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” – John 1.1-5

God created us in his image, making us intricately linked with him. An unexplainable connection that we can try to explain but more or less just sense or feel. Even those cultures tucked deep away in jungles and deserts claim a link with nature, the sun gods or the river gods… something outside of themselves that makes them unified with creation. Our Scripture claims the same, in that we and the rocks and mountains and zebras are all creations of a Creator. This image, though, speaks something different – we are intimately linked not with creation only, but with the Creator himself.

Adam and Eve were in paradise, in total communion with God. They walked the same earth, occupied the same space as their Creator. They loved him and he loved them. The whole deal was pronounced “good” by the Creator, and Love ruled.

And then serpent spoke. Adam and Eve sought to become like God by their own means and failed to recognize or forgot about the God already in them and with them. They ruined their fellowship, banished from paradise for their own sake.

Thousands of years passed. Humanity, the object of Divine Love, constantly rebelling against the Divine Lover, turning away his sacred romancing, drawing them constantly back to him. They refused, still seeking, aching to be reconciled but insisting on their own way.

And then the Creator became the created. Divine became human. Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, at the same time. God, above space and time inserted himself into it. Why? To reconcile that thousand-year-old divorce.

Jesus had a ton of people following him. The sick followed him – they heard he sometimes touched people and they were suddenly not sick. Tax collectors followed him – he took time to eat dinner with them. Prostitutes followed him – he spoke to him as though they were actually human. The religious elites followed him – he ticked them off. The healer, the friend, the radical… he was many things to many people.

On this particular day, he was a provider.

A large crowd enveloped him, drawn by the miracles they had seen and heard about. Jesus crossed Galilee and climbed a hill to sit with his closest friends for a while. He looked over the crowd and asked one of his friends, Phillip, a question.

“Where can we buy bread to feed these people?”

Philip answered in the way most of us would, “Uh, nowhere.”

Another friend spoke up, “There is a kid here who has some fish and some bread… but not enough to feed all these thousands.”

I imagine Jesus smiled his “I’m Jesus and I’m about to do something that will blow your mind” smile as he said, “Make the people sit down.” He took the food and gave thanks for it, and told his friends to distribute it.

No one went hungry. In fact 5000 people ate their fill, and there was enough to take home for later.

Later on, the crowd noticed that Jesus’ boat was gone, but that no one had seen him leave. So, as good crowds do with someone who just fed them, they went and found him.

Once they found him, someone asked, “Teacher, when did you get here?” The implication was, “Why didn’t you invite us?”

“You are just following me because I gave you free food, not because of how you saw God in my actions,” Jesus said. “Quit wasting your time searching for cheap tricks – search for the kind of food that will stick with you. The kind of food that I, the Son of Man, provide.”

The crowds longed for this food that wouldn’t leave them hungry ever again, but they weren’t quite sure what Jesus was talking about (as was often the case with Jesus). “Why don’t you just show us what’s going on? Our Scriptures tell us that Moses fed our forefathers. The bread from heaven and all that.”

Jesus paused, perhaps deciding how to phrase his thoughts. “The significance of that story is not that Moses called down food from heaven, but that God stands right now, offering you bread from heaven. Real bread. The bread of God came down out of heaven and is giving life to the world.”

The crowd became excited. “Give us that bread! Let us eat it forever!”

“I am that bread of Life. Those who come to me hunger and thirst no more. Ever. Once you embrace me, I never let go. I came down from heaven not to follow my own whim, but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me. What is that will? That all of you would be made whole – my job is to put you on your feet alive and whole when time ends.”

The religious elites got real uptight. “Who is he to say he is the bread from heaven? Isn’t this that poor carpenter’s son? We know his family! He is a liar!”

Jesus could sense their anger and said, “Don’t argue over me. This is not about you! You’re not in charge – the Father is in charge. If you sit under my teaching, you’re listening to the Father. You hear and see it firsthand from me, and I have it firsthand from the Father. No one has seen the Father except the One who has his Being alongside the Father… and you can see me. If you believe in me, you have real life, eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your ancestors ate bread in the desert and they died. Here is the bread out of heaven – if you eat it you will not die. I am living Bread! This Bread that I present to the world so that can eat and live is myself, this flesh and blood self.”

Some weren’t getting it. “How can this fool serve himself as a meal?”

Jesus kept going. “If you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have life within you. When you eat my flesh and drink my blood, I am in you and you are in me. If you make a meal of me, you live because of me.”

***

Some time later Jesus and his followers met together for the Passover meal that the community celebrated every year. Jesus’ mood turned very grave as the meal began. “You have no idea how I have looked forward to eating this meal with you before my suffering begins. One final time with my closest friends. This will be the last we share before we meet again in the kingdom of God.”

He raised the bread, blessing it. Then he tore it, passing it among them. “This is my body, given to you. Take it. Eat it.”

He then raised his glass, blessing the wine. “This is my blood,” he said, his eyes reddening and his voice quivering. “This is my blood poured out for you. A new covenant between you, me, and my Father. Drink.”

Memories washed over his followers. That day after he fed all those people with the fish and bread. I am the bread of life. If you make a meal of me, you live because of me. Eat my flesh and drink my blood…

***
Jesus seemed to be adamant on the point. Eat my flesh and dink my blood. Why would he be?

People living during the decades following Jesus’ death and resurrection thought the Christians were a cult of cannibals, due directly to this story and the practice of communion (the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist).

Through the centuries, many Christian denominations have come to view communion as more or less simply symbolic. The juice and the bread are simple reminders of what Christ has done. I agree with that.

However, that doesn’t seem to reconcile Jesus’ insistence for his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Obviously, he wasn’t insisting that we have Fried Jesus for dinner. Rather, he was insisting that we partake of his very essence. That we, in a sense, become Jesus.

But this becoming doesn’t mean that we will soon be able to walk on water and be able to call ourselves equal to the Creator. No, this means that we become Jesus by spending time with him, learning from him, being captured by the Holy Spirit, striving to have his mind, seeing people as he sees people, talking to people as he spoke to them. In a word, Loving.

Love, after all is the truest essence of God. It propels him in his every action – Creation, all the repentance messages of the Old Testament prophets, and ultimately Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

Jesus’ message to us was for us to consume him so that we may live as he lived. That we may be in his presence.

The bread and the juice are reminders and symbols and also much more. This simple eating and drinking is where we intersect with countless men and women across the ages who have done the same and where we ultimately intersect with Christ.

Where we become the Word.