Bill's Big Stuff

Proof of communality, one never eats with one’s enemies. Powerful image of sharing a single cup of wine.

It is very difficult to deal with the concepts of body and blood in the Elements. One commentator in the Abingdon Press commentary, noted that those words did not show up in the service until the second century or later. In my mind, it seems to be of a piece with the scapegoat nature of the interpretation of the crucifixion as the payment for our sins. Taken literally, it smacks of a symbolic cannibalism, whereby the virtues of the eaten are conferred on the one eating.

Did Jesus make some significant gesture at the Last Supper? Certainly. Was it as quoted in the Eucharist? Very possibly not.

At a personal level what am I to do with this? Communion seals the sense of community of the members of the church, and with Baptism is a most important reconfirming of belief. I cannot accept communion at the face value of the liturgy.

Several weeks later….

I have been working with this question for the last couple of weeks, and think I finally see the way clear.

The process was to read all the general commentary on the New Testament in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, as well as the passion week commentaries on all the gospels, and C.F. Wood’s general commentary on the Pauline letters in Peake. Of course I also have read the pertinent passages from the Gospels and Epistles. I also went back and looked at the commentary on the Eucharist in the Abingdon Press commentary, and found that unlike Peake, its commentators were willing to discuss the symbolism of the Eucharist, at least to limited degree.

I think I will present a collection of quotes with some notes to illustrate my path of reasoning.

First, as best as I can from memory, in the Eucharist,
“On the night in which he was betrayed, he took the bread and and, after he had given thanks, broke it. He gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this as often as you shall do it in remembrance of me.’ Likewise, after supper, he took the cup and gave it to them saying, ‘Drink you all of this. This is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.’”

At the end of the Eucharist,
“May the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, strengthen and preserve us.”

At this point, the words give a literal image that is very much at odds with the church teachings, and there are no context clues to help with the symbolism.

Next the passages from the Gospels. (I am using a college edition of Jennifer’s that is probably an edited RSV)

Mark 14: 22-25
“As they were eating, Jesus took bread and asked God’s blessing on it and broke it in pieces and gave it to them and said, ‘Eat it – this is my body.’ When he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it and gave it to them; and they all drank from it. And he said to them, ‘This is my blood, poured out for many, sealing the new agreement between God and Man. I solemnly declare that I shall never again taste wine until the day I drink a different kind in the Kingdom of God.’”

Matthew 26: 26-29
“As they were eating, Jesus took a small loaf of bread and blessed it and broke it apart and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take it and eat it, for this is my body.’ And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks for it and gave it to them and said, ‘Each one drink from it, for this is my blood, sealing the New Covenant. It is poured out to forgive the sins of multitudes. Mark my words – I will not drink this wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom.’”

Luke 22: 17-20
“Then he took a glass of wine, and when he had given thanks for it, he said, ‘Take this and share it among yourselves. For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.’ Then he took a loaf of bread; and when he had thanked God for it, he broke it apart and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body, given for you. Eat it in remembrance of me.’ After supper he gave them another glass of wine, saying, ‘This wine is the token of God’s new agreement to save you – an agreement sealed with the blood I shall pour out to purchase back your souls.’”

What finally registered, was in the general commentary on Paul, that Wood pointed out that in 1 Corinthians, Paul records the words used in the early Eucharist, and that this writing predates Mark by at least 10 years.

1 Corinthians 12:23-26
“For this is what the Lord himself has said bout his Table, and I have passed it on to you before: That on the night when Judas betrayed him, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks to God for it, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, ‘Take this and eat it. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.’ In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new agreement between God and you that has been established and set in motion by my blood. Do this in remembrance of me whenever you drink it.’

Note that in Paul’s letter, the wine is NOT the blood but the recognition of the new covenant with God. An early Christian version of “I’ll drink to that,” which comes from a practice of using a communal cup to seal an agreement. This leaves me with the bread as the body. Considering that by the time this was recorded, the early church was already thinking of itself as the body of Christ, with Jesus as the head, the original bread was not intended to be the literal body of Jesus, but representing the body of people who share the common beliefs, and that the sharing of the bread is the proof of communality. One does not eat blessed bread with one’s enemies.

If I were to take communion, I would approach it as sharing bread as a member of the church community, and drinking the wine to remind myself of and to renew a covenant with God.

Pherigo’s commentary in the chapter on Mark in Abingdon, concurs with the above considerations, at least with respect to noting the changes between Paul and the synoptic Gospels on the interpretation of the wine.
Apparently the issue of the body is not an important concern to the scholars I have read. To me it is/was, and my exegesis is that Jesus said something to the effect that the bread was the body of believers of which the disciples were part and in which they shared, and the eating of the bread was the confirmation of it.