His Body the Church

We’re handling what symbolically associates us with a range of holy matters, because they connect us with the One whose body and blood they represent. Most specifically, however, they connect us with his final and most distinctive act of obedience to God. That act was ultimate self-giving in painful (body) death (shed blood), identified respectively with this bread and “fruit of the vine.”

Eating these emblems of pain and death stretches us beyond lesser expressions of devotion, love, and obedience that characterize living like Christ. As a group, we serve as the equivalent of his body in the world today. They are not to be taken lightly but with commitment to do, if need be, the ultimate any of us can do or be for his Father and ours.