1 Corinthians 10:16-17: Is not this cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?
Many Christians over the centuries have thought of the Lord’s Supper as a kind of continuing or second incarnation. First the Son gets embodied in flesh, but now that He’s gone away He gets embodied in another material. Nowadays, He dwells among us not in a human body but in bread.
This kind of analogy between the incarnation and the presence of Christ in the Supper has produced all sorts of bad habits. If this is Jesus here on the table, we should bow down and worship Him. We should keep the bread after we’re done, and maybe even preserve a bit in a golden chest so we can go back and venerate it later.
One way to say this is that we should not think of the Eucharist not so much as Christmas – as if the Son were born again in bread – but instead think about it instead in terms of Advent. This table marks a triple Advent: It celebrates the past coming of the Lord; it is the coming of the Lord; and it looks ahead to the coming of the Lord. We commemorate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; we feed on Him by the Spirit; we proclaim the Lord’s death until He come.
When we view it as an Advent meal, we see that this Supper is about Jesus’ absence as well as His presence; it’s about the future as well as the present. It is a present feast, a feast we celebrate because the Lord has come. But it is not yet a full banquet, because the Lord is still to come.
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