Becoming the Body of Christ

The Bread of Eucharist (“Thanksgiving”) is a real and true participation in the Body of Christ. The Cup of Eucharist is a real and true participation of the Blood of Christ. There is only one body and one Eucharist, and in that one Eucharist, that One Cup, that One Bread we have a real and true participation in the One Body of Christ. 

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf. (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).

Paul was speaking the language of real participation. Modern Evangelicals largely follow the philosophy of Nominalism, but neither Paul nor the Greeks nor the Hebrews nor the Christians held any such way of thinking. They understood that the reality of a thing is not found in the words or thoughts we assign to it but in the thing itself. So when Paul says that the Cup of Thanksgiving is a participation in the Blood of Christ, he is not saying that the Cup is like the Blood in some figurative sense but that the reality of the Cup and of the Blood is inseparable.

Our feelings, whatever they may be, have nothing to do with this reality. It is an impoverishment that so many today who deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist keep trying to wrap the Eucharist up in the language of feelings, thoughts and sentiments. If the Eucharist were nothing more than the thoughts and sentiments we bring to it — no matter how uplifting those thoughts and warm those sentiments, or how much joy or tears they generate in us — then it would be empty ritual and quite unnecessary, for there are any number of ways of generating such thoughts and feelings. The Christian faith is not about empty ritual; if we make it into  that, we make it into a lie. The true gift of the Eucharist that Christ has given for us to feed upon is his Real Presence — Body and Blood.

The Bread of Eucharist does not merely generate sentiments about the Body of Christ but participates in the reality of His Body given for us. The Wine of Eucharist does not merely generate thoughts about the Blood of Christ but participates in the reality of His Blood shed for us. When we partake of the consecrated elements, we are partaking of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ — and so do we become the Body of Christ.