The Eucharist, An Invitation into Reality

We are living in an unprecedented time when the world appears to be losing touch with reality. The rise in narcotic consumption, to fake news and social media, demonstrate that people don’t only attempt to escape reality; they actually struggle to discern what is real in the first place. These challenges are only escalated by the recent technological advancements in Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence.

Many of the assumptions held in contemporary culture tend to be gnostic in character. Escaping the mind and body is perceived as therapeutic, whilst rewriting history in an attempt to be delivered from its evils has also been presumed to be virtuous. Liberation from institutions due to distrust in authority thereof, also appears to be an assumed necessity. The Church’s mission holds an antithetical set of assumptions to these, for God redeems our flesh through sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3). In the same way that Christ was raised, our bodies too will be raised. This is an historical reality and will continue to be so, as God’s kingdom transforms the world in history. The institution of the church is the means by which He fulfils this mission, through community, word and sacrament. As the world loses touch with reality, the church has a profound opportunity to celebrate its goodness and integrate people back into it. It is within this context that I will explore how the Eucharist is a sacrament.

The Word of God is corporately communicated to His people through two primary means of grace. God’s promises are heralded from the pulpit as the Scriptures are taught. His promises are also spoken over and to His people through the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. The ministry of Word and Sacrament are necessary elements of what identifies a true church, as they were ordained by Christ Himself. They are vitally necessary to the life of the church and spiritual health of God’s people.

When the Scriptures are taught, God’s promises of grace and good will towards His people are declared to them. In our weakness and humanity however, people often hear the Word of God taught and doubt that God’s promises are truly for them. Struggling to believe specifically for themselves, they can subconsciously assume that promises are for someone else in the congregation. The Eucharist caters to this need in that it delivers God’s promises in a more tangible, direct and personal way. As the Priest offers the sacramental elements to the individual, Christ is effectually promising the receiver that His body was broken for you and His blood was shed for you. They are receiving these promises, not in a merely corporate and immaterial way that is more prone to doubt, but in a more direct and personal way through tangible substances that can be objectively consumed. In effect, the promises of God are physically touched and consumed, making them easier to believe and received by faith. Therefore, the Eucharist as a sacrament is a certain sure witness that strengthens and confirms our faith (Art. XXV).

The Eucharist is more than a mere symbol though. It is an efficacious means of grace by which God enacts and effects those promises within us. Whilst the Bread and Wine symbolise the Body and Blood of Christ, they actually become the Body and Blood for us, when we receive them as such by faith. It is in this sense that Richard Hooker righty argued that the transubstantiation happens not within the sacramental objects, but rather within our hearts.[1] When received in this way by faith, we receive Christ and all His benefits and participate in His life. Wisdom was required in order for the earliest humans to cultivate creation and develop bread and wine (Genesis 1-9) and through these means we receive Christ who has now become our wisdom and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). Through the Wine we receive the rich joy, fruitfulness, blessing and prosperity found in Christ. In the Bread we embrace God’s hospitality, provision and nourishment within our souls.

The sacramental Bread further typifies Christ and His Body, for Jesus Himself is The Bread of Life (John 6:35) and St Paul emphasised the unity of God’s people as “one body” (1 Cor. 12:12) in his eucharistic instructions to the Corinthian Church. Through the Bread we receive a family, community and a place to belong. As we meet together to offer up our sacrifice of thanksgiving (eucharistia literally means “giving of thanks”) and partake of the Bread and Wine, we are effectually being drawn up into heavenly places together, to sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in order to eat, drink, and have communion with Christ and the Saints. The Eucharist is God’s means of actively and objectively forming a people for Himself, a new humanity, as St John Chrysostom profoundly put it, “Christ makes us His body, not by faith only, but in reality.”[2]

In concluding, the reception of God’s truth is the only way one can fully embrace reality.  For He created all things. This is His world and we are His creatures. Living in accordance with this is what it truly means to live in reality. Through the Eucharist God connects one with this reality in a metaphysical way. When the sacramental elements are held in one’s hands the basis of reality, the truth, is no longer invisible and seemingly abstract, but it becomes visible, tangible, and imminent. Its reception ceases to be limited to the mind alone as the bodily senses are engaged. Moreover, instead of seeking to escape from reality, the fact that God uses physical objects of creation as channels of grace, draws us to an exciting exploration of the kind of world that God has made. One that is not governed by impersonal forces or fates, but by a loving and relational God who miraculously surprises His people through faith and prayer.

[1] Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book Five, Vol. 2, Everyman’s Library No. 202, ed., Ernest Rhys (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1922) 328.

[2] St John Chrysostom, Ad Populum, Homily 60; et 61; Homilies on Mark, Homily 89.