Communing with God

Communion is our chance to celebrate and remember what Jesus has done for us.

On the night He was betrayed, Jesus did something significant.

This is not surprising, as Jesus did many significant things but this time it wasn’t a miracle, a healing or a sign. It hardly even took much time. But it was something Jesus told His followers to continue doing in memory of Him.

While eating the Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus took the wine and the bread and called them His blood and body. He told His followers to eat and drink them, and to continue to do this in His memory. (You can find this in Matthew 26, Luke 22, Mark 14 and 1 Corinthians 11:23- 25.) This remembrance feast (called the Lord’s Supper or Communion) has caused some controversy throughout history, with some critics even claiming that Christians are cannibals! It is certainly true that Jesus’ words are pretty strange when you encounter them for the first (or second, or third) time. What is the use of repeating this strange meal? Jesus was giving us a way to remember His sacrifice. He was about to be arrested and crucified, even though he was entirely innocent.

He was about to be killed—His body broken, and His blood spilled— for our sins, and through this selfless act provided our salvation and forgiveness. Sharing together emblems, which represent this, can help us put Jesus’ sacrifice and love in the forefront of our minds. In 1 Corinthians 11:26, Paul tells the believers that whenever they celebrate communion, they proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus. As followers, our lives are to bear witness to the wonderful news of His death and resurrection, and this meal can remind us of our calling to follow Him.

Its interesting that this ceremony involves food. When we eat food we chew it, swallow and digest it, break it down and the important parts of it are taken into our bodies. The food we have eaten is then used to keep us alive, to rebuild broken parts of us, to heal woundedness, and to build us, from the inside out.

When we share in remembering Jesus’ sacrifice by eating and drinking this special meal, we can think of the fact that Jesus offers to come inside each one of us and make us new people. He offers to give us a new life, to take our brokenness and woundedness and make us whole, to turn us into something extraordinary: a child of God. In celebrating the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the fact that Jesus came to earth and died for us to make this transformation possible. And that’s something worth remembering!