Eucharistic meditation, Fourth Advent

John 6:35: Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

Throughout the centuries, Christians have thought about the Lord’s Supper by analogy with the incarnation. Just as God became man in Jesus, so the bread and wine of the Eucharist are or contain the body and blood of Christ. Luther put it this way: “What is true concerning Christ is also true concerning the sacrament. In order for the divinity to dwell in a human body, it is not necessary for the human nature to be transubstantiated and the divinity to be contained under the accidents of the human nature. Both natures are simply there in their entirety, and it is true to say ‘This man is God; this God is man.’ Even though philosophy is not capable of grasping this, faith is. And the authority of God’s word is greater than the capacity of our intellect to grasp it. In the same way, it is not necessary in the sacrament that the bread and wine be transubstantiated and that Christ be contained under their accidents in order that the real body and real blood may be present. But both remain there at the same time, and it is truly said: ‘This bread is my body, this wine is my blood,’ and vice versa.”

This is by no means a perfect analogy, and can be highly misleading. God is not “there” in the bread the way He was there in Jesus. This bread is not assumed by the Incarnate Son in the way that humanity was assumed by the eternal Son. If we press the analogy of Incarnation and Eucharist, we are bound to go off track.

Yet, at another level, there is a strong analogy between the incarnation and the Supper, in that both display the humility of God. When we are incorporated into the body of Christ, we don’t go through some elaborate initiation like those popular among the mystery religions of the ancient world. We are incorporated into Christ by water, the most common substance on this drenched planet. And when we commune weekly with God, He doesn’t call us to mystical activity that only few attain. He offers us the staple of human diet, bread, along with the gift of wine.

Luther recognized this well. In one of his Advent sermons he said, “If we don’t want to understand this with our ears, but accept only that which our eyes see and our hands touch, we will miss our King and be lost. There’s a big difference between this King and other kings. With the latter everything is outward pomp, great and gallant appearance, magnificent air. But not so with Christ. His mission and work is to help against sin and death, to justify and bring to life. He has placed his help in baptism and the Sacrament, and incorporated it in the Word and preaching. To our eyes Baptism appears to be nothing more than ordinary water, and the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood simple bread and wine, like other bread and wine, and the sermon, hot air from a man’s mouth. But we must not trust what our eyes see, but listen to what this King is teaching us in his Word and Sacrament, namely, I poured out my blood to save you from your sins, to rescue you from death and bring you to heaven; to that end I have given you baptism as a gift for the forgiveness of sins, and preach to you unceasingly by word of mouth concerning this treasure, sealing it to you with the Sacrament of my body and blood, so that you need never doubt. True, it seems little and insignificant, that by the washing of water, the Word, and the Sacrament this should all be effected. But don’t let your eyes deceive you. At that time, it seemed like a small and insignificant thing for him to come riding on a borrowed donkey and later be crucified, in order to take away sin, death, and hell. No one could tell this by his appearance, but the prophet foretold it, and his work later fulfilled it. Therefore we must simply grasp it with our ears and believe it with our hearts, for our eyes are blind.”