Hard Teaching - Bread and Wine, Body and Blood?

Inspired by the words of John 6:60, I asked my congregation to give me the things about the Christian faith they found hard to accept.

They responded! See my last post for the list they gave me. Some questions we tackled in the service, and I promised to blog and write about them all.

I thought I should begin with the one that made the first hearers uneasy. Jesus had told them, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

What on earth did he mean?

Of course, these words were echoed when at the Last Supper he took bread and wine and gave them to his disciples telling them, "This is my body..this is my blood...do this in remembrance of me."

Most Christian churches regularly have a service in which we eat bread and drink wine, calling to mind this moment in Jesus' life, and consciously trying to obey his instruction "Do this in remembrance of me."

But what we believe about what we're actually doing differs a lot.

 For some of us, this is an act of commemoration. It calls to mind Jesus' death on the cross, the sacrifice he made for us.

Others of us are more literal minded about this issue, and hold that in the bread and wine is the real presence of Jesus himself, and that we are in some way re-enacting his sacrifice.

Books have been written, ink has been spilled, battles have been fought over this issue down the centuries. I'm well aware I'm not going to add anything new.

Well, I'm struck by the word Jesus used when he said "eat my body." He might as well have said "chomp" or "munch." Nom nom nom. It's that sort of word.

Eurrgh! is my reaction - perhaps it's yours too. Intellectually, I run a mile from this.

So you might expect me to veer towards thinking that communion is just a memorial.

Except that something happens at communion. It's very hard to say what, but at this moment in our worship, there is a level of closeness, of intimacy, yes of communion - there's no other word - with God that I never experience anywhere else.

When I receive the bread and the wine, I receive Jesus. It is the most precious gift.