Quick – name three key elements of what Christians mean when they say “Communion.”

Regardless of your faith background – religious or non-religious, Christian or not – chances are you probably thought of at least “bread” and “wine.” You might have also heard of the phrases “body of Christ” and “blood of Christ” in connection with Communion.

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If you’ve been to some kind of mass or church service that involved communion, you’ve probably experienced it as a rather somber affair. Even upbeat contemporary evangelical services tend to play somber hymns during their once-a-month communion services.

I remember when I first encountered Communion when I was probably about twelve years old. It was in a small town in deeply Islamic Yemen, at a Christmas Eve mass conducted by the Sisters of Light, the Mother Teresa group. I was a young Hindu boy then, but my mother had a deep friendship with several of the Mother Teresa sisters, since many of them were from the same part of India as my mother. So, we attended this service at the house where the sisters lived.

A Catholic priest drove in from the big capital city, hundreds of miles away. Since it was illegal in Yemen to have non-Islamic religious gatherings, the mass had to be held in secret, in a room shaded with thick curtains so that the neighbors wouldn’t report us to the police. When time came for communion, I remember that my mother and I were told to stay in our chairs, as we were not allowed to take the bread and the wine. I remember hearing the priest intone the somber words, “this is the body of Christ,” and all the nuns bowing their heads and crunching away on odd-looking whitish discs, and then the somber words, “this is the blood of Christ,” followed by equally somber sips from a simple but mysterious goblet.

I vividly remember being shocked by the thought of people actually eating the body of a dead person and drinking that corpse’s blood.

What kind of crazy people were these Christians, eating the body of their “God” person?

And now, almost two decades later, through many Communion services where I have partaken of the bread and wine (grape juice, actually) as a practicing and devout Christian, it is still a mystery to me that Christians regularly “eat” the body of Christ and “drink” the blood of Christ.

What about you? What do you think? Doesn’t this seem rather strange and uncomfortably cannibalistic, perhaps bloodthirsty even?

And, besides, so what?

Maybe you’re itching to tell me about all the great theological significances of this new covenant, about the echoes of the sacrificial Lamb, and that it’s all about Jesus giving his body and blood for ME.

Maybe you’re itching to assure me that it’s not the literal body and blood of Christ, that the Catholics are dead wrong, that it’s actually a symbolic token of the new covenant, not to be taken literally as us chewing on the bloody body of Jesus at the foot of the cross.

So what?

So Jesus gave his blood for you and broke his body for me. So we get to go to heaven. Someday.

So what?

So you drink and eat, and you remember him dying and bleeding, and you symbolically remember this new covenant, and you sing a quiet song to yourself.

Maybe you sit there and try to make yourself feel guilty about last night’s party, or you try to feel remorse about not being a “good witness” at work.

So what?

Or, maybe you’re just hungry for lunch. It is an appetizer after all, especially if you haven’t had breakfast yet.

And, why do we call it “communion” anyway? Where’s the “communal” part?

What difference does it make?

Perhaps there’s something deeper about communion – something mysterious and dangerous, something that won’t let us sit there with just deep thoughts about it, but something that demands reckless action.

Perhaps Jesus intended it to be a ritual that resonated with the deep-rooted Jewish belief that blood contains life, hence the law against eating meat that still has blood in it. Maybe Jesus intended communion to be a celebration of the giving and sharing of His life-blood.

Perhaps Jesus intended it to be a reminder that he is alive, not dead, that following him means more than belief in ideas and doctrines, that following him really means biting into his life, intimately seeking true nourishment from Him.

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Perhaps Jesus intended it to be the celebration of the Kingdom here, now, for, as he said, it is at hand.

Perhaps, Jesus intended it to be something you do regularly with other people, not just alone in your pew once a month with your little plastic cup of wholesale grape-juice-from-concentrate.

Perhaps those other people we invite to celebrate communion with us don’t necessarily have to be Christians.

Perhaps we should celebrate communion every time we eat and drink, not just once a month.

Perhaps the saints of old were on to something when they coined the word “Communion” to describe this ritual – a word with overtones of vulnerability and intimacy. Perhaps it really is an intimate act of relationship with God, more than just a guilt-trip, more than a bizarre cannibalistic holdover from sacrificial days.

Perhaps the Catholics are right after all, perhaps there really is something deep and mysterious and supernaturally transforming, and perhaps even something divinely dangerous, about the act of communion.

Perhaps communion is the beginning of a recklessly interactive relationship with Jesus, not a feel-guilty, morose sing-along about poor dead Jesus up on that tree, all dead and broken so that we can feel righteous about ourselves. Instead, it is a relationship that challenges us - a relationship that is strikingly uncomfortable, vulnerable, intense, humbling, and one that makes us bite and swallow and taste and breathe His living presence into our continually wrestling souls.

The Jews quarreled with each other, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Jesus said to them: Truly truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life everlasting, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood stays in me, and I in him. As the living father sent me and I live through the father, so he who eats me will also live through me. This is the bread which came down from heaven; not as our fathers ate and died, he who eats this bread will live forever.

All this he said as he taught in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples hearing him said: This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it?

~ John