A Ramble about Holy Eucharist

If you're like me, you not only have a computer, but sometimes it seems like it's surgically attached to your hand. When I get bored sometimes I start rearranging the Desktop on my computer. I change the themes, the icons, and also rearrange the icons which start the different applications directly from the Desktop.

I don't really need these icons, or application launchers if you prefer. Most of them sit unused on my screen as I don't use the programs they represent that often. On my wife's computer screen hordes of these icons just sit and we have to periodically clean it off. On Windows, you don't really get a choice as to whether or not they're there, when you install a program it parks one or more of these little pictures right on the Desktop for you to admire it in all its glory. Screen real estate gets eaten up pretty fast this way. It's so much of a problem on Windows that the later versions of that Operating System have a handy tool to remove the ones you don't generally use.

As annoying as these little icons can be, they actually serve a very handy and useful function for the programs you use most of the time. Remember way back in the day when Dinosaurs ruled the earth and most average cavemen ran some version of what was called DOS on their computers? There was no friendly picture display. You actually had to know where the program's executable was on your computer. If you wanted to run say a program called "program.exe", for example, you would likely have to type something like "C:\folder1\folder2\program.exe" at the command line. Thankfully, graphical user interfaces were invented.

These days, a similar approach if you didn't have any launchers would be to dig through the file browser. For example, if you had to launch MS Word, you'd have to continuously click folders in the file browser called Explorer until you reached a file called "WINWORD.exe". It would look something like C:\ -> Program Files -> Microsoft Office -> Office13 -> winword.exe.

Enter the desktop shortcut or application launcher. A lot of folks probably think these are the actual programs themselves, but they're not. They's little files assigned a picture and tied to the program they represent with the address of where that file is located on your computer. That way you don't have to go digging for it and you don't have to know more about the workings of your computer's file system than you really want to. You just click it and do what you need to do. They aren't the actual programs, but they might as well be for most people and for all practicality they serve the same purpose. They have no real purpose apart from the program they're tied to, but because they are tied to that program they become powerful yet simple little tools.

The death of Jesus Christ on the Cross was the one great final sacrifice for all mankind. This is agreed upon by every Christian denomination and the acceptance of this fact is the most basic belief of the Church, however the Church's theologians debate it. The Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church dictate that one must partake of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ in some way in order to receive salvation. This is true for any denomination, irregardless of how this is interpreted by the individual denomination's theology.

There is a little known fact about sacrifices in the ancient world. In order for a sacrifice to be considered valid, you had to physically eat it. Under the Mosaic law as found in the first five books of the Bible, nearly every sacrifice, including Passover sacrifices, sin sacrifices, peace offerings, and others had to be either eaten or cremated, and in most cases both was preferred. In one place in the book of Numbers, Moses gets after Aaron in a big way for not eating the sacrifice, but cremating it only and Aaron has to explain himself. In ancient Greek culture, the same thing was expected in sacrifices to their gods, especially the Olympian twelve. A sacrifice was not considered valid or complete unless someone had eaten it. This is actually the reason why the eating of meat offered to idols was such a problem issue for Paul to have to explain to the Greek speaking churches in his letters.

So, if Jesus' death on the cross was a sacrifice, and this was the ancient understanding of sacrifices, what does that mean? In order for His death to be considered a valid and genuine sacrifice, to partake in His sacrifice means to physically eat His flesh. He knew this and so did the people of His day. The people in John who questioned how they were supposed to eat His flesh and drink His blood didn't misunderstand Him. He meant what He said and they knew it, and it probably appalled them a little. Human sacrifices hadn't been practiced for centuries in that part of the world, and then only by pagan cultures which had been deliberately destroyed for that reason among many.

So, there was a problem. How was Jesus supposed to be a valid sacrifice for everyone who partakes of Him, when eating human beings was, and still is, culturally and morally abhorrent. And how was His sacrifice supposed to be made available for everyone who believes in Him long after the fact, especially after the resurrection?

Jesus Himself told us that solution. On the night He was betrayed, He took bread blessed it, broke it and gave it to His students saying, "this is My Body which is broken for you." In the same way He took the cup, blessed it and gave it to His students saying, "this is My Blood of the covenant which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this in memory of Me."

This has been a point of division among Church theologians for centuries now. The ancient view was undebated, they accepted what Jesus said at face value and defended it without reservation. All those who refused to accept that the bread and wine were His Body and Blood were excommunicated as heretics. It was that serious to them. These days, many churches hold differing views ranging from the literal body and blood of Christ to only a representation of the body and blood of Christ. Such views hold names like transsubstantiation, consubstantiation, and others. The central debate is the fact that once blessed, the bread and wine remain, to all experience of the senses, bread and wine. They don't look any different and they don't taste any different. Certainly not like the metallic taste of human blood, or the taste of human flesh.

I'm going to run the risk of being yelled at and posit that the bread and wine was a similar solution to the application launcher. The bread and wine themselves are in fact just bread and wine until they are fundamentally linked to the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. This link which crosses time and space to one event in history keeps us from having to develop time travel and physically eat the dead body of Jesus Christ. It allows us to partake in His sacrifice in a real and powerful way under circumstances which would render it otherwise impossible to access for anyone, even those who were His students contemporary with Him.

I don't think it's all that important as to how this is done or how we explain it. The bread and wine become so intertwined with the body and blood of Jesus Christ as to become indistinguishable from the corpse removed from the cross two thousand years ago, and we should thank God that it does. It's a "launcher" that defies all explanation, and is rightly called a "mystery". It is the mercy and love of God at work shielding us to some degree from the gruesome reality of the mechanics of His sacrifice, and a constant reminder of that sacrifice for us, and to some degree a reminder of our death with Him as Paul says in Romans.

As we prepare to celebrate the Holy Eucharist on this Sunday or a Sunday soon, or if you only call it Communion. Let's remember what it really is, and who.