Literal flesh and blood?

Now that we have addressed the arguments raised in the OP, let us proceed to bask in the glory of the divine Eucharistic liturgy:

Now, time for [staff edit] the practice of the early Church:

I don't know why we have to trash the profound simplicity - we are the people of the new exodus.

BubbaJack said:

Speaking of Communion (Lord's Supper, Eucharist); the idea that liturgical faiths have that the bread and wine are literally Jesus's flesh and blood and that partakers are eating his literal flesh and literal blood. I can see it being a memorial that has value as a sacrament simply because Jesus says so, but to insist that it's literal flesh and blood seems like a kind of cannibalism. I don't know how else to put this, but I admit to finding it a bit disturbing.

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It would be cannibalism if the disciples took down the body of Christ from the cross and roasted his flesh as lamb chops and cooked his blood into blood pudding.
That would be literal in the sense that would make a charge of cannibalism true.
And yet, Jesus did literally give us his body and blood and life on the cross and under the whip and thorn. He did share the fate of every passover lamb that was sacrificed on the altar. His flesh and blood were literally the same as that of a sheep, that of you and me.
The body and blood he gave were not symbols, nor was the resurrected body of Christ symbolic.
If Christians are to presume that the Eucharist is mainly ceremonial, then would not the resurrected Body of Christ be symbolic and ceremonial as well?

The Eucharist is the Risen Body of Christ. If our partaking of it is a ceremonial act, then that means that we must believe in the Resurrection as symbolic too.
Spiritual realities points to a state of affairs that is much deeper and profound than the kind of reality that would presume the Euchratist to be cannibalism.
Like being born again, to literally believe in either means to literally believe in the spiritual reality that is as real as anything that we have ever experienced.

Endtime Survivors said:

I think any act can become a performance, whether it be prayer, praise, study, evangelism, attending church, helping the poor or whatever. Ultimately it's up to God to judge the motivations for why we performed this or that behavior, but still, I think the matter is one of learning rather than oppressing.

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Interestingly, this was an objection I had to evangelical worship on Sunday mornings back in my Southern Baptist days. Ostensibly we were all there to worship God. Now, I can't carry a tune to save my life so I'm not the guy who gets deeply into that kind of music.

And that, I suspect, is why I viewed evangelical worship with such a jaundiced eye. On more than one occasion, I saw the singers or one of the guitarists or something take a bow after an "improvised" (eg, carefully rehearsed well in advanced) guitar solo. It all seemed so synthetic. "Heads bowed, eyes closed, let's pray to God"... which really wasn't anything to do with piety. They simply wanted to do some stage production in a way that wasn't distracting like put the pastor's podium in place or set up someone's acoustic guitar or some such.

After attending Anglican services for several months and then visiting a Southern Baptist congregation again (long story, not worth telling), I was floored by just how contrived it all was. I kept my mouth shut but I knew in that moment that whatever my theology might be (and back then I was struggling through it as best I could), my preference was for liturgy and that will probably never change. There's a refreshing lack of stage management inherent to liturgical worship to which I have become accustomed and I will not give that up.

In short, the artifice and performance you mention to me is far more readily apparent in the Southern Baptist world which I abandoned.

Endtime Survivors said:

I think an emphasis on finding spirituality through rituals (like a series of "correct" observances) can distract away from new spiritual perspectives.

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New perspectives on ancient practices aren't inherently bad. But a good number of Protestants and evangelicals seem to want to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing it.

If one accepts the idea that doctrine matters to God, the notion of there being a right way and a wrong way of doing something becomes easy to believe. At least such was the case for me.

Endtime Survivors said:

One example is the most obvious; community, from where we get the concept of "communion". Jesus and his followers lived, worked, traveled, and shared together day to day. The book of Acts shows thousands of early Christians living together, the result of a fantastic manifestation of the Holy Spirit inspiring them. They shared all things in common as every person had need and the account says that these people "turned the world upside down". Communion, as a ritual, is pretty boring and I'd fairly suspect that most of the people who do it only do it because it's what's expected of them as part of their religion. Whether the bread is eaten joyously or grudgingly, that kind of thing has no hope whatsoever of turning the world upside down.

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I think you are missing some significant historical perspective there. Eating with someone was understood to be an act of solidarity with them back in ancient times. You implicitly accept someone by virtue of the fact that you choose to eat with them. So Communion was a pretty revolutionary thing in its time in that the conventional divisions which separated people from each other back then were to be wiped away by the act of receiving Communion with one another. It speaks of the unity the Church is expected to have where, no matter our differences, we come to the same Lord's Table as equals.

When I receive the Eucharist, it is the culmination of the entire Mass. Prior to that moment, I gave the same responses in unison with the other faithful at Mass, I prayed the same Our Father with them, I recited the same Nicene Creed they did and now I receive the same Body and the same Blood that they're receiving.

The Mass stresses the unity we are supposed to have with one another. Even if class divisions, ideological preferences, one's sex, race and other issues might otherwise separate us, we are all equal and united here.

With respect, I find it irksome to see these values and philosophies so lightly dismissed as so much rote artifice when the participant can't help but identify with the larger group of which he is a member.

Endtime Survivors said:

But thousands of Christians living, working, and sharing all things together for the benefit of the Kingdom of Heaven? That would be revolutionary. Now which one was Jesus talking about; Bread, or Revolution?

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Again with respect, Catholics do their fair share (and then some) with these social justice issues about which you keep banging away. As a group, we have nothing for which to apologise.

[Staff edit].

Hi Paul. Thanks for such a detailed post. It included a lot of helpful information.

I was a little surprised by all the divisions you mentioned as I had the idea that these rituals were pretty standardized, though I don't know why I should have felt surprise. Divisions happen everywhere.

Probably what is more fascinating to me (from the perspective of consistency) is that the ritual works for some people but not for others and it appears this is also based on who is a part of which group. To me it sounds rather like saying, "If you leave our group then prayer will no longer work for you" (assuming the Eucharist really is what God expects of his people).

Anyway, after thinking on it a bit, my concern with the rituals in general is that they tend toward erosion of personal accountability, over time, so that "group-think" becomes the standard. You were quite certain that the ritual is not just a performance. It seemed you were feeling a bit defensive of my use of the word "ritual" so in response I tried some middle ground by stating that I thought any behavior could become a performance. I guess I wanted you to feel a little more at ease that I wasn't singling out the Eucharist as having some kind of special problem that other rituals do not.

You said you disagree, but that puts you in a tricky spot. Why would you disagree with such a reasonable statement (i.e. any behavior can become a performance)? Is it because you're still feeling defensive of the ritual, or is it because you believe that it is impossible for any person to participate in the Eucharist as part of tradition, or because it's what their family expects, or because it's what they've been told to do by some authority rather than because of any personal conviction that it's what God wants them to do?

Your disagreement effectively lumps all participants (well, those of the correct group) into the "right with God" category without any examination of their personal relationship with God. The ritual apparently does that en masse and it seems people are taught that the rituals can become a legitimate substitute for deep, personal introspection. To me, that is super dangerous, spiritually.

That's how it comes across to me. Are you really saying you've never had any experience with people who perform the rituals as a substitute for personal examination of their own spiritual walk? I know I've experienced people who feel that way about things like water baptism, singing praise songs, giving to charity etc...

Paul Yohannan said:

The Romans and Lutherans believe that the bread and wine becomes the Body and blood of our Lord when the celebrant says "Take, eat, this is my body," etc. We Orthodox believe that the bread becomes the Body of our Lord when the celebrant says "Make this bread to be the precious body of Thy Christ...and make that which is in this cup to be the precious blood of Thy Christ, changing them both by Thy Holy Spirit, amen, amen, amen" after the Institution Narrative.

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Thanks. This is very helpful. I will remember it.

Paul Yohannan said:

I don't know if the risen body our Lord still has DNA, or if this aspect of humanity perishes with death.

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Because a ritual is an observance, then by definition it is observable. This is especially true if the claim is that the bread changes into literal flesh. And one of my continuing frustrations with this topic is that there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the word "literal" regarding the change (e.g. your comment regarding DNA).

We earlier established that the bread changes into literal flesh. You confirmed this for me. If the bread changes into the literal flesh of Jesus then it should have the DNA of Jesus. If the matter on the plate does not have what makes up the building blocks of flesh (i.e. dna) then it's not flesh. Can we at least agree on that much?

If (as you say) the change happens when the priest says the words, then verifying the change should be a simple matter of testing the matter on the plate and not even from a scientific point of view where a bunch of callous dudes in lab coats storm the meeting with test tubes.

It should be obvious and plain to the participants that the change has occurred. Not only would the appearance be altered, but the taste and consistency would be noticeably different.

Instead, the people who support the ritual are (from my perspective) notoriously cagey about how much they're willing to admit regarding the literal change.

In a normal exchange I'd imagine a participant to quite plainly say, "Yes, the bread changes into literal flesh. The appearance changes. The texture changes. The consistency changes. The taste changes. I know what bread tastes like and the Eucharist definitely isn't bread; it's the real, literal flesh of Jesus".

Paul Yohannan said:

This shows a real lack of understanding as to how the Orthodox and indeed the Roman Catholics understand "communion."

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But, isn't it Jesus' understanding of what communion should be that we're trying to find? I talked about Jesus and his disciples living, working, traveling, and sharing together in practical community as what Jesus meant when he held up the bread, said "this is my body" and then shared it around. Their communion clearly wasn't a weekly ritual.

Your response is to instead point back to what these various churches do, which leads me back to the concern regarding group-think and just doing what the church tells us to do. It comes across as though Jesus' idea of communion just can't compare to however many years of church tradition.

Hi TCB. Thanks for sharing some of your testimony; it was helpful.

thecolorsblend said:

I must confess, sir,

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Sorry, I hope this doesn't come across as pedantic, but it's my understanding that Jesus asked us not to use such special titles for one another so just call me "ets".

thecolorsblend said:

Back then I was a fire-breathing evangelical who believed all answers and doctrine could be found authoritatively in the scriptures.

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haha sounds like you were a jerk back then

thecolorsblend said:

The inescapable conclusion was the Church Fathers would recognize little or nothing of the evangelical world I then inhabited.

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Which I'd view as a fault of the "church fathers". If unity is the goal, then focusing on differences isn't the way to get there. I guess you did leave some room for unity by suggesting they'd recognize "little" of your attempts to serve God through evangelicalism, but the "or nothing" caveat still makes it a rather bleak outlook.

I get that some differences just can't be overlooked, but I think there's still plenty of room for learning how to get along, which is why I find non-denominationalism so appealing. I can walk in and out of any group, church, or organization, chewing the meat and leaving the bones.

thecolorsblend said:

In the end, I decided to fix my wagon to the Catholic Church, the institution which (with all due respect to everyone else) I believe most clearly articulates the beliefs the Church Fathers inherited from the apostles who preceded them.

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To be quite frank, I'd go the other way and suggest that the Catholic church is probably the furthest from how Jesus and the apostles lived (i.e. to whom much is given much shall be required), but I think the parable about the weeds and wheat apply just as much to Catholics as it would to any other group; there's a mixture of good and bad in all groups.

thecolorsblend said:

That is where certitude lies: in an unbroken line of tradition, teaching authority and apostolic succession going straight back to Our Lord Himself.

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lol, I like you, TCB, but quite honestly this would be the caption I'd use to reflect the completely opposite of, "The wind blows where ever it wants". Concepts like "tradition", "teaching authority", and "succession" smack of inflexibility. "Well, it's what we've always done" may offer a sense of familiarity and stability, but what happens when, like the wind metaphor, God tells us to, "blow over there today" and the "over there" part works against tradition? In that case, you'd either have to break tradition, or conclude that God would never tell you to go against church tradition, and the latter just isn't consistent with the way Jesus behaved in his day.

I mean, think about Peter, who had the audacity to rebuke God regarding what he should or shouldn't eat. At one point Peter wanted to call fire down on an entire village just to soothe his hurt feelings. Actually, it seems Peter regularly screwed up along the way. He had disagreements with Jesus (e.g. being likened to Satan and then the denial). He was rebuked and corrected by Paul for dumping the gentiles to in an attempt to impress his Jewish friends. Apparently he and John had some kind of running rivalry between them (e.g. in John's gospel he actually narrates himself out running Peter to Jesus' tomb! lol) and when Peter asked what would happen to John, Jesus rebuked him and basically said, "what business is it of yours"?

And yet, Peter was one of the people closest to Jesus because he had so many good points, too. People, no matter how inspired or high up the chain of command, still make mistakes, which is why a reliance on tradition can be so dangerous. Everything needs to be questioned, re-evaluated, and re-examined on a regular basis even if it's a 2000 year old tradition. Yesterday's faith is not good enough for today.

thecolorsblend said:

There's a refreshing lack of stage management inherent to liturgical worship to which I have become accustomed and I will not give that up.

In short, the artifice and performance you mention to me is far more readily apparent in the Southern Baptist world which I abandoned.

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I dunno. When I see a catholic service, there appears to be A LOT of stage management happening. From the clothing, to the furniture and relics, to the words, to the response from the congregation, to the timing...all of it is carefully planned out in step by step observances and it's always the same program.

You see the artifice in the Baptist world, but not in the Catholic world? To me, that is an inconsistency which indicates something more happening below the surface. This artifice thing seems to be some kind of paste smeared over the top.

thecolorsblend said:

But a good number of Protestants and evangelicals seem to want to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing it.

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I think this is where "every wind of doctrine" Paul warned about comes in handy. Change is good. That's what all learning is; change. If God really is infinitely everything good, then there must be so much that he wants to teach us. I think it'd be safe to say that several lifetimes would not be enough to learn everything God wants us to learn, which means that there is not only plenty of incentive, but plenty of obligation to learn and grow.

thecolorsblend said:

If one accepts the idea that doctrine matters to God, the notion of there being a right way and a wrong way of doing something becomes easy to believe. At least such was the case for me.

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"Doctrine" is a convenient concept for organizing beliefs. In that sense, I think God is concerned about what we believe and how we behave. There really is a right and wrong for everything, but it is our lack of understanding for how to appreciate those right and wrongs which causes the problems.

This is why flexibility is so important. Our understanding should be changing from day to day as we learn and grow. What may have seemed the right path today may not necessarily be the right path tomorrow.

thecolorsblend said:

I think you are missing some significant historical perspective there. Eating with someone was understood to be an act of solidarity with them back in ancient times. You implicitly accept someone by virtue of the fact that you choose to eat with them. So Communion was a pretty revolutionary thing in its time in that the conventional divisions which separated people from each other back then were to be wiped away by the act of receiving Communion with one another. It speaks of the unity the Church is expected to have where, no matter our differences, we come to the same Lord's Table as equals.

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The question isn't at all about historical perceptions regarding eating together, but rather what was Jesus' understanding of how his followers should behave. He and his followers lived, worked, traveled, and shared together full time as a community of believers. Their unity was a sample of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. When Jesus said, "This is my body" he wasn't talking about bread; he was talking about the unity of believers being and sharing together, which is why he then passed the bread around, making a show of sharing it together.

It doesn't make sense to conclude that rather than encourage the practical, day to day unity he'd already cultivated with his followers, that he instead introduced a completely new concept where his followers would go live separately in their own homes, coming together once (or maybe twice?) a week to perform a ritual of "being together" capped with a miracle transfiguration each and every time.

Why would Jesus exchange the real-deal community he'd worked so hard to build for three years, for a fraction of that unity performed weekly via a special food-eating ritual? It just makes no sense.

thecolorsblend said:

With respect, I find it irksome to see these values and philosophies so lightly dismissed as so much rote artifice when the participant can't help but identify with the larger group of which he is a member.

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Can't help? If the context were different, I'd shrug this off as an idiomatic expression, but in the context of concepts like "tradition" and "church father authority" it really does come across as, "I have no choice but to accept that these people are the ones to decide what my relationship with God should be like". If that's what's happening then that is definitely not consistent with what Jesus taught.

Endtime Survivors said:

I was a little surprised by all the divisions you mentioned as I had the idea that these rituals were pretty standardized, though I don't know why I should have felt surprise. Divisions happen everywhere.

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Have you even bothered to look into the subject of Christian history? You are aware that the Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists and other traditional churches are not the same denomination, but have been separated by various schisms?

The Ecumenical Movement btw seeks to restore unity to Christians, and I support this movement (even if at times, some ecumenical associations like the World Council of Churches come across as frustratingly politicized).

Probably what is more fascinating to me (from the perspective of consistency) is that the ritual works for some people but not for others and it appears this is also based on who is a part of which group.

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This is simply because Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants are separated by a schism and each have their own ecclesiology. Protestants tend to adhere variously to an invisible church, local church or branch ecclesiology, Catholics, to an ecclesiology centered around the Roman bishop, and the Orthodox, to an episcopal ecclesiology focused on a communion of correct worship (Orthodoxy literally means "right glorification.")

You will find on CF.com extremists from all three persuasions, and some who claim affiliation with neither, who would claim persons of another are not saved.

This is not my view, as I have made clear.

To me it sounds rather like saying, "If you leave our group then prayer will no longer work for you" (assuming the Eucharist really is what God expects of his people).

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If someone actually left the Church this is quite a different matter compared to simply not being a member to begin with.

Anyway, after thinking on it a bit, my concern with the rituals in general is that they tend toward erosion of personal accountability, over time, so that "group-think" becomes the standard.

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This is of course an invalid concern as even a passing familiarity with sacramental confession would attest.

You were quite certain that the ritual is not just a performance. It seemed you were feeling a bit defensive of my use of the word "ritual" so in response I tried some middle ground by stating that I thought any behavior could become a performance. I guess I wanted you to feel a little more at ease that I wasn't singling out the Eucharist as having some kind of special problem that other rituals do not.

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No, rather, I object to your use of "ritual" to refer to liturgy, which would be correct if we were speaking in the Latin tongue, but in English the word has acquired additional implications which distort meaning. The correct word for referring to all forms of worship of the liturgical churches except for personal devotions is liturgy, from the Greek leitourgia, meaning Work of the People.

You said you disagree, but that puts you in a tricky spot. Why would you disagree with such a reasonable statement (i.e. any behavior can become a performance)?

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Because this statement is not reasonable.

Is it because you're still feeling defensive of the ritual, or is it because you believe that it is impossible for any person to participate in the Eucharist as part of tradition, or because it's what their family expects, or because it's what they've been told to do by some authority rather than because of any personal conviction that it's what God wants them to do?

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No, rather, I reject your initial claim that I "perform a ritual," in the Eucharist. We are going in circles, by the way, which is something I will come to take a dim view of.

Your disagreement effectively lumps all participants (well, those of the correct group) into the "right with God" category without any examination of their personal relationship with God.

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No. It would really help if you bothered to study our faith before commenting on it.

The ritual apparently does that en masse and it seems people are taught that the rituals can become a legitimate substitute for deep, personal introspection.

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No, rather, this would be the congregational absolution we commonly see in lieu of confession in Protestanr churches.

To me, that is super dangerous, spiritually.

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Probably, but your criticism does not apply to us.

That's how it comes across to me. Are you really saying you've never had any experience with people who perform the rituals as a substitute for personal examination of their own spiritual walk?

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It would be of mutual benefit if you were to refrain from putting words in my mouth.

I know I've experienced people who feel that way about things like water baptism,

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Water baptism is a new birth, although it does not remove from competent faithful the requirement to examine one's cons

singing praise songs,

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LOL.

giving to charity etc...

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Jesus teaches us that giving alms can be helpful provided we do not do it for reasons of self-promotion.

Because a ritual is an observance, then by definition it is observable.

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This is by definition a non-sequitur and a red herring, since we do not observe passively the liturgy.

This is especially true if the claim is that the bread changes into literal flesh. And one of my continuing frustrations with this topic is that there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the word "literal" regarding the change (e.g. your comment regarding DNA).

We earlier established that the bread changes into literal flesh. You confirmed this for me. If the bread changes into the literal flesh of Jesus then it should have the DNA of Jesus.

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It is presumptuous to say that after the resurrection, the flesh of our bodies will still have DNA. We do not believe the Eucharist we consume is the deceased body and blood of our Lord, but the resurrected and living body and blood of our Lord.

What is more, even if the flesh of our resurrected bodies still has DNA (which it would not require, by the way, owing to the presumable lack of death and lack of reproduction in the eschaton), it is our view that the perceptual attributes of the Eucharist, what Thomas Aquinas refers to using Aristotleian categories as the "accidents," remain normally unchanged.

If the matter on the plate does not have what makes up the building blocks of flesh (i.e. dna) then it's not flesh.

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I don't know if Adam had DNA before the fall, or Jesus still has DNA having risen.

Can we at least agree on that much?

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No, for the reasons I outlined.

If (as you say) the change happens when the priest says the words, then verifying the change should be a simple matter of testing the matter on the plate and not even from a scientific point of view where a bunch of callous dudes in lab coats storm the meeting with test tubes.

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No, because as I referred to above, we believe in trans-substantiation rather than trans-accidentiation, if I might invoke some thrillingly Thomistic vocabulary.

This is not to rule out an occasional legitimate change in perceptual attributes. In Orthodoxy however, as a rule, we tend to view changes in perceptual attributes during the Eucharist with suspicion. It is canonical that if an Orthodox priest notices the bread taking on a fleshy appearance during the liturgy, he should set it aside and send for a bishop.

It should be obvious and plain to the participants that the change has occurred. Not only would the appearance be altered, but the taste and consistency would be noticeably different.

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Again, no, for the reasons cited above. You clearly have not bothered to look into our beliefs on this subject at all. Nor into the beliefs of Lutherans, which are similiar, but slightly different (the "in, with and under" bit).

Instead, the people who support the ritual are (from my perspective) notoriously cagey about how much they're willing to admit regarding the literal change.

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This is incorrect. I have laid bare for you the entire theory, including somewhat esoteric details which are not widely discussed.

In a normal exchange I'd imagine a participant to quite plainly say, "Yes, the bread changes into literal flesh. The appearance changes. The texture changes. The consistency changes. The taste changes. I know what bread tastes like and the Eucharist definitely isn't bread; it's the real, literal flesh of Jesus".

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Yes, but this is not what we believe. We believe that normally, only the substance changes, while the accidents remain unchanged. There have been miraculous events where the accidents have changed; when this occurs, we (Orthodox) send for a bishop to determine if the change is real, or a demonic deception of some sort. I expect, based on Catholic accounts of Eucharistic miracles, but do not know, that the Catholics would simply assume the legitimacy of such a change automatically, and I have no idea what the Lutherans would do.

But, isn't it Jesus' understanding of what communion should be that we're trying to find?

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My considered opinion is that the Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist is the one taught to the holy apostles, based on the NT and extant Patristic writings of the first century.

I talked about Jesus and his disciples living, working, traveling, and sharing together in practical community as what Jesus meant when he held up the bread, said "this is my body" and then shared it around. Their communion clearly wasn't a weekly ritual.

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Communion is celebrated daily in the Orthodox and Catholic churches (except on Good Friday etc.). Most established Catholic parishes have daily services; Orthodox parishes, not so much, but in monasteries and large cathedrals, certainly.

Your response is to instead point back to what these various churches do, which leads me back to the concern regarding group-think and just doing what the church tells us to do. It comes across as though Jesus' idea of communion just can't compare to however many years of church tradition.

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But this is simply an assumption about what our Lord's teaching of communion was, without regard to anything more than a personal guess as to what the NT means. I am not content with such guesswork; I prefer to base my faith on the praxis of the earliest followers of the Apostles and the continuity of those practices through successive generations. I consider this more compelling than a private opinion regarding the meaning of scripture.

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Can I ask about this (with no intent to argue no matter what the response is, I'm just wondering)? Where in Scripture is there the Mass? Thank you!

hengesthorsa said:

Can I ask about this (with no intent to argue no matter what the response is, I'm just wondering)? Where in Scripture is there the Mass? Thank you!

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1 Corinthians 11, and the equivalent pericopes in the Synoptics, and John 6, and also to a large extent, in Revelations.

The RC scholar Dr. Scott Hahn gave an interesting talk on this point, which by and large I agree with:

hengesthorsa said:

Can I ask about this (with no intent to argue no matter what the response is, I'm just wondering)? Where in Scripture is there the Mass? Thank you!

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Here's a good summary, but you can find dozens of good articles on the subject:

Bible references for the Catholic Mass

Need to go back to the actual Jewish passover meal to understand what communion really is, I'd recommend speaking to a messianic jewish person who can explain the passover meal and what each element of the passover meal represented.

BeachBabe87 said:

Need to go back to the actual Jewish passover meal to understand what communion really is, I'd recommend speaking to a messianic jewish person who can explain the passover meal and what each element of the passover meal represented.

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Luke 22 is a passage where the last Passover looking forward to the Cross and the first Lord's Supper looking back to it, is seen in the wording of one passage.

Hey BB. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

BeachBabe87 said:

Need to go back to the actual Jewish passover meal to understand what communion really is

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I wonder about that. The word "communion" comes from "community", meaning living and working together. When Jesus held up a piece of bread and said, "this is my body" he could have been talking about the bread, but it's more likely that he was talking about his followers living, working, traveling and sharing together in community. The ritualistic sharing of the bread afterwards supports this. Community only works if the participants are willing to share with one another. The passing around of the bread was an important reminder of this. Though each participant got his own little mouthful of food, it all came from the same source.

That would make a lot more sense, just like it made more sense that Jesus was talking about his own body when he said, "Destroy this temple and I will build it again in 3 days". Well, it makes more sense than believing Jesus held a literal lump of transfigured flesh in his hand, thus starting a new teaching where everyone would go live in their own houses living their own private lives until they come together again once a week to eat literal flesh again. That's hardly the kind of community Jesus taught.

BubbaJack said:

Speaking of Communion (Lord's Supper, Eucharist); the idea that liturgical faiths have that the bread and wine are literally Jesus's flesh and blood and that partakers are eating his literal flesh and literal blood. I can see it being a memorial that has value as a sacrament simply because Jesus says so, but to insist that it's literal flesh and blood seems like a kind of cannibalism. I don't know how else to put this, but I admit to finding it a bit disturbing.

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God CAN show Himself as a piece of bread. Can't He?
Yes, we want to eat God, so God would be come part of us.

juvenissun said:

God CAN show Himself as a piece of bread. Can't He?

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Yeah of course he can, but why would he? Why would Jesus suddenly replace full time living, working, traveling, and fellowshipping with his followers for a weekly bread-eating ritual? It just makes no sense

Endtime Survivors said:

Yeah of course he can, but why would he? Why would Jesus suddenly replace full time living, working, traveling, and fellowshipping with his followers for a weekly bread-eating ritual? It just makes no sense

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It is not a replacement. It is an enhancement.
That is what the purpose of a ritual is. It enhance the effect. Human on the earth is a physical being.