Memorial
‘Do this in memory of me,’ (1st Corinthians 11:24).
The most revered Christian symbol is the communion service and I come to it with
a sense of awe and humility. However routinely or impersonally it is presented,
I am overawed by a sense of the presence of Christ.
Certainly both the grain from which bread is made and the grape from which the
wine is squeezed, have their history in Christ, the Creator. (Genesis 1:11-13).
They were given on the third day, and perhaps it is interesting that the number
three often refers to the Trinity – Father, Creator and Holy Spirit.
So the first day revealed God to our planet because ‘in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth.’ He put it together, he made a unit, a
total oneness.
On the second day, the Holy Spirit is revealed in a separating by separating
water from water and creating individual unities, still united but with
individual properties.
On the third day the Creator brought up land and made food bearing plants and
trees, forging a complete environmental harmony.
Before He died, the Creator reclaimed His creation. He took bread and said,
‘Take this; this is my body,’ referring His disciples back to the grain
foods of the third day that became our general sustenance. We were bidden to eat
that which He had designed to grow the human body. It was His from the
beginning, created by Him, now a symbol of His presence with us as a member of
the family of man.
Then Jesus said of the grape juice He presented to His disciples, ‘This is my
blood,’ referring to the physical fact that He was the one who had created
the grape on the third day.
The Bible does not refer to the ‘juice’ of the grape, it refers to the ‘blood’
of the grape. So when Jesus gave it to His disciples to drink, He could quite
rightly say, ‘This is My blood,’ because He had created it and it was literally
‘His blood.’
Jesus claimed the bread and the blood of the communion service as His creation.
They did not come to us by any means other than by the hand of the Creator. The
very sustenance He had created for our growth and health, He made symbols of our
growth and health in Him and through Him.
Broken bread and poured out wine symbolize that He has finished what He set out
to do and He could cry out from the cross, “It is finished!”
Grain and Grape are memorials of the Creator and I eat and drink them because He
said, ‘Do this in memory of me.’
Elizabeth Price