For the biblical Paul, what happens in communion is not just a pale echo of the past: what is past becomes present “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,” and it extends into the future as we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).
The reformer Martin Luther grounded his theology of the sacraments in this same belief: That when people in worship hear the word and participate in the sacraments, these habits are not just symbolic recollections of past happenings that are now over. They are happening now. Communion, for example, is “the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to drink” (Small Catechism, ELW, p. 1166). Holy Communion is not only bread and wine, but also the Spirit’s presence within the people gathered, the act of eating and drinking together, and the time and space in which it happens.
This message is excerpted from the Bible study “Holy time” by Meghan Johnston Aelabouni in the September 2020 Gather magazine.
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