Bread, Wine, Body, Blood, Jesus

Reflecting on Good Friday, I think about the last supper, the meal of wine and bread that Jesus shared with his disciples prior to his crucifixion.

"While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take it; this is my body." Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," he said to them." - Mark 14:22-24

In many ancient traditions life sustaining foods such as grain were actually considered to be the very bodies of the gods that provided it. Likewise the wine from grapes and fermented liquids from other fruits and grains were considered to be the very blood of the god. The change and action caused by fermentation being seen as the very spirit of the god. "By taking the grain or wine into their bodies, as food and fermentation, human beings brought into themselves the body of the sacred themselves." (from the book: "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" by Stephen Harrod Buhner).

If this is true then it is shocking when you consider the last supper of Christ. When he said about the wine, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" and about the bread, "This is my body, which is for you", the people surrounding Jesus would have clearly understood the similarity between what he was saying and the pagan rituals, and the implication of what he was saying and doing would have been scandalous and profound. They would have instantly hearkened back to when he said "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him."John 6:56. It would not have been symbolic at all, the people surrounding the table of the last supper would have had a clear and real cultural context for the significance of the bread and the wine as His body and blood.

Jesus was not simply stating that he was a god, nor was he just the Messiah of the Hebrews, he was making it clear, he was the God of gods. That even the body and blood of the pagan gods that many worshiped belonged to him, and that the salvation and presence of God that many sought by eating the "flesh" and drinking the "blood" of these gods could truly only be found through His physical flesh and blood that just a few hours later would be consumed for the salvation of the world.

The pagans were not flippant or foolish about their beliefs, the grain and the wine brought life their physical bodies, and it was reasonable to them that their search for the power that would ultimately overcome death should follow this same pattern. They participated in this ritual honoring the creation for its power to sustain life, but despite the spirit they called upon, or the fervency by which they conjured it, they were left seeking.

We might look upon these ancients as ignorant heathens, but Jesus came not to condemn them, nor did he share in their ritual to mock them. Just as many religious Jews were finally confronted in Christ with the reality of the Messiah that their traditions had been leading them to, so also were the worshippers of the earth and every other deity finally confronted with the power they were seeking, and not in a foreign tradition, but through the body and blood, in the grain and the wine, as they were accustomed.

As we consider the last supper of Christ, consider, that in a very real sense ancient people performed a similar ritual for thousands of years before Christ with the firm and true belief that they were partaking in the body of their god, who had no power to save them, and now similarly, we partake in a very real way of the body and blood of Christ, who can.