The Bread, The Cup, and The Cross

Part Eight: How the Lord's Supper shapes our relationship with food.

If baptism is the bath for the beginning of this journey, the Supper is the table that God spreads in the wilderness along the way. — Michael Horton

Every week that we do communion, our pastor calls on people to bring the elements to those of us sitting in the congregation. Yet this week, after I had spent the whole church service weeping over my sin, he invited us to come forward to receive. 

He knew my sin—I had confessed it to him and his wife the day before—and now I wonder if he did it all for that reason.

I watched every person walk to the front of the room, each taking the tiny cup of juice and the wafer. I sat still in my seat, my face likely blotchy and red and my eyes bloodshot. We’re a small church, under one hundred, and people looked at me, likely wondering why I hadn’t moved or released my death grip on my seat. An older man looked at me and offered me his, but I shook my head.

As everyone parted, my pastor lingered. He didn’t move on with the rest of the words. Finally, with my eyes on the carpet, I strode forward. I stared at the elements, not daring to meet my pastor’s eyes. I wanted to say, “May I partake?” but instead I sobbed, “I do not deserve this.” My pastor picked up one of the cups. “That is the whole point.” 

I looked up and met his dark brown eyes. He reached over the table with the cup. “This is Christ’s body, broken for you, Lara.”

Since that day, I have never taken communion the same way. When I told this story to a friend, she said to me, “Perhaps this is the good God is bringing out of this sin: that you get to experience his forgiveness in such a new, deep, and poignant way again. I don’t think you’ll ever take that for granted.”

Perhaps the Lord’s Supper has become a bit rote for you. You’ve been doing this for so long that you simply go through the motions. I want to reawaken your wonder to the Lord’s Supper in light of all we’ve discussed about food, the body, and the gospel.

The Meal that Came Before

To understand the Lord’s Supper, we must look to the sacrificial meal that came before it: Passover. Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant meal during the Passover, showing us the essential connection between the two. 

We return to Israel’s captivity in Egypt under Pharaoh. Pharaoh had brutally enslaved the Israelites out of fear of their size and God’s apparent favor upon them. He had them make bricks under the whips of his taskmasters, requiring them to gather their own straw and produce far more than they possibly could in short amounts of time. They groaned and wept—and God heard his people. 

God sent Moses to perform signs and wonders before Pharaoh, demanding that he let the people of God go so they could worship him in the wilderness. Yet Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he refused to believe. After God sent nine plagues upon Egypt through the hand of Moses (the Nile turned to blood, abundance of frogs, gnats, flies, the death of livestock, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, and complete darkness), God sent one final plague that pushed Pharaoh over the edge: the death of the firstborn son of every beast and person. 

But before he sent this plague, the Israelites were given a command to keep them safe: Each family must take a year old male lamb without any blemishes and kill it at twilight, placing its blood on the doorposts of their home. They had to eat the flesh that night, roasted on a fire with unleavened bread (for speed) and bitter herbs (to mirror the bitterness of Egypt). They were to eat this meal with their sandals on, belts tightened, and staffs in hand, ready to flee. Any of the meal left by morning was to be burned. As the angel of death came to the land of Egypt to kill the firstborns, he saw the blood on the doorposts and passed over their homes. “In a very tangible sense, the lamb died instead of the firstborn son of the household.”¹

This meal became a memorial of how God saved his people from Egypt. “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast” (Exod. 12:14). 

During his final days before the cross, Jesus partook of the Passover meal with his disciples and instituted the New Covenant meal in place of the Passover. Jonathan Griffiths explains how the Passover was a picture of the reality to come:

As the Passover meal served as a foundational meal of the old covenant, taking place on the brink of the foundational saving act of the covenant (the Exodus from Egypt), so the Lord’s Supper was the foundational meal of the new covenant, taking place on the brink of the saving work that Jesus would achieve on the cross. As the Passover meal served as a reminder of the redemption that the Lord achieved for his people in bringing them out of bondage in Egypt, the Lord’s Supper becomes a powerful reminder of the redemption that the Lord Jesus achieved for his people in releasing us from slavery to sin. This meal is, then, the foundational and enduring symbol of the new covenant in Christ.²

Without the Exodus, Israel would not have existed and Jesus would not have been born. And without Jesus’ death on the cross, we would never be saved from the bondage of sin and death. The physical sign of Passover of passing from death to life became a spiritual reality in the death of Christ. This is what the Supper represents for us. 

All throughout the Old Testament, animals are sacrificed to atone for sins because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22). But the author of Hebrews tells us that the blood of goats and sheep never actually atoned for anything (Heb. 10:4). How can the blood of an animal pay for the sins of a person, let alone a whole community? “Until Jesus came, God passed over sin because of the blood of sheep and goats, and other animals. When Jesus died on the cross, God didn’t pass over sin anymore. He took sin away. God’s demand that sin be atoned for was satisfied whole and complete by Jesus’ blood.”³ This is the reality represented by the Lord’s Supper in place of the Passover. 

And how did God choose to communicate these mighty realities to us? Through meals shared in a community. But why?

“Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood”

As he inaugurated the Lord’s Supper, Jesus took the bread and said, “Take and eat, this is my body.” Then raising the cup he said, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:26–28). This isn’t the first time Jesus spoke this way; he had prepared them for this moment. 

After Jesus fed the five thousand, many of those people followed him. But Jesus knew that they came not because of their spiritual needs but because of their physical desire for food (wouldn’t you?). He then drew their gaze back to when God provided the manna for the Israelites and declared, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:49–51). Though the people began to grow concerned by this language, Jesus continued:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. (John 6:53–58)

Those who had come for only physical nourishment left—their hearts could not comprehend what Jesus was saying, nor did they want to. They simply wanted their stomachs filled. Yet the twelve remained because they understood: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68–69).

Why would Jesus use such strong and confusing (and, for some of the people listening, repulsive) language? He needed them to see that belief in him is just as essential as the food we need to live. Just as desperate as our daily need for food and water, so is our need for salvation from sin. This is why Jesus said to Satan when tempted to turn stones to bread, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). 

We’ve seen throughout this journey how vital it is to listen to our bodies, and how God created us this way on purpose. He does not look down upon us for depending on food and water for survival; he does not expect us to deny ourselves this basic need. Yet woven within this reality is a greater spiritual one: just as we are utterly dependent upon God for our physical nourishment, we are dependent upon him for salvation from sin. 

Perhaps this is why Jesus chose a meal to represent his death on the cross. We must feed on him if we are to live. This is also why we don’t take of the Lord’s Supper only once; we take of it regularly. We need to feed on Christ every day. Baptism is a one time act of being cleansed and brought into the family of God, but the sacrament of communion is a repeated ritual in which we come again and again in need of being replenished, just as we do each of our physical meals. Remember, the Christian life is one of dependence; we can do nothing on our own. We need him, and each time we place the bread in our mouths and the wine to our lips, we live that truth. We cannot survive without partaking of our Savior. 

A Family Meal

This meal isn’t an individualistic ritual. There’s the horizontal reality of us and Christ, but there is the vertical reality of us and our believing neighbors. This is why the sacrament is meant to only be taken in church; it’s a family meal in which we collectively declare our dependence on God, proclaim Jesus’ death, confess our sins, and place our hope in the life to come. “To the extent that the Supper is at the heart of the church’s life, it will generate a familial and communal bond of love.”⁴ Michael Horton writes,

There is also an important horizontal dimension, uniting us to each other in a bond of fellowship in which we grow more and more into a family. Yet all of this is possible because the meal is nothing less than Christ himself. Because he has risen and sent his Spirit with his word, the event not only celebrates the past acts of redemption but allows us here and now to receive Christ and proclaim his death as well as his resurrection and return. And because each of us shares or participates in Christ himself through this meal, we are bound together with each other as one body (1Co 10:17).⁵

Remember what we learned in the beginning about how science shows that eating together bonds us? This same reality happens in the Supper, only not just on an emotional level but also a spiritual level. “We did not choose these people who eat and drink Christ’s body and blood with us; the Father chose them in the Son, and the Spirit has united us to Christ and therefore to them. This is the ultimate family table that relativizes every other community, including our own blood relatives.”⁶

The Lord’s Supper is communion on two levels: communion with Christ through the Spirit and communion with one another through the sharing of the means of grace. All social and societal hierarchies are demolished; we are one and equal in Christ. We are not leaders, servants, daughters, sons, fathers, mothers—we are all brothers and sisters in Christ being fed by our Elder Brother who died for our sins. 

We are all sinners in need of saving; needy people in the desert of the world seeking sustenance. Not one of us can survive without this meal, and so all pride is leveled at the table. We are all sufferers, wandering the wilderness and seeking the table that God has spread for us in its sand.⁷ We are made one, the bride of Christ, awaiting and longing for our fine, white linen gown and marriage supper to our groom. 

Until He Comes Again

As we are united together in this meal, we look forward to the meal to come where we will be united in perfect harmony as the bride of Christ. In both the Supper and the Marriage Feast, Christ bends low to serve us. Ligon Duncan draws a beautiful parallel for us:

When Jesus speaks of the marriage supper of the Lamb in consummation (Luke 12:37), in glory, when the great end has come and all have acknowledged him to be King, he says that on that day he will bid us all to recline, just like the disciples reclined on the night of the Lord’s Supper, and he will gird himself and serve us. Yes, in the Lord’s Supper, we anticipate the marriage supper of the Lamb, where we will sit down with one another in glory, and our Savior will serve us again everything that we need.⁸

The Supper is something we receive, just as the final wedding banquet is as well. That’s the wonder of this sacrament and how it points to our current and future salvation so clearly: We come empty-handed, with nothing to offer, yet we are given life-sustaining nourishment, free of cost. We are given all that we need though we have no way of purchasing it. Isaiah spoke of this: 

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. (Is. 55:1–3)

We have no money, we have no means, yet we are given all that we need for life. As we come each Sunday to take of the bread and wine, we look forward to that Marriage Supper of the Lamb, where we will be given Christ himself in full and never have need again. Because we are his and he is ours, and nothing will ever separate us from him again.

1. Jonathan Griffiths, “The Lord’s Supper,” The Gospel Coalition, May 3, 2020, accessed December 5, 2024, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-lords-supper/.

2. Griffiths, “The Lord’s Supper.”

3. Donavon Riley, “The Old Testament Roots of the Lord’s Supper: Part 2,” 1517, January 21, 2019, accessed December 5, 2024, https://www.1517.org/articles/the-old-testament-roots-of-the-lords-supper-part-2.

4. Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples (Michigan, Grand Rapids, United States of America: Zondervan Academic, 2013), 385.

5. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples, 378.

6. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples, 385.

7. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples, 374.

8. Ligon Duncan, “The New City Catechism: What is the Lord’s Supper?,” The Gospel Coalition, July 12, 2020, accessed December 5, 2024, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/new-city-catechism/what-is-the-lords-supper/?childrens_mode=false.