There is a wonderful hymn in our Episcopal Hymnal that is often sung during Communion. The words of this hymn go all the way back to a very early Christian document – almost as old as the New Testament itself – called the Didache (Greek for "Teaching"). The second stanza of the hymn prays thus: “As grain once scattered on the hillsides was in this broken bread made one, so from all lands thy Church be gathered into thy kingdom by thy Son” (Hymn 302, 1982 Hymnal).

Hymns often teach great theology, and this is an excellent case in point. Why do we use bread in the Eucharist? The simplest answer is because it is the element that Jesus told us to “take” and “eat” when he instituted the sacrament on the night before he died.

But it was a fitting choice. The Church is the Body of Christ, as St. Paul repeatedly tells us in his epistles. It is a living organism made up of a variety of members drawn from all parts of the world and all walks of life into a common life animated by the Holy Spirit.

Christian preachers have long recognized that the dynamic by which individuals are drawn into the one Body of Christ is well represented by the process of making a loaf of bread. “Grain” from all over the “hills” (symbolizing the world) becomes the wheat that will make a single loaf. The wheat is “ground up” (symbolizing the prayers for deliverance from sin at a person’s baptism), “moistened” (symbolizing the water of baptism) and mixed into dough (symbolizing the bringing together of all the different “grains”), and finally “baked” (symbolizing the fire of the Holy Spirit that descended upon the Church at Pentecost and on each new Christian at their baptism). As St. Augustine put it, this is an image of the ideal Church, like the believers in Acts who all had “one soul and one heart in God” (Acts 4:32).

The same is true of the “common cup.” Wine is made from the juice of many grapes that is all mixed and poured together into one vessel, so that the “many” have become “one.” When we share the chalice, we’re reminding ourselves of the peace and unity to which the Lord calls us in the Church. It’s a great gift that we finally have the chance to do this again at All Saints, after two long years without it; and a reminder to all of us, even those of us who aren’t yet ready to partake of the cup, that “we who are many are one body.” Because we all partake of one bread, one cup (1 Cor. 10:16-17).

God bless you!

Mac