Sacramental Changes

Because Christ is the Head of the Church, it means that He is the one presiding at this Table. He is the Head which is why He is seated at the Head. It also means that He is the one who established the ritual for us, and so this is why we keep the ceremony at the same level of simplicity as when He instituted it.

There are only two elements, bread and wine. They are common elements, not exotic. We do only three things with the bread—we bless it, we break it, and we eat it together. We do two things with the wine—we bless it, and we drink it together.

To over-complicate it would be to take it from the Lord’s hands, wresting it all away from Him, in order to replace it with a ceremony more to our liking. But God knows what we need, and He has provided for us exactly what we need.

If Jesus required his itinerant ministers to eat whatever was set before them (Luke 10:8), then how much more should all God’s servants eat what is set before us. We are quite clever enough to observe sacraments, but we are not nearly clever enough to invent them. Whenever we try to invent them, we come up

God says here is the bread. Bless it, break it, eat it, and love each other. Here is the wine. Bless it, and drink it and love each other. Next week we are called to exactly the same thing, with the same bread and wine. The bread and wine never change. What changes is the love—as we are being grown up into the perfect man, our love for God grows deeper and richer, and our love for one another does the same.

In other words, we don’t say words over the elements in order to change them. They don’t need changing. We say words over the elements because they will be instruments in the hands of God for changing us. We are what changes. So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.