When we consider the image of the loaf before us, we need to remember the imagery that is brought to bear by all of Scripture, and not just the passages that deal with the Lord’s Supper directly. For example, in Corinthians, the apostle Paul teaches us that we are the one loaf of bread, and he presses this point so that we would discern one another as members of Christ.
But the image is more textured than just this. In His parable of the leaven, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is like yeast mixed into the dough. In this image, the world is the loaf—and the yeast is mixed in with this in a complex and messy way. But this messiness is presented in such a way as to make us realize that the yeast transforms the dough, and that the dough has no power to transform the yeast. Moreover this process has been going on since the foundation of the world. The world has never been without its yeast, although there have been centuries in which it looked as though it were without yeast.
We are privileged to live in a time when we can actually see the dough started to rise—but these things were true before we could see them.
So what are we doing when we eat of this loaf? Among other things, we are declaring our faith that we are that loaf. Looking forward in faith to the time when the present kingdom is manifested far more clearly, and the entire world is converted to God, we are preaching the gospel to a lost and forsaken world, and we are doing so by typologically eating the world.
What is it that overcomes the world? Is it not our faith? But we do not overcome the world, or conquer the world, through any sort of gun-barrel justice. We do it by speaking the Word, and eating and drinking the Word. Conducted in faith, this proclamation is potent. So let us come with gladness and simplicity of heart.