The Lord Jesus is seated at the head of this Table, in His resurrected triumph, and yet this is also a meal where His body and blood are on the Table. Not only this, but He teaches us that we are His body, we are of His flesh and of His bone. We are one loaf, St. Paul tells us.
This means that we are also on the Table. This is not a magic trick, as though we were talking about some kind of substantive alteration in the chemistry of wine and bread. This is covenantal; this is ritual; this is spiritual; this is real.
We become what we eat, and we are eating and drinking one another. We are being knit together in this fashion. This is possible because we are being knit together in the Head from which every joint, muscle and sinew obtains its life.
This is koinonia, the only alternative to covetousness. We are imitative creatures; God has made us this way. And the only way to imitate without it becoming the imitation of destructive and covetous rivals is to imitate from within the life of the Trinity.
You will imitate. If you imitate your neighbor apart from faith, the end result will be ungodly conflict—biting and devouring. If you imitate your Lord, and your brothers and your sisters in faith, then the result is harmony. And if you receive the harmony of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, the gifts and blessings of the Holy Spirit, this will be a provocation for those who do not want another way of imitating to make its presence known in the world—and there will be conflict. But it will not be conflict that arises from your lusts, and so you must take care not to be lured back into that way of disintegration.
Receive the grace of God. Rejoice in the grace of God. Refuse to earn the grace of God. Chew and swallow the grace of God. Drink and enjoy the grace of God. This is not a race, not a competition. This is the Table of a household. This is a family meal. We are being drawn together, like it or not, by the koinonia of Christ.