Metamorphosis

Eating is a great mystery, a mystery of metamorphosis. Whenever we eat, something is turning into something else. Eating is all about transformation. Not only is it true that you become what you eat (in one sense), what you eat becomes you. More peanut butter sandwiches turn into little boys than little boys turn into peanut butter sandwiches.

A little boy eating that sandwich doesn’t turn into a sandwich, that is true enough. But a little boy who eats sandwiches does turn into something else—the nourishment means that he turns into a man. God has framed the world in such a way as to enable us to take an edible substance, ingest it, and use it to become something much greater than the sum of the parts.

And so we have gathered to eat bread and to drink wine. In doing this, we do not turn into bread and wine. The transformation does not work that way. Neither do we eat it to remain just what we were. The transformation—or rather, non-transformation—does not work that way either. Rather, by gathering here to eat this bread and drink this wine (assuming always a true and evangelical faith), the Holy Spirit takes this event as a mean of growing us up into the perfect man, who is Jesus Christ.

We are being grown up into maturity. We are being established. We are being nourished. But in order to be nourished this way, we have to take the nourishment in fully. If we are living in flagrant, unrepentant sin, and you come to this table, you are engaging in a form of spiritual bulimia. If you receive this bread and wine, and you keep what you receive by a simple and living faith, the transformation will continue on in your life, mysteriously and inexorably. Be reassured. God knows how to nourish His people. He knows how to grow them up. He knows what to feed them. So put away all thoughts of merit or inadequacy, and come to be fed. Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.