Eating is one of the enormous mysteries of life, and one of the greatest aspects of this mystery is how readily we drift into assuming how ordinary it is. But there is nothing ordinary about eating at all—not even with non-sacramental eating. How is it possible for life to be sustained by this means?
As food grows up out of the earth, we see it gather nutrients from the environment—inorganic matter is transformed into organic matter. And then, as the food is tended by a farmer and harvested, and fed to us, the food is transformed from a lower organic order to a higher organic order. You are what you eat, but this is not a materialist dictum, but rather a glorious mystery—God is transforming the world, and He uses the instrument of eating.
He does the same kind of thing in the realm of the covenants. As we eat, we grow. As we grow and mature, our eating does not become less necessary, but rather more obviously important. We never mature past the point of needing food. An eighty year old man looks to his breakfast just as a new born infant does. Maturity is sustained by food, and maturity never matures beyond food. This is because we are creatures, and God has created the world in an interdependent way. We come here to this Table as a needy people, and this is not our shame. It is our glory. We are His people, and He feeds us.