We gather to feed on the body of Christ, and to drink His blood, but do not make the mistake of thinking that it is some ritual form of macabre cannibalism. The Lord is risen, and we are partaking of His resurrection life. This is no corpse ritual. We are privileged to partake of the Lord’s everlasting life.
The Lord told the woman at the well that He offered her living water to drink. The Lord taught His disciples that He was the bread that came down from Heaven, and that it was living bread (John 6:51). We are not stepping outside the rule of faith if we see what we are about to drink as living wine. We are a living people, and our food must be life. Dead food is for dead people.
This is why we bless the name of “the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:20).
What we eat and drink imparts to us what it possesses, provided we receive it with living faith. This is Paschal Sunday, resurrection Sunday, and life is everywhere. The bread and wine are alive, the music lives, the Word of God is alive in our lives, and we gather here to partake of Christ because we are a living people, a living nation.
There is no incongruity in any of this because He is alive forever. He is alive because He rose again from the dead.