This Table, and the Word accompanying it, are means of grace. But grace is not an invisible fluid that juices you up in your devotional life, grace is the word Scripture uses for how God imparts Himself to us. When the gracious God gives Himself, this is grace.
And we know that we are receiving this gift of God imparting Himself to the extent that we are becoming gracious ourselves. It is not the case that God is pouring out an impersonal grace fluid into so many assembled grace receptacles, so many grace buckets.
Grace is a feature of relationship. God is gracious to you, and imparts grace to you, because you are His friend. Moreover, as you function in this friendship, understanding it, you will function in friendship and brotherhood with everyone else who is receiving the same gift from Him. That would include everyone else here. You can identify them readily enough—they are the ones who eat the bread and drink the wine with you.
Being gracious to them is not the price of the ticket so that you can gain admittance to this “ritual.” Rather, graciousness is the evidence that you have participated in this ritual in faith, understanding it. In this sacrament, God is dealing with all of us. Moreover, He is dealing with us according to His nature, which is gracious.
If we were gracious to begin with, we would not need this grace. But we are not gracious to begin with—we are ornery Pharisees, full of good works and all round cussedness.
To change the metaphor, we do not assemble here to take the bath as a reward for staying so clean. But neither are we here to take a bath that does nothing for us with regard to cleanliness, one way or the other.
Eat and drink, and as you do so in evangelical faith, you receive the grace of God. But beware—as you eat and drink the grace of God, you grow up into graciousness.