Most of our difficulties with understanding the Supper of the Lord stem from philosophical assumptions that we all carry about with us. One of the principal culprits has been the division of the world we inhabit into two parts—the spiritual and mental, the material and physical.
But the world is not to be divided up like this. God has established a fundamental divide in this world, but the divide is ethical, and is characterized by faith and fidelity on one side and unbelief and infidelity on the other. In all that we say, do, or think, we reveal an allegiance in one direction or the other. The division is not spiritual v. physical, but rather obedience v. disobedience. The devil, a proud spirit, is disobedient. And a lowly hedgehog can be obedient.
The world as created by God is covenantal throughout. This means that we are always partaking, in a sacramental sense, of one of two tables. We partake of the Lord’s body and blood in this rite. The Levites partook of the sacrifices of the altar in the old covenant. Pagans partook of their sacrifices in their temples. You do not partake of this Table, and then throughout the course of the rest of your regular life, go out into a realm where there is no such thing as partaking. In this world, there is nothing but partaking.
All of life, whether obedient or disobedient, is covenantal partaking. The Lord’s Supper is not any more “miraculous” than a pagan festival to Zeus. It is, however, far more mysterious than modern materialists assume. This is because your physical actions are every bit as covenantal as the rest of your actions.
The process of sanctification is therefore the process of learning to eat at one table only. You eat at the Lord’s Table on the Lord’s Day, and you learn, as you take up the cross daily, to eat from it in another extended sense on Monday and Tuesday, and so on. And a corollary of this is that you learn to refuse the offerings and tidbits that came from an alien altar. And if you do not want to give up those tidbits, that accounts for the temptation to shrink back from this Table. But do not do it. Come.