Bread and Wine

Sometimes, I think about this Table and the meal that is set upon it. 

We know that at the Passover meal, the seder, there was much more on the spread than bread and wine. We know that there would have been lamb and all of the accoutrement that went with the remembrance. Jesus could have chosen anything on that table to represent His body and His blood. 

But He didn't. 

And here's why I think He didn't: because the bread and the wine were the most universal of all foods that day. Every culture from every place and every time has had some form of bread and some form of fermented drink. We've been talking this week about culture, and the bread and the wine...it isn't cultural. 

It's cross-cultural. 

Think about all of the foods that you've read about in the Bible. There's a lot of talk about pomegranates. Raisin cakes. Lamb. Manna. Quail. Mandrakes. Honey. Figs. Any or all of these things, Jesus could have chosen. But these things, they are local. They are specialized. They are cultural. For example, lamb was common and perhaps if Jesus had made lamb the thing, it would still be common for us, but most Americans aren't eating lamb on any kind of regular basis. We certainly aren't eating raisin cakes. I'm not even sure I know what a raisin cake is.

And I certainly don't want any figs. (If you've been around this blog for awhile, you know that I believe the fruit that Eve ate from the tree was a fig. There's a very fun theological thread to follow to support that idea, but I've already done that in other places.)

But no. We have a God who chose bread and wine. And if we look across time and around the world, every civilization has had some form of these foods. Bread, pan, naan, crackers, ciabatta, focaccia, baguette...everyone is grinding grain and making bread. 

And all kinds of fermented drinks. Wine, of course, is quite popular, and even in places like maximum security prisons, persons are finding things to ferment - saving the scraps of their fruit from their meal trays and tucking them away in socks to make a fermented drink. There's something in the human spirit that likes to ferment. Native tribes all around the world have their own drinks. We just keep doing it. 

So Jesus looked at this table that was spread with the very cultural meal of the Israelites - the Passover - and He took the things that were least cultural among them, the things that every man and woman would know across all times and all places, and He said, This is it. This is My body; this is My blood. Do this in remembrance of me. 

As we think about culture wars, then, about the Bible and postmodernism and maybe even post-Christiandom or whatever other era we think we want to be in, and as we try to read back through His Word with whatever cultural lens we've gathered, this Table puts us back in our right place - reclining with Him, enjoying the meal, breaking the bread, pouring the wine, and doing this thing that every man and woman would always know. 

Bread and wine. 

Broken and poured out for you and me. 

Thank you, Jesus.