by Adam R. Nettesheim
What use is a little bread and a little wine in the face of such evil in the world?
Flour and water and the juice of smashed grapes?
What sense does it make to memorialize any single thing when everything feels so tragic? When evil persists and injustice prevails, when mother’s hold their children close and all the tears are spent? When a father’s hopes for the future of his family now consist of food and safety for just one more meal, just one more day? The sounds of the enemy approach ever nearer! The pain of loss grows wider and farther! The world turns as always, but why does it feel like it’s spinning out of control today?
What makes me think that such small things – like bread and wine – can make any difference against empires and famine and pandemics and pain and death?
You do God.
You do.
You knew that we would need these very emblems in times like these.
You knew these little morsels and drops were just the thing to hold us fast when all else seems lost.
You have given us anchors made of bread to sustain, wine to celebrate, a meal to commemorate that neither height nor depth nor angels nor demons nor tanks nor Covid nor death nor death nor death nor anything can separate us from your love!
When the whole world screams “death is the end of you” a still small voice whispers through the bread and whispers through the wine “I am the resurrection and the life…
…and I love you.”
As you take these emblems you take them with all those who come to this table, this day, in days long past and in days yet to come. When you raise these emblems in defiance of the darkness you do so with those sheltering in basements and those who sheltered in catacombs. Those who congregate together and apart and virtually, apart across time and space.
This table will outlast any injustice, any tyrant, any plague, any famine… ALL evil will wither and die and turn to dust, but this table goes on and on forever!
The marriage supper of the Lamb – which this remembrance is a for taste of and finds its fulfillment in – goes on for eternity when pain and loss are but a distant memory and all the sad things have come untrue.
Defy the dark now.
Stand against the present evil.
Proclaim that it is ended and it will end and it will never rise again…
Unlike us – all because of Him.
What use is a little bread and a little wine in times such as these?
What difference could it possibly make? What could it possibly change?
It changes
Absolutely
Everything.
The bread represents His Body.
The fruit of the Vine represents His Blood.
Broken
Spilled
Resurrected
and Glorified.
Do this in remembrance of Him,
Because He went to the cross remembering you.