The Blood, the Cup.

One of my favorite quotes is from Friedrich Nietzsche: "....if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." While he certainly didn't intend it as such, it's an eloquent summation of the effect sin has on us.

We celebrate Communion every Sunday at our church. Yesterday, as I stared into my own small cup of wine, it struck me that Christ's blood also gazes into us, though its gazing is far different from that of the abyss.

If Communion is only a symbolic act, then my realization would be a false one. If its only purpose is to remind us of what Jesus did on the cross, there really is no place for reflection on the act itself; the eating and the drinking are only rote behaviours divested of mystical significance and power.

But Communion is far more than that. It is spritual food, and mystical unification of the Body with the Body, and the Body with the Head. Not only the saving act it reflects, but the spiritual power it effects in the faithful of God are worthy of reflection. And so I stared into my cup of wine, into the spiritual realm of spilled blood and violently trampled grapes.

The wine stared back at me.

Only, so much different than Nietzsche's horrific abyss, the wine that gazed into me also entered me, and it brought more of God's abundant grace with it, more strength to resist sin, more courage to pursue good openly. We only drink a little at a time, but then the road to Christian maturity is trod only a few small inches at a time. That's why we drink and eat over and over, just as we move one foot in front of the other....over and over.

Christians are all too eager to resist the mystical elements of the Christian faith, the spiritual doctrines that cannot be properly or fully articulated in words. But that doesn't keep the mystical exchange from occurring, doesn't bind the Spirit in place, or sequester God to a material region in which His Holy Ghost has no purpose and no power. Rather, He intersects the spiritual realm with the physical, meeting His creation through His creation. Nowhere is this more certain, more obvious, or more genuinely terrifying than in the Holy Supper that sees each of us who partake.