12/29/12- This is my Body- Christmas

Luke 22:19- And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
I Corinthians 11:24- and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me."

Thoughts: "This is my body" is something we say (from clearly early tradition- the very words of Christ) every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper.  But the Lord's Supper is contingent on Christmas- the incarnation of Christ in human form.  "This is my body" would be meaningless unless Christ came in a body.  We remember His sacrifice when we take communion, but there would be no sacrifice without pain and death- and there would have been no pain or death without His coming down.  This is the human side of Christmas.
     For Zwingli and for some Reformed and Baptists this is just a commandment that we fulfill.  But for most who believe the Lord's Supper is a sacrament in which He is present in some way.  Most recognize that when we take communion it is a spiritually moving experience with a special sense of Christ's being with us.  That Christ is able to be present all over the world to millions, is the divine side of Christmas.
    When we celebrate communion during the Christmas season we are reminded that Christ has come- God has come.  He is Immanuel, God with us.  Christ speaks of his being able to be present with His disciples wherever they went.  He said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Mt. 18:20).  He said to His disciples "Go into all the world... and Lo I am with you always even to the end of the world" (Mt. 28:19-20).  Christ and the early church clearly believed that Jesus is able to be with His followers in a special way.  But this divine presence is seen clearest in His being with us in becoming human.  It is one thing to have a philosophy that God cares enough to be with us.  But it is another to have eyewitnesses "see and hear and touch" (1 John 1:1,2) the person of God in the flesh.  God came in the person of Jesus to show us that He cares about us enough to physically be with us.  He was in the flesh when he said, "This is my body."  It was not just a mystical theory- Christ really came in a real body.  Christmas makes communion that much more meaningful.  That is one reason why those Christmas Eve communion services are so very special. 

Prayer: Lord, thank you for your love that came down for me.  Help me to desire to worship you with others and to go into my world proclaiming your love- knowing you are with me. 

Below- The Last Supper by Salvador Dali 1955- emphasizing the mystical presence of Christ. 

"Yet the Lord is not absent from his Church when she celebrates the Supper. The sun, which is absent from us in the heavens, is notwithstanding effectually present among us. How much more is the Sun of Righteousness, Christ, although in his body he is absent from us in heaven, present with us, not corporeally, but spiritually, by his vivfying operation, and as he himself explained at his Last Supper that he world be present with us (John, chs. 14; 15; and 16). Whence it follows that we do not have the Supper without Christ, and yet at the same time have an unbloody and mystical Supper, as it was universally called by antiquity." (Second Helvetic Confession Chapter 21).