This meal is a proclamation, Paul said so: when we eat and drink, we proclaim the Lord’s death. It’s like a trumpet blast which echoes through the cosmos. We declare the death of our Lord and Master. We point to the table and we say, “His body was broken like this bread is, and see that wine, it’s his blood.” And then we eat it and drink it. The early church was accused of cannibalism, and that isn’t as strange an accusation as it first appears.

The world understands remembering the death of a great man, and using the imagery of broken bread and poured wine for that remembering, that’s as good as any other. But when the saints eat the bread and drink the wine, we are saying more than just, “remember”. We are saying that his death is to us the stuff of life, that his death is cause for joy. In the sound of chewing and sipping can be heard the whisper of the word, “resurrection.” And that whisper is amplified in our faithful works and in our songs and in our prayers as we go out from here until the whole body of the saints reverberates with the music of resurrection.

And what’s more, according to the words of institution, we are proclaiming his death, until he comes. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says the watching world, “You said he was dead. Get your story straight. If he’s dead then he can’t come back, right? …Right?… Why are you just smiling like that?”

When you eat and drink here at this table, you do so in Christian hope, and as such you are eating and drinking courage. Christian hope is not the same as a sunny disposition or positive vibes. It is forged on the anvil of historical event, tempered and tested by suffering and death, cooled in the grave, and now bright and sharp and put into your hand. We hold up our bread in the hope of Christ’s return, we hold up our wine in certain expectation of His final victory because we are certain of his past victory. So we proclaim his death until he comes.