The oak forest as a picture of the body of Christ

I read the following in a Reader's Digest article while waiting for Lucy to have her fiddle lesson yesterday. It was in the June/July 2011 issue in an article titled 'The Wisdom of the Oak' by Yelizaveta Renfro. She got the information about oak trees from a book by William Bryant Logan called 'Oak: The Frame of Civilization'. Here is the quote from her article:


"In some forests, Logan writes, oak trees of compatible species graft their roots together and "become one flesh". Through their shared root system, the stronger dominant trees may provide the weaker trees with nutrients. In this way, even the roots of stumps can continue to live and contribute to the forest."

When I read that I can't tell you how thrilled I was, immediately seeing it as a picture of the Body of Christ. If a body of believers is together reaching their roots deep into the soil of Christ's word, their root systems will be grafted together so that each can draw from the soil and from the others so that they are 'one flesh'. That's true communion, being one with Christ and with one another. The weak ones will be just as nourished as the strong ones as they share together.

A Conversation About the Eucharist: Paul Pavao

I had an email conversation recently with Paul Pavao (Shammah) about baptism which led to this conversation about the Eucharist:

Jennie,
The Lord's Supper is a lot harder than baptism because there are less Scriptures on it. Not only that, but I'm firmly convinced that the Scriptures that do mention the Lord's Supper/Eucharist/Communion are often at least partially symbolic.

My argument would be that in John 6, when Jesus says to eat his body and drink his blood, he is talking in the present tense, not in the future. They were already supposed to be eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Since that didn't mean biting him, it's obviously symbolic.

In fact, Jesus sort of says so in Jn. 6:35: "I am the Bread of Life; he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes in me will never thirst."

Does this not strongly suggest that coming to him is eating of him and believing in him is drinking of him?

It's just a chapter later when he says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He that believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of belly rivers of living water will flow" (7:37-38).

Now, keep in mind that I am aware that Ignatius, a man chosen by the apostle John to lead the church in Antioch, says that communion is "the medicine of immortality, the antidote which prevents us from dying, and a cleansing remedy driving away evil so that we should live in God through Jesus Christ."

He adds that the gnostics don't eat the Eucharist because they don't agree that it's the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The fact is, none of us like the priestly hocus pocus [hoc est corpus] that goes on in the Catholic Church. I was raised Catholic, and I can tell you that if the Catholic Church were the church of our Lord Jesus Christ and if its Eucharist were the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, then there ought to be a lot of sick and dead Catholics (1 Cor. 11:30). The fact is, though, that the Catholic Church has awful fruit, it is not the church, its communion is not the body of Christ, and its priestly hocus pocus is as false as it seems to be.

But ...

I've never met a free Christian that didn't love the idea that the bread of communion is "the medicine of immortality."

Think about it. If communion can make an unworthy partaker ill or dead, shouldn't it be able to communicate grace to the worthy partaker?

Like baptism, there's no indication that anyone considered the Lord's Supper to be purely symbolic until at least the Reformation. Zwingli did not believe it to be the actual body of Christ, but I don't think he considered it purely symbolic, either.

However, there's so much more to be said on the subject of the Lord's Supper that it makes me tired to think about it.

For example, the word "communion" is a silly word. The Greek word it comes from is koinonia, the word for fellowship. If we want to speak English, then we ought to translate 1 Cor 10:16 should be translated, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the fellowship of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the fellowship of the body of Christ?"

I don't believe this is referring to physical eating. I believe it is referring to the fellowship of the church. The blood of Christ not only forgives sin and cleanses us from our weaknesses, but it also gives us fellowship with one another (1 Jn. 1:7-9).

Paul also entirely puts the context of the Lord's Supper into the fellowship of the church. We have discern the Lord's body, he says. What was he rebuking them for? He was rebuking them for not taking care of each other. Some went hungry, others were drunk. This is what it means to not discern the Lord's body. That intense self-examination people go through is not what God is after. He wants us to eat and drink as participants in the fellowship of the body of Christ, joined to one another by the body and blood of Christ.

So I don't think the Eucharist is purely symbolic, but I believe the effect of it is spiritual. There's no physical transformation. That's ridiculous, and it could be tested by science, anyway.

I believe all of God's "symbols" are not mere symbols. They convey power.

Baptism does something because it is, as you say, an act of obedience to the Word of God. It is our response to the Gospel, the answer to God from a good conscience or the appeal to God for a good conscience. Either way, it was meant to be our "sinner's prayer" or our initial act of obedience.

The Eucharist, too, is both an act of fellowship for the body and a meal that brings grace from heaven, the product of our faith and worship, not the product of the bread and wine itself. The bread and wine is to remember him, but in remembering him, he responds. God inhabits the praises of his people.

The early churches universally took those things seriously. Speaking for them, it was important to them. It was so important that if a person was sick when the Lord's Supper was served, the deacons brought some to the sick person's home after the meeting.

Of course, back then it was a meal, not a tiny cracker. So it's possible that they delivered it to the sick person as food, a meal they needed, not just as a ceremony.

I've been forced to ramble a bit because that's all I know to do on this subject. It's so wide, and there's areas that seem to me to be free for interpretation. I can say that the early church clearly did not see the meal as symbolic, and I can say the Catholic Church has gone too far and gotten silly and powerless, but where in between we should land? Now that's a question, and I've only thrown out some bits of evidence to help decide.

Shammah


My response (so far):
Paul (Shammah),
Your answer is very helpful, even though you thought it was rambling. I have a thought about the Eucharist being partly symbolic. Could it be that the bread of the Eucharist, like the water of baptism, is symbolic, but that the act of faith of the believer in response to God is the part that brings the benefit? In other words, the believers fellowship together in faith by obeying Jesus' command to 'do this in remembrance of Me' and God in turn is with us and gives us His grace and goodness in a special way in return. But are we missing out on this by not understanding the nature of the Supper? Are we missing out on the benefits of it by thinking it's symbolic, and also by not really being in full fellowship as we are meant to?
Thanks for taking the time to address my question.
In Christ,
Jennie

UPDATE: Paul's response:
I found a neat quote on this just today from the Anabaptists:

"Those who believe receive remission of sins, not by but in baptism. ... They trust in the merits of the blood of Christ. Then they receive the sign of obedience, water baptism, as proof before God and his church that they firmly believe in the remission of sins through Jesus Christ as it was preached and taught to them from the Word of God. When all this takes place, they receive remission of their sins in baptism."

That's from Menno Symons. If I'm translating the Dutch title correctly, it's Explanation of the Christian Baptism.

That's to say, I agree wholeheartedly with your "the bread of the Eucharist, like the water of baptism, is symbolic, but that the act of faith of the believer in response to God is the part that brings the benefit."

In addition, I assure you that you are correct and modern believers are missing out on lots of things because of unbelief. We have grown used to a powerless Christianity. I have been learning to walk in faith for 25 years, but America is bathed in unbelief, and I have a long ways to go to be the kind of faith-filled believer that Stephen and others were in the early church.

Paul/Shammah

A Study on The Lord's Supper by Eric Svendsen

Here is a link to a study on the Lord's Supper by Eric Svendsen. I haven't finished reading it all, but it promises to be very helpful and thought-provoking.

1Corinthians 11:27-29: Judgment at the Lord's Supper: How Banquets in the Bible reveal Salvation or Judgment by Bob DeWaay and K. Jentoft

Bob DeWaay and K. Jentoft have an article about the Lord's Supper as related to judgment and reward in Biblical accounts of feasts. Following is an excerpt of the beginning of the article. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

"Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly." (1Corinthians 11:27-29)

If you truly know the Lord Jesus as Savior, you likely have felt too sinful to safely take communion at some point in your Christian life. The irony is that the better we do in regard to sanctification, the more concerned we are about sin in our lives. That being the case, the idea that partaking of the Lord's Supper might put us under judgment can be rather troubling.

The concept of being judged at a banquet found in 1Corinthians 11 is not at all unique but fits a pattern that begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation. The Bible is full of banquets that result in simultaneous blessing or judgment. In this article I will provide a survey of many of these passages to identify the pattern. Having shown a consistent pattern, we will then return to 1Corinthians 11 and see if we can be specific about what Paul was warning against and make application of it.
Mishteh in the Old Testament

The Hebrew word mishteh means a feast or banquet associated with a special occasion, often associated with wine. This is from the Dictionary of Biblical Languages under "mishteh": "meal, feast, banquet i.e., an eating event either as a common meal or usually a special festive dinner, often including much drinking of wine."1 But what has been overlooked by Biblical scholars is the fact that accompanying these events in Scripture are always divisions between people where some are blessed and others are cursed. These incidents are found throughout the Scriptures and are frequent in the Gospels. This concept of simultaneous blessing and judgment at a banquet or feast is a main Biblical theme and we will see how central it is to the message of the gospel. The pattern of mishteh is amazingly consistent throughout the Old Testament.

For example, consider the first use of mishteh in the Bible:

Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. And he said, "Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant's house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way." They said however, "No, but we shall spend the night in the square." Yet he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he prepared a feast [mishteh] for them, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. (Genesis 19:1-3)

Here Lot entertained the angels by throwing a mishteh. We know exactly what happened on the occasion of this mishteh: Lot and his family were saved and Sodom was destroyed. These were starkly different outcomes.

The term mishteh is used 46 times in the Old Testament, with 19 of those occurring in the book of Esther. In every case we find the same pattern of salvation and judgment dramatically revealed. The entire book of Esther is about the judgment of wicked Haman and the salvation of Mordecai, Esther, and the Jews. Haman's pride and hatred of Mordecai led to his demise on the occasion of a mishteh. Conversely, Mordecai received the honor that Haman desired for himself. Much more can be said about Esther, but the book contains stark examples of judgment and salvation happening at its various banquets.

Going back to early Genesis we see the second use of the term mishteh in the Bible:

And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast [mishteh] on the day that Isaac was weaned. Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. Therefore she said to Abraham, "Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac." (Genesis 21:8)

In that incident Isaac was named the heir of the promise, and Ishmael and Hagar were sent away. There is a division, with the blessing going to one and not the other.

In Genesis 40:16-22 Joseph had interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker while all were in prison. Then Pharaoh threw a dinner party. At Pharaoh's mishteh the cupbearer was restored to his job as Joseph predicted, and the baker was hanged.

1Samuel 25:2-42 contains the narrative of wicked Nabal and his virtuous wife Abigail. Nabal refused to show hospitality to David's men, and David vowed to destroy Nabal and his men. Abigail heard about this and bearing much food came out to greet David and intercede with him on behalf of her wicked husband. David accepted her request and spared her husband. Then in 1Samuel 25:36, Nabal held a mishteh. The next day Abigail told Nabal about David's threat and her intercession. Ten days later the Lord struck Nabal dead, and Abigail became David's wife soon afterward (1Samuel 25:42). Again, on the occasion of a mishteh one person was judged and another blessed.

A similar incident in 2Samuel 3:20-30 describes David's mishteh with Abner, with Abner being killed soon after it (2Samuel 3:30). This event was the culmination of a process by which David's house was established, and Saul's (represented by Abner) was subjugated.

This theme is consistent throughout the Old Testament. Besides non-literal uses of the term in the wisdom literature of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, whenever there is a mishteh, someone (or more) is blessed, saved or exalted, and someone (or more) is cursed, judged, or killed. Sometimes this is more or less obvious, but there are no exceptions. These banquets are occasions where people are separated based on their status entering the banquet—either by their moral character or by their status vis-à-vis God's purposes (such as Ishmael). To be invited to a mishteh always sounds like a good thing because it is a festive feast with lots of food and wine. But it is only good for some.