Christian symbols

Bread and Wine in Christianity

The Lord's Supper

Bread and wine are the signs of the Lord's Supper, the meal Jesus gave his church on the night before he died. Taking bread, he said, This is my body, and taking the cup, This is my blood, and he told his followers to do this in remembrance of him. Ever since, Christians have gathered around bread and wine to remember his death, to receive what he gives, and to look for his coming. Few symbols are as central to Christian worship, for these are the things Christ himself put into his people's hands.

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.Luke 22:19 (KJV)

The night of the Last Supper

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus sat at table with his disciples to keep the Passover. During the meal he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Then he took the cup, saying that it was the new covenant in his blood, shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.

The setting matters. It was the Passover, the feast of deliverance, and Jesus was giving its meaning a new depth. The bread broken and the cup poured out were his own body and blood, about to be given on the cross. He was placing the meaning of his death into a simple meal his friends could keep forever.

A meal of remembrance and presence

From the earliest days the church obeyed his command. The believers, the Book of Acts says, continued in the breaking of bread, and Paul passed on the words of institution as sacred tradition. The bread and the cup became the heart of Christian gathering.

Christians of different traditions understand the meal in different ways, some speaking of a real presence of Christ, some of a spiritual feeding, some chiefly of remembrance, and this page does not settle those honest differences. What all hold in common is far greater than what divides them: that Jesus gave these signs, that they proclaim his death, and that in them his people are drawn near to him and to one another.

How bread and wine have been used

The bread and the cup have shaped Christian art and worship for two thousand years. Sheaves of wheat and clusters of grapes, the raw materials of the meal, are carved on altars and woven into vestments. The vine, from which the wine comes, is often shown nearby, recalling the words of Jesus that he is the true vine.

The meal is known by many names, the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, the breaking of bread. Whatever it is called, it stands at the center of Christian worship, the place where the church does what its Lord told it to do until he comes again.

Bread of life and one body

The signs of bread and wine reach back into some of the richest words Jesus ever spoke. He called himself the bread of life, and said that whoever came to him would never hunger. He spoke of a bread from heaven greater than the manna Israel ate in the wilderness, a bread that gives life to the world. So when he took bread at the last supper and said, This is my body, he was drawing on everything he had already taught about himself as the true food of the soul.

Wine, too, carried deep meaning. It was the drink of feasts and gladness, and Jesus had turned water into wine at a wedding as the first of his signs. Now the cup of wine became the cup of his blood, the seal of a new covenant. The joy of the feast and the cost of the cross meet in that single cup, poured out for the forgiveness of sins.

The meal also makes a people. Paul wrote that because there is one bread, the many who share it are one body. To come to the table is not merely a private act of devotion but a joining, a declaration that those who eat the one bread belong to one another in Christ. The Supper heals the isolation of the human heart, gathering strangers into a family around a common Lord.

So the plainest of foods becomes the richest of signs. In bread and wine Christ gives himself to be received, feeds the hungry soul, binds his people into one, and points ahead to the great feast of the kingdom. He might have left his church a grand monument. Instead he left it a meal, so that the remembrance of his love would be as near and as ordinary as daily bread.

Do this in remembrance of me

Of all that Jesus might have asked his followers to remember, he chose to fix their memory on his death. Do this, he said, in remembrance of me, and the remembering was to be done not with a monument but with a meal, bread broken and a cup poured, taken again and again until he comes. The church has kept that command in every century and on every continent, so that the memory of his love has never grown cold.

To remember, in the language of Scripture, is more than to recall a fact. It is to make a past mercy present and to lay hold of it afresh. When the church breaks the bread, it does not merely think back to a distant event; it receives again the grace won on the cross and proclaims the Lord's death until he comes. Past, present, and future meet at the table.

The Supper is also a great leveler. Rich and poor, learned and simple, come to the same table and hold out the same empty hands to receive the same bread. No one earns a larger portion; all are fed by grace alone. In a world that ranks and divides, the table of the Lord seats everyone together as one family, needy and welcome alike.

And it always looks ahead. Jesus said he would not drink again of the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in his Father's kingdom, so every Supper is a rehearsal of the feast to come. The bread and the cup are given for the road, food for pilgrims on their way home, and a promise that the table they gather at now is a foretaste of the great table where the whole family of God will sit down together at last.

How bread and wine point to Christ

Bread and wine point to Christ as directly as anything can, for he said of them, This is my body, this is my blood. They preach his death without a word, the body given and the blood poured out for the life of the world. To eat and drink is to receive what he freely offers and to say that his sacrifice is for me.

The meal also looks forward. Jesus said he would not drink again of the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in his Father's kingdom, so every Supper is a foretaste of the great feast to come. In the plainest of foods, bread and wine, Christ gave his people a way to remember his love, to receive his grace, and to hope for his return.

A note across traditions: these symbols are shared by Christians everywhere as ways to point to Christ, never as objects of worship, for worship belongs to God alone. Where a symbol grew out of a later tradition or legend rather than the Bible, this page says so plainly. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every sign the church uses is meant to lead the heart to him.

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