You Are What You Eat

Our family and a friend went to the Los Angeles County Fair last weekend.
When I go to the fair, it's all about the food, and I wasn't disappointed! There were many tasty, exotic and reasonably healthy alternatives. There were also lots of food-like substances. But, who would eat them?
We'll OK, the four of us in our group shared an order of chocolate covered bacon, and some of us, not me, sampled the fried Klondike bar. I found that one can eat about anything if it's covered in chocolate.
But, deep fried White Castle hamburgers? Deep fried avocados? A Krispy Creme donut chicken sandwich? Do people really eat those things for any other reason than to say, “Yeah. I did that.”?
Holy Communion is even more revolting to those outside the faith. “So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’” John 6:35ff
Yeah, that requires a bit of an explanation.
Christ is present in the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion. If you took those forms to a chemist, he/she would say, “It’s bread and wine.” But our belief is that Christ is literally (not symbolically) present in those very forms of bread and wine.
St. Paul writes, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” 1 Corinthians 11:23-25
That’s why it’s Holy Communion. When we receive the bread and wine we commune, that is we have “intimate communication or fellowship” (Merriam-Webster online), with Jesus Christ. We experience the real personal presence of Jesus and the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins when, as Martin Luther reminds us, we believe the words “for you.”
If you are what you eat, that’s what I want. I want Jesus.