I sit, holding the tiny piece of bread between the fingers of one hand and the little cup of juice in the other. It is the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. As I listen to my pastor read the words of Christ, taken from that somber evening in the upper room, I delicately move my fingers over the texture of the bread, feeling its roughness and substance. I look down and see the light reflected off the smooth surface of the crimson liquid, and all my senses are aligned in the perception of these physical realities. I have done this for several years now. It helps me focus on the weighty truth we are remembering at such times – He came in the flesh and died for our sins. He was physically here. Christmas is the time of year when we recall the advent of our Savior as a baby born in Bethlehem. And just as we remember His death in the elements of Communion, I believe it is fitting that we recall the moment when that sacrifice first began, and I think we will discover added admonition as we ponder it this year. Allow me to explain.
Last December I wrote a post called “A Common Incarnation.” The point of the post was to remind you that humans are a compound of flesh and spirit, and as such are everyday reminders of that most vital incarnation of all – our incarnate Lord. Little did I know that the coming year would bring such a concerted attack upon those place holders, that we would be increasingly veiled and isolated from one another. So as I consider once again the incarnation of our Lord, it is with renewed poignancy and instruction. What is the main point of that Holy name we remember so singularly at this time of year, Immanuel? Is it not the reality of His physical presence with us here on earth? Is this not one of the prime distinctions between our God and all the others? He came down, took on our flesh, and walked among us. The birth at Christmas makes way for the blood of Calvary and the resurrected body of Easter. Christmas is the acknowledgment of the radical physicality of our faith.
A key component of the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple was the Bread of Presence, or as older translations title it, the Showbread. Twelve unleavened loaves placed upon a golden table before the Lord. (Ex. 25:30). The bread was made by the Priests each Friday in preparation for the Sabbath the following day. In Hebrew, the showbread is called lechem hapanim, which literally translated means “face bread.” The reason newer translations go with “bread of presence” is because the Hebrew word used for face here carries the connotation of “showing ourselves,” or our presence, which is most clearly seen when our faces are exposed. How fitting then that our Immanuel, the true Bread, first showed His face in Bethlehem, for Bethlehem means “House of Bread.” This Bread of heaven left the presence of His Father, to be present here “with us.”
It is this physical presence, this tangible texture of His salvation that most captivates me right now. Our immaterial God took on flesh and bone to be with us. It was a physical face that revealed the glory of God. And it is for the importance of this physical aspect that I believe the Lord instructed us to remember his death with real bread and wine, and not merely to meditate on the historical fact. It is why John adamantly writes “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.” (1 John 1:1) And again, “By this, you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.” (1 John 4:2) Our God who is Eternal Spirit and therefore omnipresent at all times means for orthodoxy to hang not upon His spiritual nature but upon the reality of His physical presence here on earth. His shining in the darkness was not like the weightlessness of earthly light, but with a breathing body tugged on by the pull of gravity.
The physical world around us is witness to the reality of our spiritual God and His eternal nature. It is not, as the Gnostics believed, some evil and insignificant emanation of a Demiurge. They believed the spiritual, immaterial world was all the mattered, indeed, all that was truly good. But the incarnation is testimony that the physical world both needed saving and was worth the cost. The incarnation proves that human, physical interaction is as spiritual as it gets! If fellowship with Adam’s race is the goal of God, the incarnation shows that the path is through the messy combination of flesh and spirit. We cannot afford the loss of either one if we would live in wholeness. If God thought it necessary to clothe Himself in flesh to reveal Himself and be “with us,” let us not think that we can be together without the physical as well.
We are His physical body on earth today and the spiritual testimony of the church will not be seen without our physical interaction with one another. This Christmas may we partake together the bread of our Immanuel, and thereby proclaim His saving death until He comes again.
