Welcome to Sunday Bible Study Basics where we help you dive deeper in your faith.

So you may have been in church before and you’ve been a part of something called communion. Where you get in line to walk up front and you eat a little piece of bread or gluten free cracker and you drink a little cup of wine or grape juice. And the pastor quotes Jesus saying, “do this in remembrance of me”.

But why do we do that? Where did that come from?

Well we have to go back to a story in the book of Exodus, where all of the Egyptian firstborns are killed as one of the plagues sent against them, but the Israelite children are saved, as long as their parents kill a lamb and sprinkled it’s blood over their doorpost at night. God then commanded the Israelites to celebrate this every year with a feast and called it Passover. It sounds wild I know. But the amazing part is the symbolism behind it.

Fast forward almost two thousand years and Jesus is sitting in the Upper Room with his disciples and they’re actually celebrating the Passover meal. One of the first things Jesus does is break a loaf of bread and gave thanks to God and then he said “This is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Then later on in the evening he took a cup of wine and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”.

And the next day, Jesus was crucified.

He broke bread to symbolize his body being broken.
And he took wine to symbolize the horrific murder that he was going to encounter.
And Jesus said, “do this in remembrance of me.” So today, whether you celebrate an actual Passover feast or if your church does communion every month, the act of breaking bread and drinking the wine is to be done in remembrance of what Jesus did for us and it’s a celebration of what it represented. The fact that he took away our sins and he will one day return again.

So it shouldn’t be a somber experience. I feel like a lot of churches make it that. It should be a celebration. We should be filled with gratitude. Jesus’ death resulted in us, you and me, living under a New Covenant. And we shouldn’t be sad because he’s no longer dead! He rose after three days and he’s coming back again in all of his glory to incorporate a new heaven and a new earth for all of us to live right alongside him.

So that is why we celebrate communion. Have the best week.

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