A while ago, while at a three-day pastor’s retreat, I overheard two young pastors discussing what happens at Communion. One wanted to discuss transubstantiation and consubstantiation -- that is, what actually happens to the bread and wine when the priest or minister pronounces that they are the body and blood of Christ. The second wanted to theorize about the effect the elements had on the worshippers when they took in the body and blood (or the bread and juice, if it wasn’t actually transubstantiated.) I chose not to get into their discussion, but it’s made me think about Communion again.

It seems to me that the weakness in their discussion was that they were trying to standardize things -- to nail down exactly what happened to the bread everytime, and what happened to the juice every ti…