I’m pretty much in agreement with all your points, Bro.
Biblically, it just gets into issues that get folks wound up quickly over . . . and it doesn’t seem like anything like a core set of issues to me so I tend to try and leave it alone.
Christ calls us to be broken bread and poured out wine to those around us, as He was and is. We are to be HIS hands extended. etc.
Thx.
That is a VERY Patristic -- and IMHO -- excellent thought. I make a big deal, when somebody is foolish enough to give me the floor, to say that the Greeks are right to make a big deal of the "offertory" (when the bread and wine are brought forward) and that it is not without meaning that the 'gifts' bread and wine are "the work of human hands" as well as the fruit of the earth. In fact a vineyard pretty much requires some degree of civilization.
So when we offer bread and wine we are offering the sweat of the farm worker, the anxiety of the wheat grower, the work of the teamsters who truck the goods to market, the wholesaler, the retailer, everyone with their sins as well as their productive work. What is (as we think) transformed into Christ by his once-for-all sacrifice is YOU!
And this necessarily has an eschatological side - we proclaim Christ's death until he comes again - in that the transformation in us is a process which will be brought to completion for the vast majority of us only at the consummation.
When we offer the bread and wine, when we offer the body and blood of Christ, we are essentially tied up to that offering. We are members of the body which was offered on Calvary.