EliRoom8: I can't agree. Sounds too much like the false RC dogma of transubstantiation. Post #4)
How the Gospel is to be delivered was illustrated on the day of the formation of the first prototype ekklesia, where:
(1) Simon Peter, standing in the delegated authority of Christ and the presence of the elders, preached the message inviting hearers to be saved by belief on Jesus The Messiah;
(2) ordered the new believer to undergo the rite of induction as a disciple on the basis of one's profession;
(3) those who would commit themselves thus were baptized into membership of the local church, the body of Christ; and
(4) they participated in the functioning of the church by allowing the apostles to have fellowship with and teach them, by breaking bread in the Remembrance Supper, praying together, and sharing their food and resources with those in need of it.
The problem is that those who see it necessary to institutionalize this Way of Life have insisted on defining procedures of interacting with God, and making inanimate objects necessary to the functioning of it, as in themselves having attained a state of holiness through reverencing the procedures and objects in a way not at all demanded by the Lord's teaching and example. But it is by this obsequious gratuitous treatment that such procedures and objects have been identified as "sacraments," a humanistic definition for which one finds no precedent in Scripture.
So, EliRoom8, for you and I the elements from the Passover supper, the common bread and grape juice, singled out by Jesus to be emblems of His Cross-death, and ordained to be objects to call the remembrance of it to His disciples, are just that: Bread and grape juice. But the practicioners of a humanly created religiosity have elevated these common, plain food items to the point where participants' attention has come to focus on these objects, these "sacraments." and the procedure of distributing them, rather than on the Lord. He Who gave them only proposed as a way to draw the believers together for a moment of remembering Him, not on the tokens that signify His Passion.
It is the strategy of creating a class of religiously inclined celebrants who alone hold the exact methods of conduct, a "priesthood" so to speak, who then can have power over credulous numbers of uninitiated adherents (a "lay" class) and thus gain power over them. I say, this is not at all what the Lord Jesus meant for the moment to humbly share the simple formula for humans to gain access to their Creator through acknowledging the self-sacrifice of their Master and His Blood that flowed to wash away the sins that kept them from coummuning with their Heavenly Father.
The bread and grape juice are not holy, they are just food objects, and believers are summoned together to rehearse and speak of the moments of Jesus' sufferings, death, and resurrection in their place; often enough that the unsaved, watching, surrounding last dregs of humanity will not forget it, either. I do not believe the His Purpose for it was to make of this a grossly ornamented, holified caricature of the moment in history that opened the gates of God's Heaven to everyone who would desire to know their Creator on His terms through Jesus The Christ--through belief in Him alone.
No "transubsantiation," no "consubstantiation," nothing but common digestible food objects that symbolized His humanity taken on willingly, and life given up freely, that God's Righteous Wrath might be propitiated, anger slaked, and friendship extended to all those intimate servants of His Son, without partiality.