While it may take some explaining to demonstrate that baptism symbolizes the end of the exile, the other ordinance instituted by Jesus, the LORD’s Supper, seems to need no such explanation. Consider what we read in Jeremiah 31: 31: “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” Then recall what Jesus said at the Last Supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
A meal that had its roots in the Exodus from Egypt, Passover as it is known, was the context within which Jesus instituted what we know as the LORD’s Supper. In showing the continuity between the people of the Old Covenant and those of the New Covenant, Paul writes in I Corinthians 10:1-4: 1For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3They all ate the same spiritual food 4and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
Several things stand out from this passage. First, Paul is writing to a predominantly Gentile congregation, yet refers to the Israelites as “our forefathers,” thereby showing continuity and connection. Secondly, Paul pushes that continuity further by seeing Israel’s experience of passing through the Red Sea as baptism, and their eating of manna and drinking of water from the Rock as eating spiritual food and drinking spiritual drink. Paul uses the word spiritual to point out the supernatural origin of the manna and the water in question.
As Paul continues his discussion in I Corinthians 10, he does something fascinating (to me, at least). He asks a pair of questions and then draws an important conclusion.
16Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
Paul’s discussion has to do with eating meat offered to idols. But in speaking of the LORD’s Supper, he points to a two-fold relationship. The cup represents our relationship with Christ: participation in the blood of Christ. The bread represents our relationship with one another: participation in the body of Christ. Verse 17 reinforces the idea of the bread symbolizing, in part, our union with one another. And this is the issue in chapter 11, when Paul speaks of not discerning the LORD’s body. He means that some have failed to recognize their organic unity with one another as the body of Christ.
The LORD’s Supper symbolizes the end of Exile, the reality of the New Covenant. Some refer to the LORD’s Supper as Communion, from Paul’s use of koinonia, translated as participation. Among other things, it is to be a reminder that not only has Exile ended, but it has ended for the people of GOD, the body of Christ.