THE LORD'S SUPPER

A debut book offers a unique take on the Christian Eucharist.

Lupich addresses one of Christianity’s most mysterious and elusive rites—the Eucharist—and provides some new ideas of his own. The author shows a deep respect for the Eucharist (the Communion or Lord’s Supper) but immediately points to it as a purely metaphorical act, thus downplaying non-Protestant views of the sacrament as being literal in intent. His is no normal Protestant view of Communion, however. Lupich sees the elements of the Eucharist as “powerful God-access mechanisms for His children.” An unusual point that Lupich makes is that God’s grace is not granted entirely freely but instead he gives believers “the Way, whereby we would be able to extricate ourselves out of the miry mess into which we have fallen.” Thus, God’s followers are to work their way to spiritual maturity, and part of this “labor is to find, ingest, and enjoy His allegorical body and blood.” Lupich explains: “For when we mingle with the Father and Son, some of the Best always rubs off on us.” It is in the author’s final chapters that he abruptly strays the furthest from orthodox Christianity. He posits that if believers exist as portions of Christ’s spiritual body, then surely they have “spiritual organs needing spiritual food,” and this special diet is “ingested over sundry lifetimes.” He concludes that a follower’s goal is to become the alter ego of God, which the author asserts is what Jesus managed to do. In his absorbing book, Lupich provides a thought-provoking look at the Eucharist in lucid prose, but he drifts into areas of Gnosticism and New Age thought that will likely limit the work’s appeal to traditional Christian readers. The volume’s structure also remains a bit problematic. The author would have done well to more effectively bridge his orthodox critiques of the Eucharist and his fully heterodox conclusions, both to prepare readers and to provide a greater context for such singular arguments.

An intriguing work explores the Lord’s Supper as a tool for a closer connection with the divine.