“Then He took the cup, gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.’” – Luke 26:27
Been thinking on food and how complete the imagery is of bread and wine.
Adam and his wife originally ate from trees (Gen 2:16). They reached up and picked fruit. After the “revelation” (Not a fall like Satan – Luke 10:18, their eyes were opened – Gen. 3:7), Adam was sentenced to eat from the “cursed” ground. He reaches down, now (Gen 3:17). The ground (the world) would be worked by him and is where he came from and would return. The world is the interaction and cycling of good and evil—compliments of: light/dark, hard/soft, beginnings/endings, wet/dry, etc. I like to call it “the marketplace of judgment.”
Some of the early field crops were grains from which was made bread. Flour is mixed with water and oil, ferments and bloats (yeasts in the grains trigger this), then baked. Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees (Matt. 16:6). This yeast is dead and just air pockets after baking.
But the bread Jesus identified with, is unleavened (Luke 22: 19). Christ is the “bread of life” (John 6:35), not of emptiness. This bread is also made from wheat, grown from the cursed ground..
But this flesh is broken and dies (Luke 22:19).
This is followed by wine from grapes. Grapes also have yeast—the grapes ferment and produce the drink. But this yeast is living in the wine as it ages, and is drunk, becoming a picture of the Spirit of God in the flesh (Matt. 13:13). The wine pictures Christ’s blood—and his life, not his death (Lev. 17:14).
Grapes are also a field crop with fruit picked from below. But in nature, the vines climb trees and the fruit is picked from above. The perfect image of the union of heaven and earth, Christ.
Well chosen imagery. Or like marriage (Genesis 2: 18/Ephesians. 5:22), were they made to tell the story?