The celebration of bread and wine is no abstract object out there, no thing to be observed as an object of interest, no mere ritual to be taken in a perfunctory or mechanical way. No. We move from a delightful contemplation of all that bread and wine disclose to a participation in God’s story by continually affirming in bread and wine that Jesus is given anew and poured out again to the world through our individual lives and through the community of the people of God, the church, who manifest God’s purposes for the world in the worship of our lips and lives.
-Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008), 147.