The Meal Jesus Gave Us, Revised Edition by N. T. Wright

by N.T. Wright

Paperback

Published January 1, 1829

About the author

N. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England (2003-2010) and one of the world's leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He has been featured on ABC News, Dateline NBC, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air, and he has taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford universities. Wright is the award-winning author of Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, The Last Word, The Challenge of Jesus, The Meaning of Jesus (coauthored with Marcus Borg), as well as the much heralded series Christian Origins and the Question of God.

He also publishes under Tom Wright.

Reviews

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very short and easy to read but it also wasn't as "in-depth" of a discussion of communion as I was hoping it would be.
It's simple enough that it could easily be used with children as the first part of the book includes many imaginative stories to tell the history of the meal that would be engaging for young minds, though I personally found them over simplified for my purposes. Each chapter also ends with discussion questions.

[Vincent Waldron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Wright sets about explaining the reasons for Communion and a touch of its history, starting with the Jewish Passover and moving on from there. The book is brief, easy to read, and has little depth to it.

The first chunk of the book is told as a "story" -- someone present at a Communion meal attempting to explain what it is and why the early church continues to celebrate it. I'm not certain that this aspect of the book works terribly well. I think Wright's goal is to make the idea of Communion accessible to non-theologians, but I didn't find the explanations helped much.

From there, he moves on to a brief summation of the different views of the Catholic church and the Reformers. I think that he believes something short of the Catholic/Lutheran view of what happens to the elements but does believe that they supply a real spiritual nourishment that is necessary for Christians to maintain their spiritual strength. In relation to this, he describes one hectic period of his life when he took the Eucharist daily in order to survive.

He finishes by saying that churches should practice Communion regularly (probably at least weekly) and should only limit those who take it to those who have been baptized. He doesn't think there should be any need for the people taking Communion to be a particular age, member of the denomination or have gone through Confirmation.

This might be a helpful book if one has no idea of what Communion is and why it is practiced, but for most people, it is short on explanation and long on Tom Wright giving his opinion. I don't see my view on the subject changing as the result of this book.

[Karla Renee Goforth Abreu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether referred to as Holy Communion, The Lord's Supper, The Eucharist, The Jesus Meal, The Table of the Lord, or some other name, this symbolic act is one of the most significant and powerful in Worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. N. T. Wright has written a concise but deep and enlightening book on this meal, the bread and wine, that is central as to what Christianity is and believes. I encourage all professing Christians to read and reflect on this most weighty subject.