What I find ironic is that so many Christians focus on the differences between denominations than on what unites us.
Not all denominations are Sola Scriptura. I was reared High-Church Anglican and am not either.
Yeah, I get that. But once you just start adding stuff without any means to test it's authenticity, then how is that different than the Mormons, or even the Muslims? At some point if enough man made stuff is added, don't you risk it not even being Christian?
As for the "remembrance," Christ said, "This is my body," not "This symbolizes my body."
Go back and consider the context of the last supper. They were Jews gathered together for Passover--- a Seder meal. The traditional foods during a Jewish Seder incorporate many symbolisms to commemorate the Jewish Exodus from Egyptian bondage. There are bitter herbs to represent the bitterness of slavery, the egg symbolizes new life, 'haroset' (apple / nut sauce) the mortar for the bricks the Jewish slave were forced to make; matzah the unleavened bread representing the bread that had no time to rise when the Jews left for the Exodus; the four cups of wine which are drunk during the Seder which have several different symbolism's one being redemption; there is a cup of salt water to represent the tears of the Jews during bondage. And then lets not forget the shank bone, while actually not eaten because it is burned, it represented the ritual lamb sacrifice which would have been made on the first evening of the first Passover.
So already lots of symbolism was going on during the last supper. And when Jesus added the symbolic reference to his blood and body it marked the new covenant for the Jews--- which were then the first Christians. It was a symbolism IN REMEMBRANCE of the blood and body he was about to sacrifice. Why anyone would believe that when he said, "this is my body.." to mean his actual body--- any more than the other symbolic foods at that Seder were the actual tears, or the actual lamb sacrifice from the first Passover is beyond reason to me.
The substitutionary sacrifice was done on the cross, not at the Last Supper. When Jesus said "consummatum est" (tetelestai in Greek), it literally meant "it is finished" which in common usage was a saying that meant "paid in full"-- or the payment is complete, all debts are now cleared. That did not happen at the Last Supper, and it certainly does not happen over and over and over again at a Roman Catholic Eucharist. There is no scriptural basis to compare the symbolic "this is my body" to the actual sacrifice during the crucifixion.
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. - John 6:52-57
The use of the language is symbolic, not actual. The bread and wine is not actually made into his flesh and blood. There is no mystical transformation of the matter of bread and wine to flesh in blood, it is only symbolic, it is ONLY to commemorate the sacrifice of the Christ.
When Paul speaks to the Christians in Rome about becoming "grafted in" to the vine, is he speaking literally or symbolically? Were gentiles actually grafted in by some mystical horticultural action into the "vine" which was part of the covenant of Abraham, or was it symbolic?
