Breaking The Bread & Breaking Jesus /// Communion

We are seated around tables, like families. We can see each into each other’s faces, read each other’s body language.

            It is slightly awkward, this being made to face each other.  We are not accustomed to this. There are four others at my table and not all of us know one another very well. Eye contact is to be avoided. 

            After we have greeted each other and have finished singing, I turn my chair to face the teacher. I am in a way, slightly separating myself from the ‘family’ seated around my table.

            We open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 26.

            I am immediately caught up in the lesson, in these words of God. Out of the bulletin I pull a piece of paper and begin to write the words that hit me the hardest, thus engraving them on my mind, forcing me to meditate on the words being taught, being learned.

            Lamb of God. Joy. Verse references.  My pen traces the letters again and again.

            We are going to take Communion, so the loaf of unleavened bread is passed around the table. We each tear off a piece, breaking it apart. A prayer of thanks and blessings is said, and we place the bread in our mouths.

            I turn back towards the table, and look into the faces of the few seated at my table. I wait until I make eye contact with each to move onto the next. If we are to be a ‘family’, brothers and sisters in Christ, then we must look into each other’s eyes, before we can see each other’s souls.

             What are they thinking about? I wonder, still chewing on the bread.

                        The teacher is speaking again.

            “I want you to think about what we just did. We are the ones who sent Jesus to the cross because of our sin, but He loved us so much that He gave us His body to break. We broke His body. You broke His body. I broke His body. God gave us His own body to break.”

            What the teacher says next crushes my heart.

            “When Jesus broke the bread with the Disciples, it is as if He says to everyone ‘you broke me.’ “

You broke me. You broke me.

My throat tightens. I have to resist the urge to spit out the partially chewed bread, which now I no longer find sweet tasting, but foul.

Who am I to cause my Savior to die and then partake in the life that He gives?

‘Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the Disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”                                                                               Matthew 26:26

I force myself to finish chewing and then swallow the bread, looking around the table again.

Did they hear that? Are they feeling what I’m feeling?

“And He took the bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”                                                                                                         Luke 22:19

God willingly gave us His body to break! He invited us to partake in Himself.

I’m not sure how the others feel, but I for one, feel closer to each person in the room. We had partaken in a gift from God together.

I write it on my paper in tiny letters. ‘You broke me.’

The flavors in my mouth don’t taste so foul anymore.

Yes, we had broken Jesus apart, but He allowed us to do so, willingly. He wanted to save us from our own brokenness, so He let us break Himself. He loved us enough to let us break him apart.

He loved us more than enough. He loved us for infinity.

xoxo Emma

Many thanks to my teacher for allowing me to use some of their words [paraphrased] and for helping me to see Communion in a new light.