Have you ever wondered why the Lord’s Supper is the central symbol of worship in most Christian Churches? Why did Jesus insist that the tearing apart of a loaf of bread and the drinking of wine be done whenever Christians meet together? Why is this enactment so important? Jesus understood that this great meal would always help his disciples cope with and transform life’s deep experiences of brokenness, tragic loss, grief, despair and aloneness.

At the Lord’s Table we experience God as always one with us in our brokenness. And we are also provided with the divine grace to become one with God. When Jesus of Nazareth was executed on the Cross, God, through his Son, definitively experienced the woundedness of humanity. Jesus suffered the agony and exile and betrayal and grief of a broken world and its desperate and sinful people. Now for all time, at the very core of God, there remains this painful identity of what it means to be human. So with every tragedy, every extinction, every divorce, every betrayal, every lie, every gossip, large or small, the heart of God is broken again and again. Today God’s heart breaks again as we break the bread of the Lord’s Supper.

The Lord’s Supper is, however, also a meal of celebration. It is a Table of thanksgiving (Eucharist). But how can it be both a symbol of deep grief and of joyous thanksgiving? One response: our experiences of brokenness and grief are actually taking us deep into the heart of God, into the experience of God’s own being. The scars of grief, pain and loss have changed us forever, but God has taken them on and been changed forever by them too. And now even our sharing in the signs of brokenness, become a way of entry into the deep mysteries of God, a means of intimate communion with God. Here at God’s Table, the broken Jesus Christ offers himself to us, embracing us wounds and all, and incorporates us into his healing and victory, so that each and every one of us can know ourselves as beloved and can serve with him as disciples forever in deep holy communion.

Blessings in Jesus’ name,

KIM THODAY HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA