The Lord is here. | All – His Spirit is with us.
Lift up your hearts. | All – We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. | All – It is right to give thanks and praise.
I have spoken these words many times. They are the opening lines of the communion liturgy.
In communion, we gather to share in the sacrament of eucharist (“thanksgiving”). It is both an act of remembrance, a memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and of anticipation, a foretaste of the kingdom in which all are invited to sit and eat.
Lucy Winkett writes of the eucharist as a broken hearted celebration. In the eucharist there are four liturgical actions. The bread is, in turn: taken, blessed, broken, given.
You may wonder, on this remembrance Sunday, what relevance is the eucharist in the midst of the horrors unfolding in Gaza? Where in a world at war, is the the face of Christ?
The face of Christ in the bread which is taken, blessed, broken, given. Broken-hearted, we stare at the disfigurement of death, looking upon Jesus who was given over to death. Continuing to look upon Jesus, we see the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead and promises life. What cause for celebration.
Often, we would prefer not to confront what is unbearable. But in recalling the last days of Jesus we are asked to do just that. The face of Christ is the face of the suffering King. No stranger to bloodshed, repression, violence, helplessness, the Lord is here. His Spirit is with us.
The eucharist will have been shared in many places today, by many people. The eucharist liturgy says “though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread”. In a divided world, the church is called to be one.
Like the bread, the church too is taken, blessed, broken, given:
Taken; compelled by a mystery and majesty that is beyond us.
Blessed; graced by the goodness and mercy of God. We will not be short-changed. We shall not be in want.
Broken; wounded by the trials, losses, and cruelty of life.
Given; sent to love as we have been loved and to forgive and we are forgiven.
There’s the old adage that art should ‘comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable’. The gospel should do much the same. The gospel is good news for the broken-hearted.
thejoyofrachel 