Reflection: This is my body: food

There’s no forgetting a salvation story. Every year at Passover Jerusalem is swollen and pulsing with excited pilgrims eating, drinking, dancing in memory of God’s phenomenal Exodus rescue.

In an unlikely place, behind closed doors, Jesus and his closest friends are enacting a drama: washing hands and feet, humming some Passover tunes, sidling up to each other, reclining around a carefully arranged spread, and… (you thought I’d say looking forward to food, didn’t you. No doubt, but…well…) this is really about looking backward.

Jesus, however, is consumed with looking forward.

They’re all chewing; chewing and dipping; self-sustaining.

But Jesus tears off some bread, and with a gut-wrench of knowing anguish commands their attention: “This is my body given for you; eat it in remembrance of me.”

The arresting thing, of course, for those who had eyes to see, was that this was about sacrifice-to-come, and that the one blessing and proffering was (as he’d previously explained) bread himself, The Bread of Life.

He broke the bread because he had to.

We eat it because we have to.

When you’re breaking and chewing bread today, (I take it, anytime you’re self-feeding is a good time) pause and remember who truly and deeply and eternally nourishes you.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, confront us with the raw emotion of this ‘last supper’. 

Bread of Life, your broken body satisfied your Father. Now satisfy me. Feed me till I want no more.

And bring me, with all your people into the passionate and forever-company of our forgiving Father.