There’s a gift we’ll forsake, a presence we’ll miss, if we choose to be distracted by our own perceived failure, anxiety, and regret in the midst of an Event. I’ve lost count how many times I’m caught up in an article or app on my phone while my wife or friend is sitting beside me in the same room. Days (sometimes only minutes) later, I’m struck with a familiar thirst for nearness and connection — something just moments earlier I invited to seize and capture and taste. John’s thirteenth chapter is often read as a series of events leading up to the iconic crucifixion of Christ. A last moment shared with the disciples, Jesus recapitulates the Mysterious Pattern of death and resurrection through self-giving love. He shows us, rather than teaches us, with his hands touching his disciples, what a cracked open soul filled with wonder and pain and goodness looks like. He models to his friends a new way that becomes symbolic and experientially connective for future generations to participate in — the Eucharist. Judas gets a pretty bad reputation for being the greedy mole, for giving up Jesus to those looking to kill the man of sorrows. However, as the narrative goes, many of Jesus’ most trusted friends left him when he needed them most. They forgot the years of love and nearness for a moment of fear and crisis. Sure in their hearts but unable to enact. Peter, Thomas, Mark. All of them. He was crucified alone. He offered his body and blood — even washing their feet– to each one, the one(s) that would betray him.
The disciples were probably distracted by their own sense of anxiety, silently wondering, “Lord, am I the one to betray you?”. The upper room creaking underneath their nervous, tapping feet. Because each of them knew after years of shared life, moments of cowardice and ego and missed opportunity, that it was not beyond or beneath them to, each of them, be the one who would forsake their friend. Christ offered them peace from their anxiety in that moment and with half-committed hearts each one of them ate and drank of the offered elements.
Christ dipped the bread in the wine for Judas. Then Peter. Then John. Then Thomas. And so on until each had participated. They truly did not know what was being done for them. This is true bread. This is true wine. This is true forgiveness, mercy, love, and resurrection power. To wash the feet of and offer the sacred dipped bread to ones you know would desert you and deny you. What was he thinking? As Jesus stared intently and compassionately into Peter’s glazed over eyes, shifting like a typewriter to and fro. Heart drumming and hands nervously wiping sweat off on his tunic as he prepared to receive what was offered. And I’ve no doubt the Christ loved each of them purely. For he truly did love them until the very end (john 13v1).
This idea of the little we receive from Christ becoming more than the sum of our little parts that we feel we can offer. That when we receive. When we harbor love and goodness and mercy, it’s transformed and metamorphasizes, taking on new meaning and becoming all that we need it to be and more in that moment — for ourselves, for the other. We’re able to release the bread, trusting not that God will provide that bread again by means of our labor or efforts to acquire it privately. But the gift comes through and in the real presence. Real presence of the Christ through one another. Mysterious, sweet presence in pain. It’s all Bread. We’re invited to dependence. To be present and to receive. Receive from the Christ his own blood and body and from others who will be the ones that supply us with food for the journey. This bread is received and this bread is passed along.
This bread is divine and this bread is physical and human and food. This wine is experiential, not merely theoretical. This bread sometimes is the only thing we have — a simple, unaccompanied, utilitarian life-giving source that keeps us breathing one more time and gives just enough energy to keep our bellies full and our eyes open. If this bread is anything, it is enough. If this wine is anything, it is enough.
This bread is a meal. It can be used with other seasonings and sides in contrast to create something magnificent and wholly different. Utilizing other ingredients and flavors to intensify the experience of tasting with our whole bodies.
This act of taking and eating of the Body and drinking of the Blood is an act that both disrupts and integrates. It disrupts in that this act cannot be done as an afterthought. There can be no handling of the elements of communion and a grasping for other things. There are two hands and two elements. Both hands are needed to hold the cup and the bread. There can be no multitasking while experiencing the Eucharist. The act is an act of trust — that this centering participation. It’s a sacred participation that cuts in on an ongoing activity. To bring a mind and body that is preoccupied with some other activity during a time where God desires to free the participant of the anxiety of efficiency and results would defeat the purpose of entering into such an act.
Being… truly being, as we’re invited, will challenge our attention to re-focus again and again on the present moment of “with-ness” through a shared meal. Truly becoming, as Augustine notes, what we eat and drink.
brandon-perkins.com 