God's Table - A Communion Meditation

More is here than bread and wine. At this communion table we discover a living drama of death and hope; of suffering and comfort, of mystery and salvation.

Here we talk about the suffering body of our Lord who took break and broke it saying his own personal body would also become broken. At this table we remember the Lord taking a single cup and proclaiming his blood would be spilled in the hope of bringing us all together into a wider covenant, all drinking from this one cup.

Over the centuries, Christians have written about this table. By our words and witness we speak of things concerning the body of Christ. While Christ-followers have held different perspectives and unique emphasis, all have agreed. At this table we have touched the tangible grace of God.

On this flat surface, we lay down the son who suffered; now limp and damaged, murdered by fear and power, the result of even our own personal flaws and failures. From his sacred head to his pierced feet, this expression of God’s love was found with a form and function we could understand, yet became mangled like a piece of sausage. Our ugly and shameful vulgarity shouts our assault upon the persistent goodness of God, a goodness the crucified one maintained even to his final breath.

He is not alone on this table. There are others with him. The tortured and executed Christ encompasses all who have suffered and who will ever suffer. This table is the make shift stretcher for the child whose once perfect body has been marred by war. It is the hospital gurney carrying the bloodied and battered victim from some recent trauma. It is the solemn casket holding the vacant shell of a person dearly loved and sorely missed.

Here we find a home for every tear ever shed, a haven for every heart ever broken, and a tender respite for every person ever shattered. At this table, we are invited to see within and through these images to the very presence of a God still at work within the devastation of the creation we have dishonored and alongside the human family, all made in the divine image that we have wounded.

At this table, God holds the son and welcomes the sinner. The son gave it all in love. All who honor him may be strengthen by his example. In his life and death, he teaches us how to keep faith in a world gone wrong, how to practice love in a world full of oppression and violence, how to never lose hope in a world appearing lost and condemned.

Here we are held by these divine hands. At this table, the one who began our lives,with loving patience, picks them back up mixing our brokenness with the son’s; giving us a blood transfusion, a heart transplant, a new spirit, a new future, a change from the inside out, a promise so permanent that even darkness and death cannot harm it. Here we are being trained to be the church, the still working body of Christ in the world.

Yes, there is more here than bread and wine at this table. It is nothing short of the presence of Christ, the power of God, the renewed dream of the creation’s first wish. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to the Christ. Thanks be to the Spirit, Amen.