Communion
I am impacted by it again - I hold the bread, broken in my hand, and I think of His body broken so that I can have life. Not just life on the outside of my skin but life inside of me. I swallow down feeling it enter my body, invading the boundaries of my flesh. His broken body taken into mine. This is the communion, the remembering and thanks of a perfect life given to death for me. I take the cup, watching the viscous liquid move, and bring this life giving fluid to my lips. Again, I swallow and say thanks, thinking of His blood dripping from His hands, His feet, on the cross for me, the life-giving fluid on the inside of me. He has entered my frame. He lives on the inside of me (1 Corinthians 3:16).
We are His body. He enters our flesh. What hurts us hurts Him. This is communion. This is the covenant.
It's so hard to understand because we live our lives falling into a state of divorce. From the moment I was conceived my face was turned from God (Ps. 51:5) and my whole life is about turning back into grace, back into love. I'm trying to find the divine pulse that gave me life so my own arrhythmia might find the eternal beat with Him - the rhythm of Edenic existence and pulsating communion with God.
For I moment I catch the rhythm, feel the melody of His song sung over me (Zeph. 3:17) and then I find myself again turned, looking into my own blackness of thought - envy, resentment, rejection creeping up on me like a dissonant chord. Why do I so easily drift into that which divorces the heart from God and others? What will keep me in the divine dance?
I look at the cup in my hand, empty, and isn't this all that I have? Just an empty cup that He fills, and that cross, it was enough to clean my cup too. The blackness of me rested on Him like a dark shadow and He is the radiant light that the shadow can never quench. My cup is empty, cleaned, ready for the life that He gives and I simply turn to Him, look into His eyes and take that broken, bloodied body into me because really it's the only way that my broken, bloodied soul is going to find myself whole. This is life, Him in us, and in communion with him we become the body of Christ.
We are His body. He enters our flesh. What hurts us hurts Him. This is communion. This is the covenant.
It's so hard to understand because we live our lives falling into a state of divorce. From the moment I was conceived my face was turned from God (Ps. 51:5) and my whole life is about turning back into grace, back into love. I'm trying to find the divine pulse that gave me life so my own arrhythmia might find the eternal beat with Him - the rhythm of Edenic existence and pulsating communion with God.
For I moment I catch the rhythm, feel the melody of His song sung over me (Zeph. 3:17) and then I find myself again turned, looking into my own blackness of thought - envy, resentment, rejection creeping up on me like a dissonant chord. Why do I so easily drift into that which divorces the heart from God and others? What will keep me in the divine dance?
I look at the cup in my hand, empty, and isn't this all that I have? Just an empty cup that He fills, and that cross, it was enough to clean my cup too. The blackness of me rested on Him like a dark shadow and He is the radiant light that the shadow can never quench. My cup is empty, cleaned, ready for the life that He gives and I simply turn to Him, look into His eyes and take that broken, bloodied body into me because really it's the only way that my broken, bloodied soul is going to find myself whole. This is life, Him in us, and in communion with him we become the body of Christ.
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
Comments