Bread

We celebrated the Lord's Supper yesterday morning. Adam makes the communion bread, a simple cracker, and bakes it on Sunday morning. Before we drove to church, I broke them apart.

As I separated them and put them into a ziploc bag, I was bemused. In church, these will be part of the sacrament, Christ's body, broken for you. In our Presbyterian theology, we do not believe that the bread is actually, in reality, Christ's actual physical body. (We believe His resurrected body is intact, real, and exists in heaven in its physical form.) Still, it is a sacrament, a holy act, a remembering of Christ's death for us, his body broken and his blood spilt. We believe participation in this meal is a means of grace to God's children.

I touched each piece. I wondered which of them, a few hours later, I would choose from the plate, for myself. A fragment of the Bread of Life, given to me to nourish me and fill me. Humble enough to bake in our kitchen, holy enough to be handled gingerly in God's worship.

I do not know why this struck me this morning. The supper is so precious to me -- that Jesus would give us something so utterly human, eating!, and bind it inextricably to himself, and make it a holy act, so holy that non-believers are warned not to touch or taste lest they condemn themselves in so doing. But someone, somewhere, in some kitchen, must bake the bread. Someone, somewhere must pick the grapes, crush them, bottle the wine or juice. There is a simplicity and a common humanity to it that is so like Jesus himself, to all appearances a simple, humble man with a holy, eternal task.

Take and eat.