Week 2: Blessed and Broken

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Second Sunday in Lent

He was still speaking when suddenly a bright cloud covered them with shadow, and suddenly from the cloud there came a voice which said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favor. Listen to him." Matt. 17:5

When we break bread together, we reveal to each other the real story of Christ's life and our lives in him. Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to this friends. He did so when he saw a hungry crowd and felt compassion for them (Matt. 14:19, 15:36); he did it on the evening before his death when he wanted to say farewell (Matt. 26:26); he did so when he made himself known to the two disciples whom he met on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:30). And ever since his death, Christians have done so in memory of him.

Thus, the breaking of the bread is the celebration, the making present, of Christ's story as well as our own. In the taking, blessing, breaking, and giving of the bread, they mystery of Christ's life is expressed in the most succinct way. The Father took his only Son and sent him into the world so that through him the world might be saved (John 3:17). At the river Jordan and on Mount Tabor he blessed him with the words, "This is my Son, the Beloved, my favor rests on him . . . listen to him" (Matt. 3:17, 17:5). The blessed one was broken on a cross, "pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins" (Isa. 53:5). But through his death he gave himself to us as our food, thus fulfilling the words he spoke to his disciples at the last supper, "This is my body which will be given for you" (Luke 22:19).

It is in this life that is taken, blessed, broken, and given that Jesus Christ wants to make us participants. Therefore, while breaking bread with his disciples, he said, "Do this as a memorial of me" (Luke 22:19). When we eat bread and drink wine together in memory of Christ, we become intimately related to his own compassionate life. In fact, we become his life and are thus enabled to represent his life in our time and place.

This is the great mystery of the Incarnation: God has descended to us human beings to become a human being with us; and once among us, descended to the total dereliction of one condemned to death. . . . In the first century of Christianity there was already a hymn being sung about the descending way of Jesus. Paul puts it into his Letter to the Philippians in order to commend to his people the descending direction on the latter of life. He writes:

Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in the form of God,

did not count equality with God

something to be grasped.

But he emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

becoming as human beings are;

and being in every way like a human being,

he was humbled yet,

even to accepting death, death on a cross.

Here, expressed in summary but very plain terms, is the way of God's love. It is a way that goes down further and further into the greatest destitution: the destitution of a criminal whose life is taken from him. 

Jesus loves his disciples with the same love that the Father loves him, and as this love makes Jesus one with the Father, so too does it make the disciples one with Jesus.

Our Prayer

God, you have told us

to listen to your beloved Son.

Nourish us with your word

and cleanse the eyes of our spirit,

so that we may know your glory.

We ask this through Jesus Christ.