All tagged communion
We say we are Christians but continue to live our lives of faith like suits of clothes; we treat our belief in Christ lightly and only let it brush up against our skin, when we should actually be taking Jesus into our very being, our hearts, and making our faith like the communion meal reveals... a part of us.
In communion we consume the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and as often as we do so, we are told to remember Him, but what are our remembrances? Do we recall His miraculous birth, the Sermon on the Mount, a particular miracle, his passion, death, resurrection, the moment we first embraced Him, or are our thoughts drawn to His return, and how we will become one with Him just as in marriage we become one flesh with our earthly spouse? Do we recall the thought of this ethereal spiritual reunion, and how He has brought peace to a relationship that was once marred by hostility, and by our rampant pursuit of sin?
Jesus took on our sins to redeem us, and it was no easy task. While praying in the Garden of Gethsemane His sweat became like blood, and God felt it necessary to send an Angel to strengthen Him. The weight of our sin was so great that Jesus pleaded with His Father to take this cup from Him, but in the end He did His Father’s will, and as He died for us, we were made to live on in Him, and His anguish in assuming our sin, became our joy, as it was revealed through His grace.
When Jesus gave His disciples the bread of His body during the first Communion, He did not cut it with a knife, or have it prepared with a perforation so that it would break cleanly into pieces. Jesus took a loaf of bread and simply broke it. Unlike a wafer it didn’t snap cleanly, but tore, and it’s edges were jagged, uneven, and ripped asunder; it was a messy tear. This is how He died for us… He died just as we live and die… messy, torn, imperfect, and yet made to be righteous, by His sacrifice, resurrection, and our coming ascension upon His return.