Break - Jesus Broke the bread.
Not only does Jesus take what we bring - sin, brokenness and failures - and bless it - offers it to the Father for us as an appropriate offering - He also breaks it in His sacrificial death and transforms it into the currency of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Currency may not be the best word to use here but is the only one I can think of at the moment.)
The Apostle Paul said that Christ came to set free those who all their life had been enslaved by the fear of death. Kingdom life takes the best shot that sin has to offer - death - and turns it into the way that the Kingdom is advanced.
The bread, with its crusty shell, must be broken. It cannot be allowed to stay in its present state. It cannot be passed along whole and untouched and do the work that it was designed to do.
When our lives remain comfortable and untouched by brokenness, we are unable to truly touch this world of failures, faults, grief and despair. We cannot connect with those "less fortunate" and all we have to give is platitudes and self-help steps of human potential.
But what we see in Jesus is that he does not run from the cup of brokenness and he doesn't deny its pain. Jesus knew full well the extent of the bitter drink of brokenness and asked the Father to remove it from Him - if it was His will. It was not and he drank deeply from the cup of our brokenness and by His brokenness we are healed.
The quiet comfort of Emmanuel - God with Us - in our pain, brokenness, sin and failures heals us as we submit to our own death. In the same way, when we stop fighting brokenness as part of the ministry of sharing at Christ's table we are able to quietly comfort others in their pain, brokenness, sin and failures.
My dear friend Rod can minister to an alcoholic better than I can because he has drunk from that cup of brokenness and can minister as one touched by that disease. BUT... not before submitting to the brokenness of it!
He had to submit to the powerlessness of death and brokenness and let God - as He understood Him - transform his life into a sane slice of breaded humanity that God could use.
We must all submit - give ourselves freely - to the brokenness ministry of Jesus and not resist His breaking us in order that He can give us to the world as a taste of Jesus working in our midst. We are the Body of Christ that is broken for the world and given to the world that they might know the presence and fellowship of Christ in the suffering that this world offers.
If we shy away and refuse the cup, we don't have anything to share with the world but platitudes and empty promises. Our brokenness is not a sign of God forsakenness but His solidarity with us in our pain and His resurrection to new life in us.
How beautiful is a recovering alcoholic, a grieving widow, a dying cancer patient, a downsized middle manager that drinks deeply from the shared cup of Christ's brokenness and says, "not my will but your will be done."
They are now pieces of grace ready to be given to the world!
Tomorrow - Give.
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