"When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them."
Luke 24:30
Take - Bless - Break - Give! Jesus did this at the last supper, the feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000 and at other times recorded in the scriptures.
Over the next several days, I will tease out these four words and the ministry of the Eucharist that Christ draws us into.
Take - Jesus took the bread!
Jesus invites us to participate in His life and what He is doing by taking what we give Him. He calls us to table fellowship (acceptance) and takes what we have as the material of salvation.
A widow's mite, five loaves and two fishes, a short man who extorts his countrymen by collecting taxes for the occupiers, a porn addiction, a kind word, an aborted child, giving to the poor, a 20 year struggle with alcohol, teaching Sunday School for 30 years, adultery, pride, religiosity, faithfulness, love, peace, feeble legs, one hundred yards rushing, divorce, marriage, success and cancer. All the material of humanity - the mixed bag of beauty and shame that we carry in ourselves is the stuff that Jesus takes from us.
The invitation to Christ's table does not come with a dress code and does not require that we bring our best - just bring what we have. It is our failures and successes that Jesus beckons us to offer and he takes it ALL!
The Lord's table has been misunderstood and abused throughout the ages. You can eat, they cannot. Are you a believer? They are too young! Have you joined the church? Do you have unconfessed sin in your life?
Don't come to the table unworthily!
The fear of defiling the table has led many to not come to the table because what they have to offer falls short of a defined grocery list of acceptable ingredients. All I can bring to the table is faithlessness, doubt, failure and sin. "I am unworthy to come to the table. My five loaves and two fish can never feed the crowd."
The early church made the mistake of turning the Lord's table into a demonstration of the "have's and have-not's" and the poor were left out while the rich gorged. Paul rebuked them and told them their actions were denying the oneness we share in Christ and denying the fact that we feast on Christ not our well-prepared meals.
I believe that we come to the Lord's table unworthily when we come to His table thinking we are worthy. Thinking that our stuff that makes it to the table is placed there because we demonstrated a spiritual culinary flare that impressed Jesus enough to say - "Now this is good home cookin', let's dig in!"
No! The reason any of our stuff makes it to the table is because Jesus takes it - Ritz crackers, fallen cakes, burnt toast and cheese souffles are the things that Jesus takes and invites to His table and begins the process of saving us with those things. But first He blesses!
We'll pick up there tomorrow.
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