Bread and Wine
This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance
of me.
Luke 22:19 NIV
In reference to the community
of believers and communion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said; "It is ‘our’ daily
bread that we eat, not my own. The one bread that is given to our community
unites us in a firm covenant. Now no one must go hungry as long as the other
has bread. Whoever shatters this community also shatters the community of the
Spirit."
Now, I readily admit that I
sometimes struggle with the idea of Christian community. I have trouble seeing
the "community" of believers when I take notice of certain things in
‘the church’; impenetrable cliques, racism and other prejudices that continue
seemingly unabated. There are even individuals in my own church that do not reply
when I greet them. How am I to see Christ in this? Where are the ‘community’
and the ‘Spirit’ in these things?
All of us may feel
light-years apart from time to time. And that, I imagine, is quite normal. But
the communion table is our gathering place. When the bread and the cup are in
front of us we stop being greater or lesser, black or white, poor or rich,
commoners or royals and are unified in our need for salvation. When we take
communion we are looking back and remembering the cross work of Christ and we
are also looking forward to the time when we say, "Blessed is the one who
will eat bread in the reign of the Lord." Luke 14:15
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