by Julie A. Kanarr

A dozen people gather around a table. They light candles, unfold a simple cloth, and set a loaf of bread and a cup of wine at its center. Reciting from memory, a pastor shares the familiar words of the story of the night of Jesus’ betrayal. While celebrating a Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus took break, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them with surprising words: “This is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me.”

With hushed voices, those gathered honor Jesus’ command and claim his promise, reminding one another that the meal they are sharing is the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.

Half a world away, several hundred people gather, exuberantly singing their praises to God: “You are holy, you are whole! You are always ever more than we ever understand. You are always at hand. Blessed are you coming near. Blessed are you coming here to your church in wine and bread, raised from soil, raised from dead” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 525). They, too, are drawn to a table set with bread and wine. They, too, listen and give thanks for the whole story of God’s creative and redemptive work: from the beginning of creation, woven through the history of ancient Israel, and centered in Jesus, who dined with his friends on the night before his death and made himself known to his followers anew after his resurrection in the breaking of the bread. The pastor leads them in prayer as they prepare to receive this holy meal: “O God, you are Breath: send your Spirit on this meal. O God, you are Bread: feed us with yourself. O God, you are Wine: warm our hearts and make us one. O God, you are Fire: transform us with hope.” (ELW 69)

Each Sunday, Christians gather in worship to hear God’s word and to be reconciled with God and with one another. We come for renewal, hungering for God, and God invites us to a feast. Compared with the supersized portions that have become the norm in fast-food restaurants throughout North America, this meal isn’t much: a bite of bread, a sip of wine. Yet is enough to whet one’s appetite and assuage one’s spiritual hunger, for this bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ.

We offer ourselves in worship and we receive the one who has offered himself for us. We are invited to Christ’s table with words like “Come to the banquet, for all is ready. These are the gifts of God for the people of God.” Rejoicing in the gifts we have received from God, we respond by giving ourselves away in love and service to God in this world.

Dining with God

Stories of celebration feasts are woven throughout the Bible. Israel celebrates its redemption from slavery in Egypt with the Passover feast—food for the journey to freedom and new life. God sustains those hungry, complaining Israelites in the wilderness with manna, food from heaven. The psalmist rejoices that God prepares a table of abundance even in the presence of danger. Isaiah envisions that the Messiah’s coming will be accompanied by feasting with well-aged wines and finest food (Isaiah 25:6), and with such abundance that even the poor can eat their fill without worrying about the cost (Isaiah 55:1–3).

Jesus tells parables about how when the lost are found, there is feasting and rejoicing. Jesus dines with tax collectors and sinners, as well as with Pharisees and with his disciples. He shares stories of grand banquets where even the poor and the outcasts have a place at the table. Set against a cultural backdrop where strict rules governed who one should and should not eat with, this feast imagery and Jesus’ practice of inclusive table fellowship points toward a radical vision of the reign of God. In God’s realm, all are welcome, fed, forgiven, and found in the embrace of divine mercy.

As a communal meal, the Lord’s Supper is personal, but never private. Although it is hard to recognize in English translation, the you in the phrase “given and shed for you” is plural. We are nourished in community as individual members of one body in Christ. Lay people might be sent out from a congregation’s worship to share the communion meal with those who are physically absent, or a pastor may visit and celebrate communion in a home, hospital, or nursing home. Yet even if one receives Holy Communion while home-bound or hospitalized, the meal is an extension of the common table and the community’s worship.

In some church buildings, the communion rail is a half-circle, a symbol that those who are physically present are only part of the circle. The circle surrounding Christ’s table isn’t closed. It stretches invisibly beyond us to include all those who have gone before us, all those who will come after us, and all those who are physically apart from us. No matter how many happen to be gathered in a particular setting, everyone who receives the body of Christ is re-membered and re-connected with the whole body of Christ in every time and place. In this meal we are drawn into the full circle of God’s embrace as part of the communion of saints.

Blessed and Broken

The risen Christ greeted his disciples with the words, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19). He breathed God’s life-giving Spirit into them and empowered them to offer forgiveness. We receive the peace that Christ offers us and extend it to those gathered with us. More than a perfunctory greeting or an abstract concept, this ritualized act of reconciliation is a concrete opportunity to embody God’s reconciling love poured into us through Christ. This love renews us for life in community. As God’s Spirit is breathed into us, we can exhale and let go of lingering hurts.

The apostle Paul, concerned about dissention within the church at Corinth, implored them to remember that they were one body in Christ and to honor one another accordingly. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged his disciples to be reconciled with one another before bringing their gifts to the altar. Does this mean that we need to be perfect in our relationships before we come to the table? No—otherwise, none of us would be worthy of this meal or ready to eat. Our call is not to perfection, but to practice.

If you are at odds with others in your worshipping community, the peace is an invitation to seek them out, rather than avoid them, and share Christ’s peace. We are called to a spirit of genuineness and humility in offering and receiving forgiveness, even if it means taking small steps. By sharing the peace, practicing reconciliation, and eating together as the body of Christ, we bear witness to God’s reconciling love and desire for peace for the whole world.

As we embrace God’s gift of peace, we are also invited to receive and rejoice in the gift of Christian community as it really is, complete with all of its imperfections, flaws, and messiness. The risen Christ appeared to his followers still bearing the wounds of crucifixion. In his doubts, Thomas came to faith through the risen Christ’s invitation to touch his wounds. The body of Christ is both blessed and broken, and in its brokenness, there is room for each of us.

In the community of faith, there is room for you to come as you are, with all of your imperfections, flaws and messiness. Know that you are welcomed and fed, forgiven and strengthened. As Christ’s body is blessed and broken for us, we who are broken are blessed.

Food for Body and Soul

Before we receive Holy Communion, we pray the Lord’s Prayer, asking God to “give us this day our daily bread.” We open our hands to receive Christ, who is the bread of life. Christ’s gift of Holy Communion invites us to imaginatively re-frame how we think about our common, ordinary meals. How might we be transformed through an awareness that everything we eat comes to us as a gift from God?

Holy Communion is a meal where the portions are equal, where status doesn’t matter, and where there are no particular guests of honor. For those who are rich in the material blessings of this world, the simplicity and small portions of the bread and wine are a sign of what is truly enough. This meal is an invitation to trust that God will supply our daily needs. This meal offers us an opportunity to consider what might be the material excesses in our lives, as we come to the “hungry feast” that stands over against our own extravagance.

For those who are poor in terms of the world, or living with food insecurity or hunger, this gift of Christ’s body is an invitation into the divine economy that envisions a world in which there is enough for all. At Christ’s table, there is a place for every member of the body and food in abundance.

Jesus’ command, “Do this in remembrance of me,” invites us to remember both his last supper with his disciples, and the whole of his life, teaching, death, resurrection, and promise to be present with us always. The Lord’s Supper is not just about the last supper, but also about the next supper. It is a foretaste of the feast to come. It is a meal of death and of resurrection.

At Emmaus, the risen Christ was made known to his followers in the breaking of the bread. Jesus invites us to the meal where he is host and we are guests. And in this meal, we receive a joyful exchange: Christ experienced humanity’s suffering, death, and brokenness. We, in turn, receive new life. We discover that we are what we eat.

We who receive the body of Christ are fed and forgiven, and called to live as the body of Christ in mission in the world. The risen Christ who invited his disciples to join him for breakfast on the beach and quizzed Peter about his love, also commanded him to “feed my sheep” (John 21:17).

Refreshed by this meal, we rise from the table and are sent out into the world renewed as Christ’s body in mission, with words like “Go in peace! Serve the Lord! Christ is with you! Remember the poor!” still echoing in our ears. Rejoicing, we offer our heartfelt response, “Thanks be to God.”

The Rev. Julie A. Kanarr, an ELCA pastor from Port Townsend, Wash., has served parishes in Montana and Washington.