This past Sunday we received communion at church. Due to COVID, communion looks different right now and the church we are attending only offers one of the elements (the bread) at the moment. Our family was sitting up front so we were one of the first families to go forward to receive our little piece of bread. From behind her mask, the young girl serving us declared, “The body of Christ broken for you.”
As I sat in my seat and heard those words repeated to every person who came up, “The body of Christ broken for you,” my heart was so stirred. I was compelled to daydream about how powerful those words are for us as individuals, each new person walking up to receive what God has to offer them. Each person with their own unique struggles, sins, hardships. Time stood still a bit. The weight of it slowed my thoughts and my heart felt heavy. “The body of Christ broken for you.” As I opened my palms to receive the bread I contemplated all the places in our lives where we unknowingly are not truly receiving what Christ meant with those words.
I thought about how we sometimes come to the communion table with a heavy heart full of shame. With a heart that questions whether or not God could forgive us. With a mind boggled with the million undone madane tasks. With thoughts already selfishly thinking about what’s next. Our bellies ache from eating from the world’s table of pleasure, but we feel unworthy to eat the bread. Our throats are parched from drinking from the cup that leaves us needing more, but we question as we take the wine if we will really leave the broken cisterns behind. We hurry up the process while shooing guilty thoughts like an aggravating fly.
As all these thoughts danced around my head to the backdrop of the word “The body of Christ broken for…” I opened my eyes in time to see a little girl bouncing forward smiling ear to ear, hands open wide to receive. She smiled at the one who offered the bread and she SKIPPED back to her seat.
I felt the emotion of the moment. Warm tears ran down my face. I closed my eyes to hear the words more clearly “The body of Christ broken for you.”
My mind wandered to a field full of flowers, which is my favorite place for the Lord to take me. In my daydream I saw myself skipping. My heart felt light, my mind clear, my belly satisfied, my thirst quenched as I danced around the communion table. I felt odd to have such joy at the table of communion. Should I not wear my shame like a heavy sackcloth? Should I not lay in defeat? I have sinned. I have doubted. I am messed up. I struggle.
What was this joy I saw in this little girl and in myself?
Could it be my utter depravity being dealt with rightly before the throne?
SURELY he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows:
He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crush for our iniquities;
The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
“The body of Christ broken for you.”
Every bit of you!
All of you.
I got a glimpse of us being fully free. I saw us accepting what the bread fully represented. I saw us letting that truth fill all the little scary corners of our lives and I felt freedom bursting forth… not just freedom in me, but freedom in the Church as a whole. I saw His kingdom breaking in on a desperate world in need of a Savior. I saw the truth of who I truly am, I sinner in desperate need of a Savior. I saw Jesus giving himself to fulfill that need!
“The body of Christ broken… for YOU.”
The words soon faded off and the movement of the day resumed. But that moment of gazing beyond this place will stay with me.
We as God’s people have so much to dance for. The work on the cross is finished and His kingdom is coming. Open your palms wide and receive! Your sins are forgiven. What Jesus did on the cross through his body, he did for you!
The body of Christ broken for you!