Revisiting the Lord's Supper Part 9 Breaking

[HKHaugan]

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper  Part 9 Breaking 

Taking, Thanking and now, Breaking.  The Lord took bread as a sign of His body and broke it.  He was giving us an ultimate parable, bread/body, broken bread/broken body, His physical body/His spiritual life, visible body/invisible person, life/death.  Is it the physical we see that lasts forever?  No.  But what about the invisible person within the physical body?  Therein lies every person’s ultimate question.  When death breaks down the physical body is there anything left?  Jesus came to answer that question for each and every human being that has ever breathed a breath.  If Jesus breathed the last physical breath and physically died what would happen to Him then? 

‘Crucify Him’ was the cry of the crowd, ‘execute Him’ was the conspiracy of the religious leadership and a foreign political power, a fractured and fearful populace avoiding Him, His friends betraying, deserting and leaving Him, a distressed loving mother weeping for Him, the spirit of fear embracing the hearts on every level of leadership, an apathetic atmosphere where the powerful rule the day and the night.  No one in the whole world was innocent.  All left Him alone and that’s exactly what He came to deal with like no other human being was qualified or able to do.  He came to live alone, to act alone and to die alone but to do that in a very special way described with one word summarizing His entire world experience, faith.  It was faith in His Father, His Fathers’ Word and His Father’s will. 

Self-centered sin with its fear and pride, ruled the hearts of everyone in the world, the world of hearts He loved and came to save.  The world of hearts separated from God was ruled by fear and the devil its ruler.  Where we are afraid the devil is in charge. His hold on the world and the alone, isolated, individual human heart had to be broken and what better way than to break the physical body and the heart within it?  Isn’t that the way every world institution holds power over its members?  Fear?  Fear of some form of death?  If it’s not execution, it’s banishment, avoidance, economic and social rejection.

 The visible cross with its tortuous lengthy and visible suffering, was Rome’s way of instilling the fear of death in the hearts of anyone even thinking against it.  The compromised religious leadership in Judea knew it and everyone else did as well. And isn’t compromise a form of death?  As the high priest Caiaphas said, “It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish (John 11:50).” The irony here is the high priest of ‘good intentions’ was inadvertently relaying a spiritual truth that, extracted from his unspiritual manipulation, says, it is better that one man die because there was One Man, Jesus, whose sacrificial death would save all people from eternal perishing.  A spiritual decision in the mind of God to be experienced in the human body of Jesus, His Son. 

 He breaks the bread because the world powers are about to try and break Him.  The devil is taking his last shot at Jesus by manipulating the secular and religious powers to kill Him.  They are going to put Him on display as just another rebel who deserves death.  He is identifying His body with bread. “I am the bread of life (John 6:35).” He breaks bread because it’s going to remind everyone that His body was going to be broken for every person’s sin that precedes every choice and decision with fear of death.  It’s the bread signifying eternal life can be tasted in Jesus alone.  It’s meant for every individual heart struggling to understand what life is all about and the death that ends it when they receive it.

If Jesus, who claims equality with God as His Son and that He is the way to live, the truth that heals the mind and the life that lasts forever, if He dies what happens then?  Again, that’s why Jesus came, with death casting its shadow on Him from His birth throughout His life.  Unlike us, every choice and decision Jesus made was made with faith in His Father.  It was not just faith but faith in His Father, the perfect Father/Son relationship.  Everything had to be done with that faith in mind.  Jesus knew that and lived that in a physical body like ours for our sake, with us in mind, with our hearts in the balance between death and eternity.  “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me…This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you (Lk.22:19-20).” 

 

More on breaking next time.

[Bobbie Bulford Nelson]

thank you for laboring soo faithfully for us  this post is just what i needed when I needed it most..  love and appreciation for you and yours always..