Eucharistic Meditation, December 26

1 Corinthians 11: the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it.

Division and reunion, death and resurrection, is the basic pattern of human life. Marriage is, as Pastor Wilson has taught us, woven into the fabric of creation. It is not just an ?institution,?Ebut a basic principle and reality of existence.

And that same principle, that same dynamic, is apparent in the meal that we celebrate here. When Jesus taught His disciples how to commemorate His death, He taught them to take bread, give thanks, break it, and share it together. The bread is broken, separated into multiple pieces. But the effect of this division is to unite all who eat this bread into one body: We are one body, Paul says, because we partake of one loaf. Jesus is the true bread come down from heaven. And because He was broken, the wall of division is broken down, and we are united together in one body.

This is a table of unity, but it is also, necessarily, a table of division. There is no unity without division. A man cannot cling to his wife without separating from his parents, and from all other women. We cannot be united as one body in Christ unless we are simultaneously separated from Adam. We cannot be united at this table of unity unless we are also separated from the tables of demons. Through breaking and eating bread, we are simultaneously united and separated, made one loaf and separated from the leaven of the world.

This is the dynamic of Christian living that we enact at this table every week. We are one in Jesus Christ; we are the one body of Christ because we partake of the one loaf, which is Jesus Himself, the true bread. But in uniting together we are also separating together. God has joined this unity and this separation together at this table; and what God has joined together, let no man put asunder.