Holy Habits - Breaking Bread

One of the helpful approaches to “Walking the Way: living the life of Jesus today” is to consider the development of holy habits.  Here we are going to consider the Breaking of the Bread.

We have all sorts of names for it these days – Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, the Mass – it doesn’t really matter what you call it.  It is a matter of sharing bread and wine and, through that, remembering how God shows great love for us in all that Jesus has done.

When I was a child, it was all something of a mystery.  In the Baptist Church where I grew up, the Lord’s Supper was for grown-ups.  The service came to its end, and those who were not involved, for whatever reason, left and those who were stayed.  I didn’t really know what happened in this separate little extra service, just that it happened once a month or so.

Later, as I began ministry in my first church, Communion was a really big thing.  It was a big event, once a quarter, because that is how often we celebrated it.  That made it important.  Then I went to London – and there I discovered that everyone could take part, the children so long as their parents had agreed.  After that I got involved with the Church of England, in a Local Ecumenical Partnership, and I became minister of a United Reformed Church that had formerly been part of the Churches of Christ tradition, and so we celebrated Communion weekly.  Indeed, because I was the minister, there were some Sundays when I celebrated Communion three times – and so I have learned that Communion can be so special that we only celebrate it rarely, perhaps once a quarter, and that Communion can be so special that we simply must celebrate it every week.  As with the whole approach to holy habits, it is not that one is right and one is wrong – it’s a question of context and of different perspectives.

All of the holy habits are unique.  They each have their special element.  That is certainly true of this holy habit.  With some holy habits you can just get on and do them by yourself.  With some it is about engaging with others.  That is very much so here.  Yet there is, at the same time, a bit of both.  Communion, for me, is a very intimate thing.  It has a strong personal element.  It is part of my relationship with God, but it is also always a communal thing.  It is something that I do together with others.

How did it start?  Mark’s account of that comes in chapter 14, verses 22-25.  While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take, this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.  He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.  Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’

It is all so familiar and yet, every time, it is all so special.  So what is there to say about our celebrating Holy Communion?  How can it be a used to help our broader adoption of holy habits?  Well, I would like to think around some of what we are about at Communion and see what that might say, more generally, about holy habits.

Firstly, then, I want to note the fact that we often talk about celebrating Holy Communion.  It is a celebration.  But I wonder how obvious is that note of celebration – and that goes for the whole of our lives as Christians, not just when we are at Communion.  Celebration should be at the core of our lives as Christians.  The prophet Nehemiah wrote: The joy of the Lord is your strength.  The angels announced the birth of Jesus, saying: I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.  Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit.  Richard Foster concludes his classic book “Celebration of Discipline” with a chapter on celebration.  Amongst other things, he says this: “Celebration adds a note of .. festivity .. to our lives.  After all, Jesus rejoiced so fully in life that he was accused of being a wine-bibber and a glutton.  Many of us lead such sour lives that we couldn’t possibly be accused of such things.  …. Celebration gives us perspective.  We can laugh at ourselves.  We come to see that the causes we champion are not nearly so monumental as we would like to believe.  In celebration the high and the mighty regain their balance and the weak and lowly receive new stature.”  So what are you going to celebrate over the next 24 hours, and hour?  And over the next week, the next month?

The second key element that I want to highlight within the holy habit of breaking the bread is story-telling.  One way or another, every time we engage in this special act we retell the story.  In our tradition, mostly we do that by reading one of the Biblical accounts of how it all started, either Paul’s description in his letter to the Corinthians or one of the Gospel accounts.  But there are all sorts of ways in which the story can be told.  Stories are great, and story-telling is great.  We all do it, even if we don’t think we do.  Did you hear about …? The other day I was … and so on – and when we hear such a phrase we wonder what’s coming.  The re-telling of the story is part of the breaking of bread.  How ready are we to tell the stories of the good things that God has done for us?  I recently watched the first part of the film ‘Pollyanna’ – and I was intrigued by the ‘game’ that she kept introducing, especially to grumpy folk.  She challenged them to complete the sentence, ‘I am so glad that … ‘ or ‘I am so lucky because …’  Maybe we should try completing the sentence, ‘I find God so wonderful because …… ‘  Let’s tell the story, the stories of how God has affected our lives.

Then, thirdly, I want to say something about thanksgiving.  When we talk, as we do sometimes, about the Eucharist, that is, quite literally, the thanksgiving.  That is what the term means.  Thanksgiving is a central part of the Communion service, the breaking of bread, whatever we want to call it.  It is good if we can let that spill over into the rest of life.  Do you live, thankful for what you have; or do you live grumpy, because of what you don’t have?  The booklet in the ‘holy habits’ series that looks at this particular holy habit talks about ‘eucharistic living’.  I like that and how it is explained by a couple of comments in the booklet.  Eucharistic living is about being open to receive the gifts of God through both the dark and light, through the creative and destructive, through the essential otherness of those who are different. It is about an openness to receive that includes the possibility of transformation.  It is about gratitude.  We should be living as thankful people.

 

Fourthly, I want to talk about remembering.  ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’  It is fascinating how remembering has caught on.  Commemorations have a large part to play in reminding and inspiring us.  What are the things that you remember that have an effect on how you are now?  What do you do with the damaging memories?  And what about the encouraging ones?  The inspiring ones? 

Fifthly, we think about sharing.  We share the bread and the wine, and that is symbolic of all the things that we share.  But it also raises the question about what it is that we are prepared to share – and what are the things that we don’t want to share.  I have a favourite story about sharing.  It’s about two little lads.  Let’s call them Billy and Tom.  They were good friends and they knew about sharing.  One day they got into a conversation about it.  ‘Would you share it if you had a thousand pounds?’, Billy asked Tom.  ‘Course I would,’ came the reply.  ‘And what would you do if you had a hundred pounds?’  ‘I’d give you fifty.’  ‘And what about if you had a hundred marbles?’  ‘I’d give you half.’  ‘What about if you had two marbles?’ A pause. ‘That’s not fair.  You jolly well know that I have got two marbles.’  Amusing, but amusing because it is so close to reality.  How do we get on matching practice to theory?  How ready are we to really share?

Then the last thing I want to take from this holy habit – the going out.  The Breaking of Bread, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, comes to an end and we need to go and be God’s people in the world around us.  That can be a big challenge.  But we need to let our holy habits direct how we live.  One of the things that we note about Jesus is that he often seemed to be having a meal with one person or another, and it didn’t seem to matter to him with whom he shared the table.  As we think of some of those occasions when Jesus ate with others, may we be challenged to think about where we should be going when we go out from the special moment to the ordinary – and challenging world.

A question: what is the most important moment in the Communion service for you?  Or, if that is too deep or too personal, how can this holy habit help you in walking the way, in living the life of Jesus today?