Take….Eat
“By eating something, you don’t merely accept it as putting something into your body,: it becomes part of your body.”
Luke 22:14-23
“…..it wasn’t the first time that He had spoken of Himself as “bread,” to make He Himself a Life Source. They would have been hard-pressed not to remember that Jesus is the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of Life: John 6:25-69
Several followers actually deserted Him, so dramatic was this statement. Yet Simon Peter and the 11 others choose to stay. Consider this, just the previous day, Jesus performed His largest-scale miracle yet: multiplying five loves of bread and two fish to feed upward of 5,000 men. With accompanying numbers of women and children, well over 10,000 were miraculously fed! Next day, this same crowd came chasing down Jesus, anticipating, no EXPECTING, for him to do yet something more amazingly entertaining!
Yet, by calling Himself “the Bread of Life,” Christ was clearly instructing his Disciples that He was all anyone needed…..far more than being “on good terms with God,” of One that might give a person all they “think” they need or want. Nothing else other than God can truly satisfy every human need! This is the reality that Jesus Christ, the Son of God ultimately wants us to understand at Holy Communion!
“Don’t work so hard and waste yourselves on food that spoils,” Jesus might conversationally say. God’s Word says: “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat that endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you for him that God the Father sealed.” (John 6:27)
This what we are doing each time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, remembering Christ’s Body, broken for us, and Christ’s Blood, poured out for us. When the truth of God gets into us, we can no longer live as though we were our own source, never seeking ultimate nourishment from anything or any one.
Even in the act of everyday eating, a necessity to sustain our physical existence, we can remember to “take and eat” “our” daily bread,” as in the Lord’s Prayer, “give us this day our daily bread.” We can’t help but give thanks for all that God has given us in Jesus Christ. The life of Christ is our life! We’re been given everything!
Link to YouTube Video – Take and Eat
