Communion
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." — 1 Corinthians 11:23–24
There is a table.
Not a podium. Not a fortress. Not an arena. A table.
And around that table, on the last evening, they all sit. Those who will soon betray. Those who will soon flee. The one who has already decided to hand him over. The one who will soon deny him three times.
Jesus knows it. And he breaks the bread anyway.
It is worth lingering over who is present.
Not the worthy. Not those who have passed a test. Not those who have understood everything correctly.
Judas is there. Peter is there. Those who have just argued about which of them is the greatest — they are there.
Jesus washes their feet. All of them. Including Judas.
It is almost unbearable to consider. That he kneels before the one who will deliver him up. That he serves the one who has already taken payment for the betrayal.
It is not naivety. Jesus knows what is coming. It is something else. It is a demonstration of what love does when it meets betrayal: it kneels.
Communion has become many things through the centuries.
A sacrament. A ritual. A theological battleground — churches have even split over exactly what happens to the bread and wine, who may partake, and who is excluded.
There is a bitter irony in the fact that the meal Jesus instituted as a sign of unity has become one of the clearest signs of our division.
Perhaps we have sometimes made a fellowship meal into something narrower than it was meant to be. A place where we draw lines between who is inside and who is outside.
And perhaps we have sometimes forgotten what it was that Jesus actually did that evening.
He shared the bread with those who failed him.
There is something about a meal that is unlike anything else.
You can hear a sermon without being moved. You can read a book without letting it in. You can sit through a service and remain unchanged.
But to sit around a table with someone is something different. It is bodily. It is vulnerable. You see each other's faces. You share the same bread.
Jesus did not choose a lecture as his final message. He chose a meal.
Not because teaching is unimportant. But because what he wanted to leave behind was not a doctrine. It was a fellowship.
Paul writes to the church in Corinth because the Lord's Supper has been distorted.
The rich eat their fill before the poor arrive. Some are drunk. Some have nothing. And Paul says something sharp: You eat and drink judgment on yourselves.
Not because they have wrong theology about the bread. But because they have forgotten one another.
That is what makes communion dangerous, in the biblical sense. It is not merely a remembrance of the death of Jesus. It is a test of whether we actually live what we remember.
The bread is broken. And the question is: Are we broken too? Do we give ourselves for one another, as he gave himself for us?
Or do we hold fast — to position, to rights, to boundaries — while speaking the words of fellowship?
There is a moment in communion that easily slips past.
Jesus says: "This is my body, which is broken for you."
For you. Not for the worthy. Not for those who understand. Not for those with the right doctrine. For you — the disciples who within hours will prove themselves cowardly, confused, and weak.
It is undeserved. And that is the point.
Communion is not a reward for the faithful. It is a gift for the weak. It is God's insistence on fellowship with people who do not deserve it.
And if that is true, it has consequences for how we treat one another. For if Jesus shares the table with those who fail him, what gives us the right to refuse the table to those we disagree with?
We have spoken throughout this book about golden calves, about fear, about swords, about power.
Communion is the answer to all of this. Not as an argument, but as an act.
The golden calf offers visible security. Communion offers a broken bread — almost nothing, and yet everything.
The sword strikes the enemy. Communion invites him to sit down.
It is not a strategy. It is an existence. A way of being in the world that says: We own nothing, we control nothing, we have no power — except this bread, this wine, and one another.
Communion reminds us of something we keep forgetting.
That Christianity is not primarily a position. It is a fellowship. And fellowship does not begin with agreement, but with shared bread.
At that table there are no seats of honor. No right opinions that entitle you to sit closer. No wrong opinions that send you to the end of the bench.
There is only bread. Wine. And the words: For you.
For all of you.
Perhaps this is where the book has been heading all along.
Not toward a conclusion. Not toward an action plan. But toward a table.
A place where we lay down the golden calves, the swords, the fear, and the need to be right — and simply sit down. Together. With those we agree with, and those we do not. With those we understand, and those we do not understand.
And receive what is given.
Broken. Shared. For us.