Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given

Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given

Luke 9: 10 – 17, Luke 22: 19, Luke 24: 30 – 32

Introduction

This morning we will observe the Lord’s Supper together as a congregation. Some churches refer to the Lord’s Supper as a sacrament. A sacrament is a means to receive the Grace of God.

As Baptists, we do not recognize any sacraments. Other churches recognize as few as two sacraments or as many as seven sacraments. The most common sacraments in Christian churches are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We practice both baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but we don’t think of them as ways to receive God’s Grace. Instead, we recognize them as ordinances—symbols of what God has already done in our lives.

Of course, you know that there are several different ways that churches practice baptism. There is baptism by immersion, which is our practice. And, there is baptism by sprinkling and baptism by pouring. The different methods of baptism are the result of three different understandings of baptism.

Most, if not all, Christian churches observe the Lord’s Supper in one form or another. There are two elements in the Lord’s Supper—bread and wine, of course our tradition is to use non-alcoholic grape juice.

In some churches, the bread and wine are known as the Eucharist. Eucharist is the English form of the Greek word eucharisto, which means “to give thanks.” In these Christian churches, the purpose of eating the bread and drinking the wine is to “give thanks” to God for the salvation offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The most common way churches refer to the bread and wine is the term Communion. The word “communion” refers to a mystical relationship between Christ and the person who eats the bread and drinks the wine. Some churches believe that the bread and the wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus when it is consecrated in the worship service. Others believe that the presence of Christ inhabits the bread and the wine in a miraculous way. In both cases, “Communion” refers to the way the actual presence of Christ or the symbolic presence of Christ enter into the person who eats and drinks the elements.

In our tradition, we refer to the meal of bread and wine as the Lord’s Supper. For us this is a symbolic meal through which we remember the body of Christ broken and given for us and the blood of Jesus poured out for us.

Eucharist means to give thanks to God through eating and drinking. Communion means to commune with God through eating and drinking. The Lord’s Supper means to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus through eating and drinking. This is the reason we have Jesus’ words printed across the front of our Lord’s Supper table, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

In our remembering this morning, we remember the bread reminds us of the body of Jesus, and the wine (juice) reminds us of the blood of Jesus. However, I want to focus on the bread today by looking at three places in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus served bread.

Read Luke 9: 10 – 17

10 When the apostles returned, they reported to Jesus what they had done. Then he took them with him and they withdrew by themselves to a town called Bethsaida,

11 but the crowds learned about it and followed him. He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.

12 Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, "Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here."

13 He replied, "You give them something to eat." They answered, "We have only five loaves of bread and two fish-- unless we go and buy food for all this crowd."

14 (About five thousand men were there.) But he said to his disciples, "Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each."

15 The disciples did so, and everybody sat down.

16 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to set before the people.

17 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

(NIV)

This is the only miracle which appears in all four Gospels. There is something significant about the feeding of the five thousand. I don’t think this is a Lord’s Supper story. On one hand, it doesn’t contain the two elements of the Lord’s Supper—bread and wine. On the other hand, we don’t need this to be a Lord’s Supper story. Later in the Gospels, Jesus explicitly serves bread and wine to his disciples and institutes the Lord’s Supper by commanding us to continue doing this in remembrance of him.

More than likely, the significance of this story is the way it demonstrates Jesus as the fulfillment of the Jewish hope for a coming Messiah. The Messiah would be like Moses and Elijah and would provide food for God’s people. Therefore, this story shows us how Jesus is the Messiah by connecting the dots between Old Testament prophecy and the earthly life of Jesus.

Most of the time, we focus on the facts of Jesus’ miracle. We talk about the large crowd of people—five thousand men, not including the women and children. We talk about the little boy who shared his common lunch of bread and fish. Or we talk about the way Jesus’ miracle produced enough food for everyone to eat, AND there were twelve basketsful of leftovers!

Instead of focusing on the facts of the miracle, I want you to notice HOW Jesus performed the miracle. We might even say that Jesus used a process for performing this miracle. The process shows up in Luke 9: 16, “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to set before the people.”

Jesus did four things with the bread. He took the bread. He blessed the bread. He broke the bread. He gave the bread.

I find it interesting that Luke tells us two other stories about Jesus’ serving bread, and uses the same four verbs in each story.

When Jesus gathered his disciples in the Upper Room to share their last Passover meal together, he served bread. Luke 22: 19, “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’”

After the resurrection, Jesus met two travelers on the road to Emmaus. The travelers were amazed that Jesus wasn’t aware of the events that had taken place over the past several days. The travelers thought they had found the Messiah, but this Messiah was crucified. It was obvious to them that Jesus could not be both the Messiah and crucified. Then, Jesus explained the Scriptures to them and joined them for supper. Luke 24: 30 – 32, “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’”

Every time Jesus served bread, he did four things. He took the bread. He blessed the bread. He broke the bread. He gave the bread.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus told us that he is the Bread of Life. As the Bread of Life, Jesus is the source of life for us—just as bread was the primary source of nourishment in the ancient world. However, we can also say that Jesus is the Bread of Life, because he was Taken, Blessed, Broken and Given for us[1]. In the same way, if you and I want to be used by God, we must recognize the ways we have been Taken, Blessed, Broken and Given.

Taken

Jesus could not serve the bread to his followers until he “took” the bread. In the same way, Jesus was taken—or chosen—to be the Unique Son of God, the Promised Messiah for Israel.

We know that Jesus was chosen by God through an event that took place at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. When Jesus came out of the water, the Spirit of God descended on him in the form of a dove. A voice from Heaven said, “This is my beloved Son. In him I am well pleased.”

This is one of the most important things we need to recognize about ourselves to think of ourselves as God’s children. We have been taken by God.

Perhaps it is better to use the word “chosen” when we talk about people. But we do use the word “taken” to talk about ourselves. For example, sometimes a young man might ask a young girl out on a date. If she already has a boyfriend, she might answer by saying, “I can’t go out with you, because I am taken.” In the same way, when we are approached by all the temptations of the world, we should say, “I can’t go along with what you are asking of me, because I am already taken.”

We don’t really like to use the word “chosen,” because it gives the impression of winners and losers. That is not the Spiritual understanding of being chosen. That understanding comes from our own sinful desires to compete against others and to be considered elite.

It’s the same mistake Israel made. Israel was God’s chosen people. They thought this meant they were in competition with the rest of the nations and the races on earth. They believed that since they had been chosen by God, no one else could be chosen. Yet, this was not God’s intention. It was God’s plan to choose Israel so that other nations and all races could also be chosen by God.

Israel was not chosen to be God’s ONLY people. They were chosen so that all peoples could be included in God’s chosen people. The same thing is true for us. We were not chosen to be God’s ONLY people. We were chosen to include others.

Blessed

The biblical idea of blessing means to speak well of someone, or to speak good words to someone. As Christians, we are blessed by God…But we have a hard time hearing God’s good words about us. The blessing is usually drowned out by the loud voices of cursing. We watch TV and listen to the news about our world. We feel cursed and abandoned in a world we cannot change. We often think of ourselves as victims, rather than the chosen children of God.

Perhaps we need to remember God’s words to Jesus at his baptism. Just as God spoke his blessing over Jesus, he is speaking a blessing over you. You are not worthless. You are not just another person among billions of people on earth. You are God’s child.

The only way to receive God’s blessing and good words about us is to learn how to listen to God’s voice over all other voices. We can listen to God through prayer.

Prayer, in its true form, involves both speaking to God and listening to God. It is a mistake to think we have more to say to God than he has to say to us. We can listen to God’s blessing through silence and by meditating on Scripture. We ought to develop the discipline of prayer by speaking to God about all our needs and concerns then listening to God’s still small voice. The Scriptures contain the word of God. It is not God’s word to Israel or even God’s word to the early church. It is God’s word to you and me. If we refuse to open our Bibles and listen to God’s word to us, we cannot hear God’s words of blessing over all the curses of the world.

Broken

Brokenness is a natural part of what it means to be human. I am a broken person. You are a broken person. Every person you know is broken. And every person you see on television and through the media is a broken person. We learn how to hide our brokenness and pretend that we do not suffer.

Jesus took bread and blessed it when he fed the five thousand, served the Last Supper to his disciples, and served the travelers on the road to Emmaus. But that bread was worthless until it was broken. The bread could not be given until it was broken.

The same thing is true in Jesus’ life. Salvation became possible for you and me when Jesus was broken on the cross.

The brokenness we experience is sometimes a physical brokenness. We live in a world filled with poverty and sickness. However, most people experience an internal brokenness—the pain of a broken heart. We have experienced the death of our loved ones, the death of our dreams, the brokenness of sin, and the brokenness of relationships—husband and wife, parents and children, friends, and colleagues.

We have been chosen by God. Each person has unique gifts, unique talents, and unique brokenness. No one has ever experienced the same life you are living today, and no one will live your life in the future. And God has chosen to use broken people like you and me. We were not chosen because we are perfect. We were chosen because we are broken.

Given

It was not enough for Jesus to take the bread, to bless the bread and to break the bread. Jesus had to give the bread for it to accomplish its purpose. Everything had been leading up to this moment.

In the same way, this is God’s purpose for your life. You and I have been chosen by God so that we could be given to the world.

The world we live in is preoccupied with having and not with giving. But I’ve never met anyone who was truly happy because of what they have. True happiness and joy are the result of giving. And when we give ourselves, God performs a miracle. There are always leftovers.

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[1] These four qualities are described in detail in Henri J.M. Nouwen’s book Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992).