Blessed, Broken, and Given

Luke 22:14–20 NIV

14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” 17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 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.” 20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

On the night before Jesus was executed Luke records one more Meal with Jesus. His Last Supper…a most intimate setting…just Jesus and his disciples...a supper which was infinitely more than just a meal. It was a supper that came to symbolize the story of Jesus’ life. And not only Jesus, but the lives of all people who find their life hidden in him.

Henri Nouwen, in his devotional, Bread for the Journey, reflects on how the bread that Jesus blessed, broke and gave to his disciples, symbolized his own life. Tonight as we mediate on verse 19 of Luke 22, I share some of his thoughts with us this evening.

Jesus is the Blessed One. He is the One upon whom the favor of the Father rests. He is the One chosen before all time to receive blessing but also to give blessing. All of us need to receive a blessing. God blessed Abraham. Abraham passed on a blessing to his sons. And parents must continue to do likewise towards their children. All of us in some way look for a blessing; someone who says, “I love you. I’m proud of you.” All of us need to receive a blessing.

Jesus is the Blessed One from God and he came into the world to share his blessing with us. Through Jesus Christ, the Father comes to all the people in the world and offers his blessing: “You are my children. I have made you and my deepest desire is that you might know the love of my Father. The Father’s blessing extended to Jesus, through Jesus is extended to all of us.

At this last supper, Jesus first gives thanks for the bread. A word that could equally be translated Jesus blessed the bread. God blessed Jesus, who is the bread of life and through Jesus he blesses us. As we join together for this Meal with Jesus, we need to hear these words. We need to hear the voice of God, saying to us what he says to his own son, “you are my son, my daughter, my beloved; my favor rests on you.” Especially during the dark and difficult times of our life we need to hear that voice, trust it, and remember it so that we can live our lives as God’s blessed children and share that blessings in the same way that Christ shared his blessing with us.

As the Bread of life is blessed.....we are blessed.

After having blessed the bread, Jesus broke it. Tonight above all nights, we remember that Jesus was broken on the cross. But it was not just at the end of his life that he was broken. He lived a life of humility and suffering. Jesus was a man of sorrows that choose to live among the sorrowful. He ministered to the weak, the wearied, and wandering. Jesus’ suffering and death was not an evil to avoid at all costs but a mission to embrace. It was precisely in the midst of his suffering that Jesus yielded himself to the will of his Father in heaven and thereby brought blessing and hope to the world. We call this Friday “Good” because obediently Christ was broken so that forgiveness and peace could be extended to all people.

We too are broken. We experience and endure brokenness in countless ways. We live with broken bodies, broken hearts, broken minds, broken spirits. We’ve all experienced shattered dreams and endured broken relationships. Tragedy and devastation in our world fractures our hope. We too are broken.

How can we live with our brokenness? The brokenness that Jesus experienced was not something he avoided but something he embraced. Luke writes, “He set out resolutely towards Jerusalem,” the city that would kill him. Jesus embraced his brokenness and suffering as a mission for he knew that as he laid aside his own life, he would find life in the hands of the Father.

How can we live with our brokenness? In the same way that Christ embraced his brokenness and put it under the blessing of God, we too take our brokenness and surrender it to the blessing of God. Our broken bodies, broken hearts, broken minds, broken spirits, broken relationships, we surrender them to purposes of God. How many times have we not encountered people who have endured depression, or marital brokenness, or struggled with a sense of worthlessness or shame, who have emerged at some later point in life to bring healing and hope to precisely the people who share the same struggles. God is in the business of transforming brokenness into blessing. Jesus knew that. He surrendered his brokenness completely to his Father and the Father transformed it into a gateway to new life for all people who trust in him.

Like the Bread that we break, Christ was broken for the sake of others. We too are God’s broken people who surrender their lives to the Father so that our brokenness can be source of life and healing.

Not only did Jesus bless the bread and break it, he gave it. Jesus gave his life to the world. His death and his life were not only for himself, they were for all the world. This one life was broken and multiplied so that it could be given as food for the entire world.

As God’s beloved children we must believe that God blesses us and breaks us so that we can be given for the sake of others. In the same way that Jesus Christ is the bread of the life, blessed, broken and given to the world as food, we must believe that God blesses, breaks, and gives us. When we surrender our brokenness to the blessing of God, he uses our lives as instruments of nourishment and healing for others.

Dear friends, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Blessed One of God. And he has come into the world to tell all of us that we too are blessed.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was broken. And because he was broken and raised up to new life, we can accept our brokenness, surrendering it to God, so that it can become a gateway to new life.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was given. In the same way, we must give our lives, so that as Christ nourishes us, we in turn may become food to a hungry world.

We now approach the table of our Lord.