“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
We proclaim a death. We do this every week. Some of us do it more than once a week. We break bread and give everyone in the room a small portion, and everyone eats. We pour wine into a chalice and everyone is invited to drink. And whenever we do this, we proclaim a death.
We break the bread, and as it breaks we cherish the horrible memory of his body broken, hammered to a pole and crossbar, left to hang in such a way that he would slowly suffocate. And we remember his body stripped of clothes, particularly clothes that would identify or dignify him: no colorful garment to signify that he was a rabbi, an educated teacher and leader; no tunic that signaled wealth or social status; no pockets to hold money; no modest underclothes to protect his privacy.
We break the bread, tear it in half, then quarters, then into little bits. And then we gobble it up, we wolf it down, we consume it. We consume him.