Hope and Healing in the Bread and Cup
November 7, 2022 • By Sarah Morrison
Church is a tender place for me. Tender in the way that a bruise is sore, or joints ache. But it is also tender in the way that soft eyes look at a child, or a parent, or a friend, or any other beloved. Tender in the way of love.
It seems impossible that something could hold so much pain and so much affection simultaneously. It seems equally impossible to consider Christ’s Bride to be the vessel that holds them.
My husband and I have served in churches together for over ten years, and most of that time was spent in a church revitalization. Our time there ended abruptly, painfully, and we were left to piece our lives back together amid devastation. I had to relearn how to feel safe, secure, loved, and invited into church again.
So when I speak of love and affection in tandem with the place and priority of the local church in our lives, where it should be placed in our lives, it is not without caveat, nuance, or sympathy. I’m sure you, too, sense the double-meaning of tender.
A Gradual Healing
There was no single moment in the aftermath of our church experience where I felt suddenly healed, suddenly good, suddenly okay with being in a church building again. Honestly, there are still hard Sundays. Sundays when we sing certain songs. Sundays when I wince in fear that a Bible verse is going to be wielded as a knife that slices instead of a thread that sutures.
No, there wasn’t a single moment. Instead there has been a series of thousands of moments. A quilt of moments that locked themselves together forming a tapestry, a blanket that seems to drape over my shoulders and make me feel safer.
Most of those moments, those small but mighty bricks that have paved the way for hope and healing, have been in the weekly taking of communion. Each Sunday I walk silently to a table where a fellow member extends both of their hands toward me, one holding Christ’s body and the other his blood. Each week these words are spoken over me as I break the bread and dip it in the cup: “The body and blood of Jesus, broken and shed for you.”
“The body,” I take the matza.
“And blood of Christ” I crack it with my hands.
“Broken and shed” I dip it in the cup.
“For you.” I take and eat.
As I walk back to my seat, sucking my teeth and considering the miracle of that broken and bloody body that is somehow alive—somehow alive within me—I hear a cacophony of those words repeated. Over and over, as a whole church, we crack and dip and eat as words of life and truth are spoken over us by fellow members.
The body and blood of Jesus, broken and shed for you.
The body and blood of Jesus broken and shed for you.
I hear it spoken hundreds of times as we collectively participate in this sacrament. We remember Christ's sacrifice for us as a sum of distinct parts. We recall that this is what binds us together as a body and as a family. We participate in an act that has been passed down for thousands of years as the Church has awaited Christ's return and our own resurrection, too.
“We who have experienced trauma at the hands of our church families sympathize with Christ who was betrayed by his own loved ones. ”
A Heartbreaking Misrepresentation
1 Corinthians 11:17-26 is the first record of what we now know as the Lord’s Supper being taken in a church. This passage is what describes Communion as a sacrament, something we ought to do “until he comes.” Yet, the first half of this passage does not describe the holiness of the church that was practicing the Lord’s Supper. This body of believers were coming to the Lord’s table unfit, abusing one another and the sacrament itself.
The Corinthians were failing each other and misrepresenting the love of God in the process. They have divided themselves into factions, they are disregarding the poor and hungry among them and giving themselves over to drunkenness, potentially shaming the poor among them. They catered entirely to their own appetites during a time in which they ought to be unified, sobered, and holy. Paul rebukes the Corinthians, grieved that they gathered together for worse, not better. Harming their own body, not edifying.
We who have experienced trauma at the hands of our church families have seen this underbelly. We’ve witnessed this sacrament abused and degraded. We sympathize with Christ who was betrayed by his own loved ones.
Yet our churches, though we ought to be, are sometimes no better than the Corinthians. Our churches hurt their own when they neglect sacrament in favor of appetite. We maim and harm others with forked tongues, the same tongues that taste the goodness of the bread and cup. We take the Lord’s Supper in vain.
“We have an opportunity to find rest, consolation, and solidarity in the bread and cup. ”
Solidarity in Christ’s Cup
The words of Paul in this passage echo Jesus’ own on the night that he was betrayed. Jesus: dining with those who would hand him over to be crucified, who would deny him, who would run rather than carry his cross. Jesus: selfless and eating among those who failed to love him best, who should have loved him most.
It is palpable for us to see this contrast, forced to recognize the ways in which we have betrayed Christ in our feasting with him, betrayed one another in our churches, and have been betrayed in our churches.
I think that is why I found solace in the breaking of bread and dunking of the cup and hearing the chorus of voices telling me the truth about Christ’s sacrifice. This, the body of Christ. This, his blood. Both, broken and shed for me. Now, I am broken and bloodied for my fellow church members.
None of this is to excuse the harm done by other Christians. This is not a new problem, but that doesn’t negate its importance. The betrayal we experience at the hands of another, the lack of sympathy, the absence of generosity, the scarcity of selflessness—all of these things can be healed at the Lord’s Table. We have an opportunity to find rest, consolation, and solidarity in the bread and cup. Our chairs are pulled out for us by hole-y hands that testify of being wounded by the religious, betrayed by loved ones, failed by a system that should have defended.
Ushering Heaven to Earth
The command to partake in Communion was given to the church. Not to Christians in some thinner sense. It was given to us because we belong to one another, because it is important to gather together, because it is important to tell each other over and over and over again that Christ’s blood bought us, that his cup waters the family tree into which we were grafted.
It is not without sacrifice and pain that we belong to one another in such intimate ways, ways that require us to die to ourselves and one another regularly. But it is worth it to belong to a community that breaks itself open in a way that imitates our Savior.
Through the Lord’s Table we are invited into a special aspect of on-earth-as-it-is-in-Heaven: we choose healing instead of bitterness, we choose love over hatred, and we choose to belong to each other. We participate in the ministry of reconciliation rather than amputating ourselves from the body of Christ.
In Communion with the local church, mercies are made available to us that we wouldn’t otherwise experience. This is the mercy of ushering down to earth parts of heaven, bringing to parched ground the living waters of God’s Kingdom. Together, we take, break, eat, and drink in remembrance of the God who has come and will come again.
S.A. Morrison married her college sweetheart and has had the delight of partnering with her husband in ministry for the last ten years. Together, they have walked through troubled waters, being baptized in them. Her first book, With Those Who Weep: A Theology of Tears released in 2021.
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