Today in the Church Calendar is Corpus Christi - which is a day of thanksgiving to God for the institution of the eucharist.(the photo comes from the blog of Alan Creech)
It's a big festival in the Catholic world and even though we are not wanting to overly-identify ourselves with any ONE tradition, but drink deeply from all the wells, I am thankful for the eucharist.
It keeps us anchored in the story of the gospel.
We celebrate the eucharist in hOME at every worship gathering (weekly) and I think it's really important that we do so.
At the Last Supper Jesus took, blessed, broke, and shared the bread. The four main 'actions' of the eucharist - taking, blessing, breaking and sharing are also the four main elements of the Christ story. Jesus was given (or taken), blessed by God, broken (primarily on the cross) and shared out for the life of the world as the living bread.
So each time we celebrate the eucharist we are re-enacting the heart of our faith.
But those 4 actions also encapsulate God's action upon us:
he gathers us, he blesses us, he breaks us, and he shares us out for the life of the world : we experience this on both an individual level and a corporate level in Christian community.
So for this reason (and there are others too - for example eucharist reminds us of the essential goodness of physicality), I'm glad we re-tell the story each week in our worship gathering.
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