Thought for the day. Southwark 13th July 2024

 I wonder where you are in the story.

Yes, I know I ask that question quite often.

That's because I think it's one of the very best ways to engage with Scripture, rather than sim0ly find yourself lulled into unthinking by a familiar scenario, a sense that you already know what is going to happen.

So...I wonder where you are in the story.

Likes account of the Last Supper.

A scene we know so well ThatThat we literally have a liturgy that brings us into the story week after week after week. We know the script 

We really do know what happens.

But I don't think it was ,ike that for the disciples.

Come on. REALLY think about.

Set aside any sense of wondering devotion inspired by a long Eucharistic obedience 

It won't have felt like THAT at all

Rather I imagine it was one of those situations in which while we understand each individual word, the overall message of the conversation makes no sense at all.

"What, oh what, is Jesus talking about?

Why is this the last Passover he will eat?

Are those ugly rumours about forthcoming violence true? And if they are, why are we here in thecfebrile atmosphere of Jerusalem at festival time..?

How can he know he won't drink wine again until the kingdom comes?

And then he blesses and breaks the bread but instead of taking us into our past, into our familiar defining story of Passover, he says, quite calmly, that the bread is his body.

The wine his blood

Even Jesus surely can't rewrite a story, change its meaning, just like that.

And if he has...what are we supposed to do?

EAT and DRINK.? While the man we love is still sitting among us, full of life and love? Really?!?

How can we?

Surely that would be an unforgivable betrayal, not an act of faith?

It seems that Jesus is expecting betrayal from one of us....but that hasn't stopped him sharing this strangest of meals with all of us. Each and every one of us as welcome, as beloved as ever, no matter what.

I wish I understood what he was talking about, what it all means...."

I wonder whether it began to make some kind of sense for them in the coming days or whether they clung on in blind obedience to the mandate Do this in Remembrance of me gaining confidence little by little every time...

I wonder too, whether the visitors who enter our churches and hear those same words, so familiar the insider, are every bit as confused and disturbed,

What a way to celebrate love....

And yet...and yet...the experience of eating and drinking in humble obedience brings the deep certainty that Christ is with us, that we can, and do, meet him in the breaking of bread.

May we find ourselves in the story, welcomed, fed, transformed...