The words of eucharist remember the past event of the passion of Christ who, in the same night that he was betrayed, took bread and gave you thanks; he broke it and gave it to his disciples
In the eucharist we remember the incarnation and the passion and death of Christ. We remember the last supper in the upper room and the chain of events that followed it: supper with the disciples was followed by the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ arrest and trial, his being scourged, stripped, dragged out of the city and of all human society and put to death on the cross. We call all this the ‘passion’: the passion tells us what the incarnation is; it tells us how deep the incarnation is, and that the incarnation goes down all the way to the bottom. The incarnation is the meeting of God with man, and the passion is the incarnation in miniature. It shows that God really has met man and is with him, and that this is irrevocable now, for not even death can undo it. The passion is the unchangeable fact of God’s being with man and therefore of his dedicating himself and giving himself to man.
Jesus is about to be handed over. To show that in this way God is handing himself over to man, Jesus hands this bread over to his disciples. As this bread is in their hands, and their teeth, so the Son of God is in the hands of man. Christ is about to be broken and divided up, so he breaks and divides this bread. He performs this handing over and being broken up in miniature. In this way he shows us that this did not happen to him without his knowledge or consent. It looks as though it is by his own power that man is taking Christ into his hands to do something appalling to him in which Jesus is simply the victim. But, by playing this all out before hand, Jesus shows that in all this action in which man’s violence rolls out, man is not master of this event at all. It is Christ who gives the instruction to ‘go and do what you are going to do’, to Judas. In the last supper Jesus demonstrates with this bread what is going to happen so we can see he took this role in it for himself, and so that in these events in which he is entirely passive, he is also entirely willing and active. He is actively passive. It is not man who is in charge – not Judas, not the crowd, not the Sanhedrin or high priest or Pilate – but Christ.
Christ breaks open this bread, tears pieces off and so divides it and hands it over to his friends, because he is going to open, and break and divide, hand over and share. He opens, divides, hands over and shares himself. What we are getting in all this, what we are being offered, is not this or that thing – it is Christ himself. God is given to man for God places himself in our hands. Our time here and now in this eucharist, is superimposed on that moment then. All the events that follow it, the Mount of Olives, the garden, arrest, passion and crucifixion, all the events of the passion, are contained in the Last Supper. That eucharistic meal is the whole incarnation and passion of Christ brought together. These two times come into synch: our time comes into synch with the master fly-wheel which is Christ’s time. The eucharist is the events of the passion, and the eucharistic service superimposes on our time these events of Christ’s passion. As a result we are able to follow Christ, and watch this offering and giving of God to man, from a distance. His passion is the frame into which all the events of our life fit, so that included within the events of his life, the events of our lives be raised and redeemed.
