Eucharist

When it comes to the Eucharist we are more than a work in process, we are a woman in labor! We are trying to give birth to a new a feeling, a new awareness about what Jesus did, one which emerges in the actual celebration of the Lord's Supper. What would it be like if "eating and drinking in his memory" gives rise automatically to a sense of new creation, one freed from violence, revenge and death? What would it be like if the eucharistic meal lost all its trappings of a "sacrifice offered to God" or of a memorial of atonement where God "requires" the death of his Son. What would it be like if the eucharist was a symbol and sign of a completely new way of human life, and because Jesus actually achieved that new way then the symbol is truly, really communicative? That we sense in the midst of the celebration a new land of hope, peace and life? 

So much is tied up in the tradition around the "thing" of the bread that we have lost sight of the story of the new that these signs tell of. In fact the new is itself a work in process, a woman in labor, every time we do this, until he comes!

Watch this page for more reflections and attempts to make plain what a transformative eucharist might mean.

With faith in the Risen Jesus, and thanksgiving, we embrace the gifts he gives us: the universe of rocks and light, of unseen depths and blazing stars, of sea and field and rain and tree. In the Risen Jesus we embrace our earth: the grain, the wine, the oil, the speeding bird, the mighty whale, the women, men, and children, spread throughout its living sphere.

Through the self-giving of Jesus, in his life and on the cross, we came clearly to know our beloved God, the one who cannot be seen or imaged or even thought, except through this self-giving. And now we receive from our Beloved all that is, and return the Beloved thanks as Jesus taught us, using simple gifts of bread and wine.


(From Current WHH Eucharist)