Talk 2 Loaf broken

Christ given, Christ broken, Christ divided

Wednesday March 18th

We are on our way to Easter, and are travelling through the

passion of Lent. We celebrate this resurrection, which is the
gathering, reconciliation and redemption of all things around
Christ. The cross is our route to the resurrection, and we
undergo a little of this passion every time we leave this
gathering, as we must do, in order to take this celebration of
the resurrection out through the world.

1. Christ gives himself

God is with man, and God loves man. Man is created by that
love and as he participates in it, he comes to himself. The Lord
God is wooing us and comes with a gift, ‘his only begotten
Son’. He offers his Son to us as the true image of man. God
has given himself to man, and for as long as man prevaricates,
God waits. Last week we said that Christ has brought us
together to be his body for the world. The Christian people are
drawn together to become one loaf, the body gathered and
held together against all the forces that want to break it up.
That loaf is the Church, the community gathered around the
indivisible Christ. We are integrated into this body and put in
one another’s hands and so we are placed in good company.

We also said that we see Christ on this cross. In every church

we are confronted by this appalling figure, who has been
separated from all humanity and slowly robbed of life. He
appears as man overpowered and reduced to nothing by some
unspeakable force. To approach this sight we have to overcome
our own feelings of dismay and disgust. This exaltation of this
image of death is hard to take, indeed it appears to
nonsensical to some, ‘the message of the cross is foolishness’
as the Sunday epistle puts it (1 Corinthians 1.18-25). Christ is
this unacceptable image, and because it is his body, the
Church is part of this unacceptable image, as it appears to be
suffering, divided, outdated or superseded. We see the Church
so because we see Christ so. We have no wish to see this
crucified Christ because we are afraid that this is also the truth
about ourselves, and that we see our own end and death there.
So very understandably, many people hold out against this
cross as long as they can. Indeed we have to overcome some
of this feeling of disdain every time we look around the church,
see how unimpressive its people are, and have to bear the

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embarrassment of association with them. For it is only when
we come close enough to that cross that we can look up and
see the truth, which is that Christ is glorified. Though on the
cross Christ appears to be isolated and estranged from all,
when we come nearer we see that he is glory, with the Father
and with the whole company of earth and heaven. Then we
can conclude that being isolated and on the cross is just what
the glorified Christ has done for us. The cross that appears to
be his, is ours. Christ is never without the whole company of
heaven, but seeing that we were the ones on our own, he
came to be with us, so that we should not be abandoned and
go under. Christ is with us, and has brought us into a good
company.

This time I have to tell you that Christ divides and distributes
himself here, giving himself away to us, recklessly, but that for
all that we grasp at his body, it is never entirely in our grasp.

2. The indivisible divides himself

When the Christian people come together they give thanks to
God, which is what ‘eucharist’ means. At the climax of the
eucharist the minister holds up the loaf, and breaks it, and
gives it to them. Christ is our bread and he is the one who
divides himself up and shares himself out. He has given
himself and in the passion we laid hands on him and took hold
of him. This is the moment I am going to explore today.

The eucharist celebrates the incarnation and the passion of

Christ. We remember the Last Supper in the Upper Room and
the chain of events that followed, the Garden of Gethsemane,
arrest and trial. Jesus is scourged, stripped, dragged out of the
city and all human society. He is torn and broken up, his death
this calculatedly conspicuous form of public disintegration: We
call all this the ‘passion’. It shows that the incarnation goes all
the way down, so that God really has encountered man and
remains with him, and that nothing, not even death can undo
this.

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, 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, showing with
this bread and cup what is going to happen, thereby showing
that it will happen only with his knowledge and consent. It

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looks as though, by his own power, man takes 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 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 (John 13.27). He took this role in it for
himself, so in these events in which he seems most passive, he
is also entirely willing and active. It is not man who is in charge
– not Judas, not the crowd, not the Sanhedrin or high priest or
Pilate – but Christ.

The eucharist is an offering made, and a gift given, to us. At

the Passover supper celebrated with the disciples in that upper
room, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to
them. Christ breaks open this bread, tears pieces off and so
divides it and hands it over to his friends. He breaks and hands
over. He hands over and shares himself. What we are handed
here is not this or that thing, but Christ himself. God places
himself in our hands, so God is really given and man really
receives him. So at each eucharist Christ brings us in, sits us
down and feeds us and waits on us. The indivisible and
indestructible Lord divides and distributes himself to us,
making us one community and making each one of us distinct
persons within it. Christ gives us these instalments of this
redeemed creation, he gives us his service and he gives us his
own company. In all this, he gives us himself. So, happy are
those who are called to his supper.

3. Bread broken – seed scattered

As Christ lifts up his people, in the eucharist the minister holds
up this loaf. What is happening here? Out of this loaf comes the
whole communion of God for man. This Spirit-filled people of
God flow out from this loaf into the world; they are the form in
which the communion of God comes to the world. Led by
Christ, identified by the cross, the people of God descend from
the altar and process down the church, out of the building and
into the world. They are sent in all directions, to bear the
witness of God into every corner of the world. So each
eucharistic service seems to come to an end with the
dismissal, Go in peace to love and serve… which we should
better call the commission. But in each Christian this same
service now journeys through the world and penetrates every
part of it.

During the service you see us all together, and we are visible
as the Church, and after the service we disappear into our

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separate callings, and the Church is invisible. But the saints are
out in the world, at work here, in London. They are seeds
dropped into the ground. And they are holy, that is, so what
they are cannot yet be seen.

4. Withdrawn Body
When it meets together, the Church is visible. But at certain
times of year, and certain points in our discipleship, the Church
also disappears. In particular in the preparation time of Lent,
we go on retreat, letting the clamour fade into the distance, so
we can re-learn our discipleship. We recover that self-control
that makes us more than simply our own bodies and needs,
and learn to hear the demands of others. To exercise self-
restraint is not to act against ourselves, but simply to act for
one another. We learn to ‘use’ our bodies well and so discover
how to be free for one another: this is what fasting is.

The Church always alternates between being withdrawn, and

being given to the world. When the Christians arrived here in
this city of London they gathered around their bishop, the
catholicity and universality of the Church in one person, and
they built their cathedral, and they have stood, sung, prayed
and worshipped here ever since, in this way making the body
of Christ visible for the world. But the Church also leads an
invisible life, outside the city, for it is able to do this city good
as long as it remains holy, and this requires that it periodically
withdraws for a while. Every Christian alternates between
being given to the city, and being withdrawn from it.

A long time ago just up the river from here, some Christians
withdrew in order to dedicate themselves solely to singing the
praises of God. They followed the rule of Benedict, singing the
divine office, the psalms and Scripture, seven times a day.
They had conspicuously given up their own interests, held no
property, did not marry, but were dedicated to this worship.
The abbey church of this monastic community is still there, and
its worship continues unbroken. We know it as ‘Westminster
Abbey’. In the case of this particular community, the long-term
effect of its worship of God is easy to see.

For singing the worship of God, gives this community a very

particular character. From it comes all the good practices of
self-discipline and self-control of the Christian life. The wisdom
that comes from this set of disciplines made itself so apparent,
that people came to these Christians for their wisdom. Because
they had no material stake in the outcome of any issue, they

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made good listeners and gave good advice. The forgiveness
that is extended to us by God enables a new-start for anyone
previously locked in conflict, so the community of the Church
that points to this forgiveness of God, is good at enabling
peace and reconciliation. The Abbey’s community of monks
were able to provide arbitration, resolve disputes and dispense
justice for whoever came to them. The worship of God spills
out into this other form of public service, the administration of
justice, also known as government.

The rulers of this part of England valued the counsel of these

Christians enough to build their palaces around this monastery,
and beautify their abbey. They wanted the blessing of God, the
true king, whose servants they declared themselves to be.
Their palaces, Westminster and Whitehall, are still there. This
abbey is not in at the centre of government by an accident of
history. The Church got there first. But when the Church goes
off to be itself, the world cannot help following, for from the
disciplined Christian life come all the good practices of self-
discipline and self-control that sustain a society. Within the
Church we may learn the practices of self-government and of
generosity, and made confident by our restraint, others come
to us, and public service and government are what result.

The society that sees the results of this self-discipline is willing

to receive some of it. Where it receives, however much at
second-hand, the virtues of this disciplined Christian life, our
society will hold together. When we or our leaders forget that
all government is sourced in the self-government of this
specific community, the integrity of the person and of our
society drifts into doubt.

5. Man broken – society broken

There is the love of God for man. And there is another love,
that is not the love of God for man, but the love of man turned
away from God and away from his fellow man. When we do not
receive the love of God and hear the judgment of God we will
certainly be possessed and divided up by these other ‘loves’.
Evasion of the love of God, failure to hear the Word spoken to
us and to learn self-control and self-government results in this
whole vast engine of delusion and hopelessness. When we are
in flight from the love of God we give ourselves away in all
other directions. The cultic service of the entertainment
industries is dedicated to promote the cult of the perpetual
power of the unguided love-free individual will.

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So when we only tell people what they want to hear, that that
they are victims and that society is to blame, we rob them. It is
for the Church to tell people that they are not being held back
primarily by other people, but by themselves, that is, by their
own sin. They are responsible, we are responsible: whatever it
is, no one has done this to us, but we ourselves.

Is there anything more pitiful than the man without self-

control? Without it we are at the mercy of our emotions, cannot
grow, so remain children, and all our interaction is then on the
basis of who is loudest, and all our politics becomes a form of
yelping. Is there anything more pitiful than the society that
does not learn from its own great inherited fund of truth and
self-discipline? The society that disparages all means of self-
control gives itself away, and creates the gods that it gives
itself to.

How have we done, say, in the last fifty years? Have we

fostered self-control? Or have we simply introduced more
technology instead? Has an undisciplined consumption of the
earth underwritten our voluntarism and emotivism? Faster
transport and communication means less obligation to be
embodied in any particular place to any particular set of
persons, but this technology has been paid for by massive oil
consumption. What when we reach the end of the cheap oil
and all the speculation that it has enabled? The society that
does not value self-control and self-government, and
substitutes technology for it, postpones its appointment with
reality, but each postponement will make it more of a bump
when it arrives. Will the yelping get shriller? Will it take to the
streets?

The man without self-control gives himself away and is lost.

Christ gives himself away, again and without limit and is never
lost. His integrity is safe with the Father. He gives himself
endlessly to us in order that we take from him some, and so be
drawn into his great and spacious integrity, in the communion
of God. As long as we think that we have no need for the
Church and its talk of love and self-giving and self-control, and
are outraged every time our will is crossed, we are denying our
own integrity as persons, and robbing ourselves. In the face of
the love of God our sin is weak, dull and boring. Why should we
rob ourselves of this love? Denial of it does not make us any
more interesting. However long the route to it is, we should
come to this love for ourselves, and therefore that we should
ask for this forgiveness for ourselves, and receive it. We should

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seek the approval of God, and however long it takes, let the
approval of men come in its own time. For we must all give
way to that true worship, which comes from the love of God for
man, evidenced in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Let
us be glad, for it is given to us to say ‘Christ is risen’.