Maundy Thursday: This Bread is Broken

Thursday March 28

Journey through Holy Week with daily reflections from the Rev Roddy Hamilton

Mark 14:22-25

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’

Reflection

This bread is broken
This wine is spilled
We have turned this sacrifice
Into decadent theology

This bread is body
This wine is blood
And we have made the Saviour
A ritual victim

This bread is promise
This wine is covenant
We have hidden the pain
In our liturgy and ceremony

Where is the one we have concealed
In our solemn table traditions?

In a garden
Where murky twilight camouflages a betrayer
Under the towering walls of the city
The ever present background
Of empire and religion
The framework for this entire story
The kingdom is sold out
To the schemes of diabolical institutions
And the city almost smiles

The Saviour is double-crossed
The Judas has prostituted himself
The darkness thickens
And the Jesus of Galilee,
Of the Beatitudes
Of the Magnificat
Of the I Am’s
Of the Prophets
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Is disappeared
Is stolen
Is broken like bread on a table

Where is he now?

This bread is…
This wine is…

Prayer

Holy God
In every morsel of bread
May we taste promise
And in every drop of wine
The whole covenant of heaven
And keep the hope alive
In the passing
Generously
Ubiquitously
Of this story from one to another
In crumb and shimmer
For this is a story we dare not
Cannot
Keep to ourselves

The Rev Roddy Hamilton is minister of New Kilpatrick Church, Bearsden