Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through podcast, poetry, and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Growing up, I went camping quite often. I remember distinctly sitting around the campfire late at night, swapping stories. Sometimes comparing events, sometimes trying to one up each other.
Some of those stories were urban legends, ghost stories, and other creepy tails. It was always late at night that we told these, the time of night where the dark crept in and made the stories seem plausible, if not factual.
Ghost stories and urban legends have been around as long as people have told stories. It’s almost as if we want to believe in the impossible, the improbable, the supernatural. We want there to be more than we can see, more than we can touch, something we can experience to challenge and expand our understanding of life, existence, and everything.
Whether the disciples were looking for something supernatural or not that night, they found it.
Two disciples who had left Jerusalem earlier in the day to go stay in Emmaus, these two men came rushing back into that upper room, claiming they had just seen Jesus. Jesus who had been killed, who had been buried, who had been lost to them all. They were claiming they broke bread with him. And prior to that, he had taught them about the scriptures pointing to the messiah having to die and rise again.
There had been all these stories floating around. Women found an empty tomb when they went to dress the corpse. Now, people were seeing Jesus pop up in various places. What was happening? The entire thing was jarring and took away any sense of equilibrium the disciples had.
After the death of Jesus, they had been huddled together, fearful of the Romans identifying them as fellow insurrectionists with Jesus. In fear, they remained where they were. In fear, they wept and grieved. In fear, they wondered what now.
But now, now there are whispers and stories of what could be hope? It was too much to believe.
Then Jesus showed up.
The passage says Jesus “stood among them.” In the midst of a discussion and speculation and argument about what had happened at Emmaus, Jesus was suddenly there, among them.
What a disorienting event.
How did he get there? Did anyone see him come in? Wasn’t the door locked? Was this him?
The disciples (even the ones at Emmaus) jumped to the only logical conclusion: it was a ghost.
Jesus was dead. This had to be his Spirit come to haunt them.
And Jesus (the phantom they were convinced he was) spoke to them.
“Peace.”
Don’t let your heart’s be troubled. Don’t be afraid. Don’t dwell in confusion and upheaval. Peace be with you.
Jesus binds up their fears in a healing salve of peace, and offers himself to them with his wounded hands and feet.
“See,” Jesus says. “It’s really me, your friend, the crucified messiah.”
The broken hands and feet displayed to the disciples is the proof that this is the same Jesus who, hours earlier, had broken bread with the disciples in Emmaus. Jesus carries his wounds so that we may know him, recognize him, have peace in him.
This is why we come to the Eucharistic table every week: to receive the broken body and spilled blood of Christ and in that receiving we recognize our crucified savior. This is not a ghost or a phantom or a spirit. This is the real presence of Jesus among us, with us, given to us.
In the Eucharist, Jesus draws near to each of us, intimately, that we might draw near to God, intimately.
But our time at the Eucharistic table isn’t just personal. It’s not just for us to feel good about our relationship with Jesus. For as much as it is a time to commune and come near to God, it is also a time of waiting, receiving, and transformation.
The disciples had to wait in Jerusalem to be clothed with power from on high. They had to wait to tell their witness of the risen savior to the world.
But they didn’t wait in emptiness. As they waited, they gestated the truth of the gospel.
Jesus opened their minds so they could understand what the scriptures were really saying: the Messiah, Jesus, had to suffer and die and then rise on the third day. They began to understand that repentance and forgiveness, in the name of Jesus, was their message to the world.
As they received this truth about the message they were to carry, they were also promised a transformation. A power from on high was going to clothe them, cover them, envelop them. This Holy Ghost was going to come and haunt them. The Spirit sent from God was going to transform them into bold messengers, bearing their testimonies to the crucified and risen messiah.
And this is what happens to us in the Eucharist. We come to the altar to receive, and we wait with expectation as the bread and the cup comes to us. We receive the elements, and we are transformed as the Spirit does her work of life in us. We become the broken bread and shed blood for the world so that they might know the message of the Bible: God has forgiven sin, therefore repent and believe.
This isn’t just a pretty picture, words strung together to inspire us. This isn’t just a story we tell each other to elicit warm fuzzies about God’s love. This isn’t a tale told in church that has no meaning in the real work beyond the walls of our building. We don’t retell the story of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection every week in the Eucharist for it to not mean something deep, something true, something world shaking.
The reality of what we do at the Eucharistic table is this: we tell the story of Jesus in its preparation. In the giving and receiving, we accept and ingest the grace of God that transforms and empowers us to be sent out into the world to join with the work that the Spirit is already doing in the world.
We come for nourishment.
We find sustenance.
We are sent with a purpose.
This is the power of the Eucharistic table. It unites us in our recognition of Jesus. It binds us together in the waiting for grace. It ties our hearts together as we are sent towards others. The Eucharist is our family meal, our shared sustenance, our corporate feast that we invite everyone to.
As we come to the table today, I pray we would see Jesus offering himself, his broken body, to us that we might know him. I pray that we would hear his wisdom and open our mind to the story of Jesus in scripture and the world around us. I pray that we would touch and taste the grace that is offered freely to all. And I pray we would receive the power offered to us to be witnesses in the world, to all people, about the risen Christ we encounter and know here at the table.
Amen.
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