Come to God’s Table

As a child I was taken each Sunday morning to ‘The Breaking of Bread’, our church’s communion service. Eating bread and drinking wine was part of our Christian tradition, something we did as a church family each week. It’s still an important part of my faith today.

Come to God’s table, for all is prepared,
the bread that we offer is broken and shared,
Christ’s presence among us is food for the soul,
reviving, renewing, and making us whole.

Old Testament Jews received manna, bread from heaven, a sign of God’s care and provision. Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two fish – God again provides. Jesus then says, ‘I am the Bread of Life’ – with me you won’t be hungry. I am that provision, that will be broken…

Today bread – a picture of Jesus’ human, living body – will be broken and shared in Christian churches throughout the world… ‘reviving, renewing and making us whole.’

Come to God’s table, and drink of the wine,
the blood of the Saviour, in mystery divine,
the cup of salvation both priceless and free,
transforming God’s people to all we can be.

We remember Jesus’ first miracle – where he turned water into wine at a wedding celebration. In his tradition blood represented sacrifice, made to bring forgiveness. Jesus, in his last supper invites his followers to drink wine.

Today I shall be one of his followers, linking his joyful wine with his sacrificial blood, in ‘mystery divine’

Come to God’s table, we come as we are,
we bring all the burdens we’ve carried so far,
in body, in spirit, in soul, mind and heart,
to feed on the grace only God can impart.

Today I shall come… I shall remember that it’s special because it’s God’s table. It’s not complicated theology for the deeply spiritual… It’s for ordinary people like me.

I shall come as I am with the complex mixture that’s me – jaded, needy, imperfect, burdened… joyful, optimistic, healthy, hopeful… body, spirit, soul, mind, heart… I discover God’s grace. And that’s enough.

Come to God’s table! then go in God’s grace
to hold all the earth in a heavenly embrace,
sent out in the Spirit to tend and to care
in thought, word and action, our life is our prayer. 

I come to God’s table that I may go from it. At God’s table I remember, I share, I experience. Having received God’s grace I shall leave with it, commissioned and empowered to share it with others, with all I meet, in my attitudes, conversations and actions.