Eucharist [reminds] us again to be in relationship. It's Christ over and over again reminding us I am the living bread.
But it goes beyond just remembering. Relationships are about more than just what we receive. I think the words from the first letters the Corinthians is a great reminder that the Eucharist isn't a spectator sport. We participate in the body of Christ when we break the bread. We participate in the blood of Christ when we drink from the cup. Living into a Eucharistic reality means participating in it. It means saying yes to that relationship again and again and again. It means trying to model the Eucharistic relationship that God offers us to everyone around us - the folks that we love, the folks that we are troubled by, the folks that we know, and the folks that we don't.
That the Eucharistic calls us to be in relationship is a challenge over and over again for us as believers and perhaps more importantly to us as a Church. At this time when we find ourselves so distant on this Bread of Life Sunday, how do we think about what it means to participate? To love those who seem unlovable. To go beyond the boundaries of our own understanding of who fits and who doesn't.
--Susan Haarman
Image source: The ostensibly unlovable Ebenezer Scrooge, still, A Christmas Carol (2009),
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