'Common Ground' Song 17 ‘Bread is blessed and broken’
Words: John Bell & Graham Maule. Tune : John Bell © Wild Goose / Iona Community
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DWWRbL19FQ
Featured image: Phil’s broken chalice (see text: photo © Stephen Craven)
When I set out a plan for the year of singing through ‘Common Ground’ at three songs per week, I deliberately allocated the ‘communion’ songs to weekends. This is the first of them. It is a simple song of four verses in the Iona community’s Scottish Celtic style, presumably intended to be sung by a soloist or small group while others are receiving communion.
The last line of each verse is the same: ‘Christ the Lord’. ‘Take this and remember … Here is grace in essence … Meet a friend for ever … Here for those who want him… Christ the Lord’. The focus when we share Communion is Jesus Christ himself, present in the bread and wine (in whatever sense you choose to understand that concept of presence: there are different Christian traditions here).
The other central feature of the Communion service is the breaking and sharing of the bread, and pouring and sharing of the wine. We remember Christ’s body broken, the blood and water poured out of his wounds for us, which is why the wine is always mixed with a little water. This weekend, Linda and I have been to a teaching weekend at Scargill House where we met back in 2001 (which is why I did not write this post on Saturday). It was led by the current community leader, Revd Phil Stone, who retires later this year. He passed around, for us all to see and touch, one of his most meaningful possessions: a pottery chalice (communion cup), of little monetary value, but of sentimental value to him. On one occasion it got dropped and broken, and as an act of love another community member carefully glued it back together in the fashion of Japanese kintsugi. When viewed from a particular angle (see the photo at the top of this post), the pattern of cracks looks like a spreadeagled stick figure: maybe Jesus on the cross.
It is a reminder that one of the several understandings of what Jesus achieved on the cross was a restoration, a piecing back together, of broken individuals and a broken world. This is a work that he now continues through his disciples, members of the Church. This weekend we heard one moving story of two people present with us who, years ago when they first met, had a conversation over a cup of tea. One of them was so broken she had considered suicide: that conversation saved her life, and they have remained friends. Many other people will tell how the love of Christ, shown practically by Christians, or sometimes miraculously by Christ himself, has restored their brokenness.
May you know the presence of Christ in your life this week, and share in his restorative power wherever your life feels broken.
One of the ladies , mentioned above, stated “Scargill is a Healing place”. It was a meaningful, powerful message about these 2 women. Like the many encounters where Jesus brought healing and restoration, forgiveness, compassion, wholeness, reconciliation in to people’s lives. 1 act of kindness we can show to someone else makes a big big difference.