The Final Step – Down

 

We have celebrated them all…all the great feasts: Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity…and now comes the capstone: Corpus Christi, or in English, The Body and Blood of Christ. It is the capstone, even though it is the final step – down. How so?

Take a wide view. We have a God who is driven by love to send its own deepest Word, its identity, into the human world to fix something that is broken. A relationship is broken. So, in the virgin’s womb he mends it. The Word creates a union between divinity and humanity that can never be broken again. Then he shows us what he intends to do with that hangover we call death…his and ours. After he brings us to life, he takes our very humanness home to the very throne of God and sends us his own Spirit to remind us what wonders he has done, to fill us with joy.

But bending way down to become one of us was not enough for this love. He cannot bear to leave us to struggle alone to respond to the Spirit. He found a way to take one more step – down. Yes, he bent way down to hide his majesty under the veil of our humble humanness. Yes, when he was silenced upon the cross, he made his many wounds become so many mouths to tell of his love. But he was not finished. One more step. He chose to bend down to become a thing. His veil this time is bread. He became our food…on hand, anytime, hidden...so as not to frighten even the tiniest child. So now it is our turn to bow down. For it is only in bending low that we can reach this Lover, who waits like a beggar for a meager return of love.

 Down into time-space; down into flesh; down into death-which-dies.

One more step:

Down into bread; it is finished.

You feed me with your risen Life.

Then it’s up from death to life, up from grave to glory, up with you into eternal life.

You would have it no other way.