07.05 | Taken. Blessed. Broken. Given.
Mark 14:1-31
‘And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”’
Mark 14:22
Taken. Blessed. Broken. Given.
Henri Nouwen, among the greatest spiritual writers of the 20th Century, wrote of these words:
“…these four words have become the most important words of my life. They are the most personal as well as the most universal words. They express the most spiritual as well as the most secular truth. They speak about the most divine as well as the most human behavior. They reach high as well as low, embrace God as well as all people. …through them, I have come into touch with the ways of becoming the Beloved of God.”1
Taken. Blessed. Broken. Given.
We join Jesus as He breaks bread with His apprentices on the night before He dies. This meal has been at the centre of Christian worship through the ages. The movements of this table give shape to our whole lives.
Taken. Chosen. Selected. Lifted up from the place we were because the God of all love saw fit to look at your life and include it as a part of His masterplan of salvation for the nations. To be taken is to be picked out, noticed, individually included in a chosen people. To be taken is to join Jesus as God’s chosen and beloved, valuable and essential to the satisfaction of His heart.
Blessed. Declared good. Imbibed with the anointed affirmation of the Father. Granted a new story of belonging and truth and goodness and life. To be blessed is to have our old life of sin and shame and failure wiped away, instead being renamed as a child of the one who blesses and has called you blessed. To be blessed is to join Jesus as God’s supremely blessed one — that His story reforms our own story as we are caught up into the love and affirmation that the Father poured onto His life.
Broken. Into the very realities of our pain and suffering, comes the unfolding grace of God. That we are so often more fruitful in our places of weakness, and that hope of a different quality so often most truly grows in our places of pain. To be broken is to join with Jesus, whose greatest moment of impact was on a cross and whose greatest act of worship was in unswerving obedience.
Given. Offered back. A messenger and missionary to the hurting world around us. The goodness of God in your life was not and never will be simply for your own benefit; it is a measure of goodness that the Father is working out in you that it may in turn be given away to hurting lives all around you.
Four words.
Some time before this, Mark used these four words in another story.
When Jesus fed the five thousand, he took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it.2
At the Communion table, we find out about the ministry and heart of our Lord. But we are also find, in the stunning mystery of our own participation at this table, that these four words also define and shape and send us. It is the table where multitudes find nourishment, and apprentices become apostles, and the adoration of wayward lives is honoured, and a leper becomes the host of God Himself.
This is His story.
And it is your story too.
Four words.
In them may we journey deeper today into living as the Beloved of God.
Reflect:
Taken. Blessed. Broken. Given.
Run through these words in your heart, realigning your understanding of your value and life and today’s purpose under their truths.
Pray:
Father,
You have taken me:
Picked me out;
Made me fearfully and wonderfully;
And included me in your family.
What wonder is this!
Father,
You have blessed me:
Declaring upon my life a new word and a new story;
Obliterating the narratives of shame and smallness;
And reorienting me under the wonder of being known as
One you call blessed.
What joy is this!
Father,
You invade my brokenness:
Turning my weakness to a platform for your power;
And my tears as an avenue for your compassion;
And my faithfulness as a pathway into your relentless love.
What beauty is this.
Father,
You have given me,
And I have given myself:
That in me your goodness and life
May extend to the pains of those around me,
In mighty and tiny ways;
That my life be given to your cause,
And the knowledge of your heart.
What an honour is this.
Following Jesus, thus I go;
Taken; Blessed; Broken; Given.
In His Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
1 Samuel 25-26 | Proverbs 14:10-14
Henri Nouwen: Life of the Beloved, p.42. Another beautiful reflection on three of these words is Glenn Packiam’s Blessed Broken Given
Mark 6:41