“More than Mel Gibson’s gory movie The Passion, more than a frothy message, greater than skillfully played organ music. I was gobsmacked right there on my sofa.”
If you are Catholic, it’s called Holy Eucharist; the majority of Protestants refer to it as Communion. Either way, this Christian ritual is most often practised within the walls of a church. But what happens when you transport this ceremonial act from outside the pews, ornate walls, and soft background music, and bring it into your living room during a time of fasting? I can tell you from personal experience, and from the many testimonies I have received—something amazing happens.
It was my last day of a weeklong fast and I was deeply cocooned into the fasting state. I had not moved from my sofa all day, other than to make juice or look out the window at the cold and snowy landscape. On the coffee table was my bible open to Isaiah, and my laptop, so I could record the waves of clarity that were crashing onto the shoreline of my consciousness. I have said this many times before, if you think God is no longer talking, like He somehow contracted laryngitis after the Bible was completed, you are wrong. The Spirit is alive and well—and speaks. What has happened is we now live in a culture where the quality of a day is measured by how much you cram into it. With all the noise and distraction, it’s not that the Spirit is no longer speaking; we simply do not have the ears to hear.
“He that has ears let him hear,” Jesus said this over and over to a culture far less busy than we are. A culture that didn’t have IPhones and earbuds. So can you imagine how hard it is for the Spirit to cut through our lives today?
On this day, I turned off my cell phone, TV, and radio. I was deep into a fasting state. And sure enough, that still small voice. My grape juice and a cracker on the coffee table, I started to read:
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53: 4-5
I know, you have read this a million times. So have I. But in this quiet state, the reality hit me like a ton of bricks. More than Mel Gibson’s gory movie “The Passion”, more than a frothy message, greater than the best played organ music. I was gobsmacked right there on my sofa. Overwhelmed. Wreaked at the cost. When I broke that cracker in half, it was His body, His flesh broken for me. I was the only person in the room. It was personal. Me—my sin—and Jesus’ broken body. When I put the cracker in my mouth I could hear Jesus say, “This is my body, broken for you.” So overwhelmed with emotion, I could barely swallow.
And then the cup of grape juice. Again, “this is my blood Ron, shed for you.” It was too much. I wanted it to stop, trying to catch my breath between sobs. Why? Why would You do this? It makes no sense. As I type the answer it sounds so cliché, but in that moment it was the farthest from cliché that anything could ever be. “Because I love you.”
It is that kind of revelation that will redefine your identity forever. If you are anything like me, you identify yourself by the sum total of a lifetime of failures. Two broken marriages. A list of people I have hurt. Years wasted on selfish indulgence. But there was none of that in this moment. Just a love so overwhelming and cleansing, that all of my failures are washed away.
If you think the Spirit no longer speaks, then fast. Spend time alone, and have the courage to be still. If communion has been reduced to ritual, then fast, and seclude yourself to the sanctuary of your own home and break bread with Jesus. You will never be the same again.