“Given for You”
The other momentous phrase that Jesus repeated at the Last Supper is the phrase
“for you.” In the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—and in Paul’s too (1
Corinthians 11:24ff.)—Jesus says, my body “given for you,” “broken for you,”
and my blood “poured out for you.” Anyone who has ever enjoyed lovemaking
knows that the thrill comes not just from the physical sensation but from the
other person’s desire to be specifically with you, to be naked for you, to delight
in you, to pleasure you. You always want to say, “But why me?” And you hope
the other says, “Because I love you!” It is the ultimate and very specific I-Thou
experience of Martin Buber.
I was also told by a young woman on staff at our center that she believes
women’s menstrual cycles have given women, in particular, an experiential and
cellular understanding of this experience. Because they shed blood monthly for
the sake of life, and also give blood and water at birth, just as Jesus did on the
cross (John 19:34). Of course! This “water and blood” had always struck me as
strange symbolism. But maybe not for a woman, who knows the price of birth.
How daring and shocking it was for Jesus to turn the whole tradition of impure
blood on its heels and make blood holy—and even a point of contact with the
divine! This deserves a whole book of commentary, and is supposed to be a
stun-gun experience, which all true sacraments should be.
In the same way, mutual desiring is the intended impact of the Eucharist.
We know that Jesus loved to refer to himself as the “bridegroom” (John 3:29,
Matthew 9:15), and one of his first recorded acts of ministry was whooping it up
at a wedding feast (John 2:1), creating 150 gallons of wine out of water toward
the end of the party! (What do Baptists do with that?) We also know that the
very erotic Song of Songs somehow made its way into the Bible, and its images
of union have been precious to mystics from the earliest centuries. Yet much of
later Christianity has been rather prudish and ashamed of the human body,
which God took on so happily through Jesus, and then gave away to us so freely
in the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is an encounter of the heart, knowing Presence through our
own offered presence. In the Eucharist, we move beyond mere words or
rational thought and go to that place where we don’t talk about the Mystery