When Jesus wanted the disciples to have a way of remembering him, that evening of the Last Supper, Jesus took bread. I think there is no coincidence about that. He could have said something different than he did, like, "when you see the beauty of the sunset, remember the times we have had together," or "when you see the rainbow and think of the old covenant, think of the new covenant too". But he didn't say those things -- or if he did, nobody wrote them down or remembered them! What he did, he took bread.

Jesus of Nazareth had a gift. His mind had a way of associating things, of drawing pictures. He had a way of taking the most complex and profound ideas and expressing them in simple terms. His parables speak of common people in earthy settings. His speech is full of such references as salt of the earth, faith like a mustard seed, the widow's mite.

Of all the times that he had broken bread with the disciples, I think it was this particular night that as he broke bread and poured wine, he saw another of his associations that attached profound ideas to simple things. "How like my own life," I can imagine him thinking, as his mind raced ahead to the certain arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Taken, blessed, broken, and shared. "And how like everything I've been trying to say."

I find that those four words have stuck in my mind. Taken, blessed, broken, shared. What an ordinary set of actions when we are referring to the bread. How profoundly they summarize the whole life of Christ. How well they summarize the shape of our worship. And what good news they can be for our lives!

"Taken" is the first action.

On its way to nourish us, bread is taken. It sits on the shelf at the supermarket or our pantry and then it is taken. The bread does not decide when it will be taken or by whom. The bread has no control whatsoever over being taken, so for the bread, being taken is an experience of something happening over which there is no control. It just happens.

On his way to nourish us, Jesus was taken. As a human baby he had no control over who his parents would be, when and where he was born, what he would be called. In all these things he was taken. He was named Jesus, meaning one who would save his people from their sins, but he didn't name himself. When he was named, Jesus was taken. He didn't control Herod or Herod's troops, so as his parents fled with him into Egypt, Jesus was taken.

For us, being taken is the experience of all the things in life that just happen. When we wake up on the morning we are taken into a world which we don't own, which we don't control. There may be the illusion of control -- this is the house I chose to live in, the person I chose to marry, the children I chose to have, the walls I chose to paint -- but that is an illusion. When I wake up in the morning, I am taken into a world where this house, this spouse, these children, these walls, already exist.

We generally don't like the experience of being taken, of not being in control. We use 'being taken' as a bad word -- like being taken for a ride, being taken advantage of. It is like being thrown into water and not being sure you can swim. Every single human being is confronted each day with being taken and everyone has to deal with it -- somehow.

"Blessed" is the second action.

When Jesus blessed bread, he didn't say, "O Bread, be blessed." Like all Jews, he said, "Blessed are you, O lord, who brings forth bread from the earth." When we bless our food, we say, "Thank you, God." To bless something is to put it in its proper relationship with God.

The secular world uses the word blessed in another way -- "he was blessed with good fortune," "she was blessed with everything she wanted," "they were blessed by being born in America." We confuse ourselves when we do that, because for the most part these are simply things that happen to us. They aren't blessings unless they have been put in their proper relationship to God.

Jesus, in the tradition of Israel's prophets, knew that God's reality was often the opposite of the world's impressions. Those who are blessed, he said, are those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who show mercy, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. What a reversal of the wisdom of the world, which assumes it is the rich, the beautiful, the powerful who are blessed.

For us, he has a similar reversal. Do you wish you had more control than a loaf of bread on the grocery store shelf? Then give control away.

Driving out in the country in the Bible Belt, you sometimes see large billboards that announce the message: "Get right with God." That message isn't subtle, and it isn't sophisticated, but it's not bad advice. Bless your life by giving control away and putting it in a right relationship with God, as we bless bread by blessing the One who brings it forth from the earth. By the time we left kindergarten we knew all the words we need to put ourselves right with God: Please. Thank you. Yes. I'm Sorry.

When we seek to hang on to control, we lose it; when we give control to God and act as stewards of all that God has given us, then we have all the control we need.

"Broken" is the third action. Conventional religion would prefer to stop with the first two actions. You wake up, things are terrible, you get right with God, things are wonderful. End of story. Biblical religion knows that life is more complicated than that.

Before it can be eaten, bread is broken.

Sometimes the experience of being broken in our lives is deliberate and the outcome understood, and joy is mixed with the discomfort and pain. When a woman decides to have a baby she takes her body--whose attractiveness the world tells her is supposed to be so terribly important--and lets it be broken in the new shape of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth.

Other times being broken is not our choice and the outcome is unknown. A crippling auto accident, a painful disease, a loss of job, a death. Our lives contain pain and tragedy. Not all of us will experience betrayal and death as the price of being taken and blessed --but by the time we've lived a couple or three decades, we've experienced pain and sadness.

Bread is broken. Israel was sent into exile. Christ was crucified. Justin, who wrote the second communion service of our series, was martyred. Thomas Cranmer, who wrote last week's service, was burnt at the stake. In our age, Mahatma Gandhi, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, have been assassinated.

Bread is broken. Broken is a Good Friday word.

"Shared" is the fourth action. The world is suspicious of sharing. The world's message is the bumper sticker that says, "The one who dies with the most toys wins." Jesus says: "if you want abundance: share." When St Augustine said, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you," he was addressing the God who shares himself continually. Part of the restlessness he was referring to is our restlessness which happens whenever we fail to share ourselves.

The purpose of the bread is to be shared. The purpose of Christ is to be shared, and the purpose of our lives to be shared.

In Luke's Gospel we hear of the two thieves crucified to Jesus' right and left. The first thief joins the crowd in taunting and mocking Christ. The other, thinking of someone else at the cost of transcending his own pain, tries to hush the first thief up, protesting Jesus' innocence. "Today," Jesus tells the second thief, "you shall be with me in Paradise."

Once Christ was crucified, then he could be a presence in our lives in a way that he could not have before. His life has been shared by all the people who have believed in him, all the people who have been influenced by him, all the people who have benefited from the lives of other Christians for the 2000 years which have followed. Gandhi, Kennedy, King--all have had a special influence in death that they otherwise might not have had.

More than 20 years ago, when I was an Army Chaplain, the word "broken" got attached to my first marriage. It was a very painful experience for me. To my surprise, however, the number of soldiers who stopped by my office to seek counsel or advice or talk over their problems rose dramatically. Apparently, they sensed that I might understand what they were going through in a way that apparently they didn't sense before. Out of the brokenness apparently came an opportunity to share.

One evening last year Fran and I spent an evening trying out new dance steps. It was probably not the best evening of our lives. I got to a point where I just couldn't get what the next steps were. That being the case, I froze on the dance floor, and ended up sitting out a big part of the evening.

"Taken, blessed, broken, shared" are the key steps to the dance of life, and we can find ourselves on the sidelines if we don't know the steps, leave some out, or get them out of sequence:

• "Controlling people" have been taken but not let themselves be blessed. We have all seen people who spend most of their energy trying to control their environment, and losing more and more in the process.
  
  
• "Self-pitiers" have been broken but not let themselves be shared. How often we see people whose lives are given up to feeling sorry for themselves, for continually seeking out sympathy, who are so wrapped up in their own pain that they are stuck in their brokenness, something they will stay stuck in until they allow themselves to share their lives with others.
  
  
• "Burn-out" comes from trying to share without having been blessed or broken. People in the helping professions often try to give without first having received; rushing out to do good without setting their own spiritual house in order, and quickly falling prey to burn-out and cynicism.

On the other hand, put the steps together in the proper order and we are connected to the basics of the universe. When these steps become the pattern for our lives, our lives are a dance and we are in step with the Lord of the Dance.

But do we dare to join the dance? Do we dare to step out onto the dance floor and step to these actions, each of which the world thinks is foolish, confident that the Lord of the Dance is with us? A young dominee (or minister) in Alan Paton's book of South Africa, "Too Late the Phalarope", said in a sermon:

Today's lessons are about bringing what was dead back to life. Ezekiel looks out at the remnants of Israel after their Babylonian captivity and wonders "Can these bones live?" In the Gospel, Jesus brings Lazarus back from death. The Christian Gospel is a Gospel of life.

At the Last Supper Jesus didn't propose elaborate theologies or eucharistic theories. He merely took bread, and blessed, and broke, and shared it. When you do this, he said, remember me. When you do this with your bread, do it with your lives, and my life will be part of you. If these bones would live, if these lives would dance, do this.

And so, as Christ commanded, Communion after Communion, we repeat those actions in remembrance of Christ: we take the bread from what has been offered, we bless it by giving thanks for it and for all God's activity in history, we break it, and then as we all approach the altar, we share it together. Four actions happened to the bread at the Last Supper. Four actions that represent Jesus' life. Four actions that form the shape of our Communion service. And four actions that represent Christ's message for our own lives.

There is something more than meets the eye about what we do in Communion. Taken, blessed, broken shared: The shape of worship. The dance of life.