Luke 24:30,31 – Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him;
Today’s passage describes two of the disciples of the Lord who saw Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. They had Him come to rest and have supper with Him when they recognized Him when He broke the bread. Jesus had instituted the communion meal just a few days before this telling the disciples that this bread was His body and this wine was His blood. Just as the Son of God came cloaked in a human body today He is hidden away in the body and the blood that we receive when we gather together with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Before our eyes were blinded and even if we took the bread and the wine that’s all it was to us, crackers and grape juice. But now our eyes are opened and we see Him, we see the glory of God unveiled in the body and blood that we receive when we come together. Here is how Augustine describes this.
“And no one should doubt that his being recognized in the breaking of bread is the sacrament, which brings us together in recognizing him…..Remember, though, dearly beloved, how the Lord Jesus desired to be recognized in the breaking of bread, by those whose eyes had been kept till then from recognizing him. The faithful know what I’m talking about. They know Christ in the breaking of bread. It isn’t every loaf of bread, you see, but the one that receives Christ’s blessing and becomes the body of Christ. That’s where they recognized him. They were overjoyed and went straight to the others. They found whom they already knew. By telling what they had seen, they added to the gospel. It was all said, all done, all written down. And it has reached us.”
If you have eyes to see you clearly see Christ in the communion. We see Him as the body of Christ, we have become bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. We see Him in His blood that takes away all of our sin. We see Him as our healer as we remember His suffering and death. We see Him as the giver of life as we see His victory over death in His death. I have to say, “I see you Lord. I see your glory in the bread and in the wine. I see you every time I gather with your church, the body of Christ”.