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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Bread in Hand

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At the death of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, the world of economics lost one of its most influential thinkers. He is perhaps best known for popularizing the saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” which is now a common English dictum.

Though consumer-trained eyes, we understand this phrase as Friedman intended: Anything billed “free of charge” still has a bill attached. It is both economic theory and lay opinion. Whatever goods and services are provided, someone must pay the cost. Thus, economically, we see that the world of business is first and foremost about profit and market share. And cynically, we suspect that every kind gesture or free gift has a hidden motive, cost, or expectation attached.

It was strange, then, to find myself thinking of “free lunches” as I was approaching the meal Christians call communion, the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, which comes from the Greek eucharistia, meaning thanksgiving. I approached the altar, hands outstretched to receive a broken piece of unleavened bread. Could my consumer mindset apply to this table as well? How much might this ‘free’ meal cost? Certainly the compulsion many feel to drudge up a sense of guilt at this table could be one sign of its costliness. But is this cost the host’s or a fee self-imposed? Inherent in his invitation to the table is the very freedom the Son came to offer: “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”(1)

Jesus spoke readily of the cost of the cross, but his is not a description of the kind of transaction consumer-hungry minds are quick to expect. The cost is his, even as he peculiarly invites the world to share in it. As the disciples gathered together in the upper room where they would participate in the last supper and the first communion, Jesus told them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”(2) He is both the Bread of life at the table and the one who paid the cost that it might nourish his table of guests. Our consumption at the table holds a great deal in which to participate.

Unfortunately, we are at times like the poet Alison Luterman who admits it is quite possible not to participate, not to see or consume or desire this gift of the connection between what feeds us and the hands who made it possible. She writes eloquently,

“Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones even bruise at too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten—every piece of fruit—had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone’s knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before?”(3)

Holding the bread of Christ in our hands, we are indeed faced with a costly meal. As Luke imparts, “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’”(4)

Stories of hunger and consumption pervade the world around us. The same theme pervades the gospel story, but in a manner that counters and transforms both our hunger and our ideas of what it means to consume. The consumer of Christ is not stockpiling one more product for personal use and fulfillment. Nor does he or she partake of a free service that requires a minimum purchase or a small commitment. The invitation to consume is neither selfish nor small: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Those who come to this table cannot consume with the same disconnectedness with which we consume countless meals and materials. We are ushered into a community, an interconnected life, the Body of Christ himself, and it leaves an entirely different imagination of the world in our grasp. The Christian makes the very countercultural claim that one can desire what one already has in hand. Desire does not have to assume an incessant longing for what we lack. Every broken piece of bread represents nothing less than all that we hold in Christ: One who gives himself freely, who gives everything away to present the hungry with an invitation to join him, to taste and see that God is good.

This free meal that Jesus presents overturns our lives as consumers, turning our hunger and desire inside-out. As Augustine imagines the voice on high saying: “I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you, like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me.”(5) Christ is unlike anything else we can consume or desire in this world. For all who are hungry, the Bread of Life, the gift of God, is in hand.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) John 6:37.

(2) Luke 22:15.

(3) Alison Luterman, “Every Piece of Fruit,” Ed. Alice Peck, Bread, Body, and Spirit: Finding the Sacred in Food (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Path Publishing, 2008), 15.

(4) Luke 22:19.

(5) Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 124 [Book VII, 16].

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A World of Glory

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As one who flies often, dying in an airplane crash has been one of my greatest fears. The horrifying descent of the Germanwings flight chronicled in the news recently, killing everyone including the one presumed responsible for the intentional downing of the plane, is a terror I cannot imagine. I cannot begin to fathom the sheer panic that must have reverberated as loudly in individual bodies as the pilot’s desperate pounding on the locked door of the cockpit during the last eight minutes of the passengers’ lives. This, to me, is a kind of terror that is unimaginable.

What were the terrors in the mind of the young co-pilot that would propel him to this hopeless end? What were the fears that haunted him? The deep depression that stalked him relentlessly throughout his young life must have pervaded and colored his view of himself, others, and the world. So marred was his view, that it would destroy his dream of being a pilot, and destroy all of the other dreamers he took down with him. What must he have thought as he turned the nose of the plane downward, or heard the screams of the passengers and crew just outside the cockpit door? No one will ever know, but in one way or another, an overwhelming terror subsumed him, as well.

I have as little understanding about the terrors involved in this tragedy as I do about my own compulsion to read article after article about this flight. Doing so only heightens my own fears and sorrow. Yet, I am compelled to do so—when any terrifying tragedy occurs—be it in the French Alps, at Garissa University, or in my own community. I cannot turn away from the stories of those who have experienced terror; those horrifying scenarios in our worst nightmares we hope will never see the light of day, until they do.

Even though we are bombarded with stories and images of terror every day, for most of us it is likely difficult to relate to terror of this magnitude. Yet, perhaps wanting to connect with these kinds of stories is a way in which we try to process our own terror. We can recall the terror of the dark at night. Some might remember the terror of a particular nightmare, or of being utterly lost in a strange place without a map or any sense of direction. Perhaps for some, terror is the experience of being alone, or the fear of a future without anyone in it. For others, terror is being with others who harm and abuse, ignore and neglect, or who berate and belittle. Whatever the experience that conjures our deepest fears, the commonality is the human experience of terror, as the Hebrew psalmist felt and gave voice to thousands of years ago:

My heart is in anguish within me,

the terrors of death have fallen upon me.

Fear and trembling come upon me,

and horror overwhelms me.

And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest”(1).

While it would be a mistake to claim for the Bible the same impulse that lies behind modern horror stories, there are large portions of the Bible filled with terror. Whether the forces of nature, personal or national enemies, or God, stories of fear and terror are abundant. The story of Cain’s murder of Abel, the story of the flood, the offering of Isaac as a sacrifice, and Joseph’s being seized by his brothers are just a few examples all found within the very first book of the Bible.

Biblical scholars note that “the psalms are filled with vivid pictures of terror-sometimes recalled, sometimes averted, sometimes projected as coming in the future. The lament psalms often paint a heightened picture of the threat that surrounds the speaker-threats that lead the speaker to claim that his ‘bones are shaking with terror’ and that his ‘soul also is struck with terror.’”(2)

In the New Testament, Jesus paints a picture of the coming destruction of Jerusalem with people fleeing to the mountains in terror, anguished pregnant women, rumors of military invasion, famines and earthquakes. And of course, the whole passion of Jesus is an extended scene of terror. Not only do we witness the victimization of an innocent person condemned, but we are also led through a series of terrifying scenes of bodily mutilation and pain, accompanied by severe psychological suffering. Yet it is against this backdrop of terror—both recorded in the pages of Scripture and in our contemporary experience—that we sing in my church every Sunday:

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts:

Heaven and earth are full of your glory

As if by means of protest, I sing these words against the terror that is too much with us. But more than protest, I sing them in the hope that God is there in the midst of terror. I admit that sometimes when I sing the whole world is full of God’s glory after reading about yet another tragedy, I am perplexed at the ways in which God’s glory shines. But the glory of Christ crucified is no less mysterious, no less difficult. Yet I affirm this beauty as both protest against the darkness of this world and as the very sustenance of hope in a seemingly hopeless world.

Christians, having just celebrated the resurrection of Jesus on Easter, surely place their hope in the God who brings life from what was dead. The good news of the gospel proclaims that even in the most terrifying events, God is at work even there, even then, even now. And even in this most difficult world of sorrow, there is a King of Grief, one who came near enough to sorrow in kinship, and lead us to glory. And thus, we sing continually:

Heaven and earth are full of your glory,

Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the highest.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) See Psalm 55:4-6.

(2) Leland Ryken, James Wilhoit, Tremper Longman, Colin Duriez, Douglas Penney,& D. G. Reid, The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Electronic ed., pp. 854–855.