The Table is Ready . . . Come and Be Fed
“In Gethsemane” and “Jesus Wept,” Elijah Mustillo, September and November 2022, Coloured pencil and graphite and paper, 12 x 12 cm
Jesus took the bread, blessed it,
and broke it and he said:
This is my body, broken for you.
Take, and eat, all of you.
And in the same way, he took the cup and blessed it, and said,
Take, and drink, all of you. When you eat of this bread and drink of this cup, remember my promise to always be with you.
But then, as Jesus prepared to pass the bread and the cup to those at the table, he stopped.
He looked around at those gathered. He put the bread and the cup down. And he said,
Actually, no. No more.
No more broken bodies.
No more bodies broken on the altars of racism and white supremacy. Instead, a bread that feeds and nourishes BIPOC bodies in their resistance, their strength, their fighting back. And a bread that feeds white bodies in their discomfort, their growth, their work of change.
No more bodies broken on the altars of transphobia. Instead, a bread that feeds and nourishes trans and non-binary bodies in their visibility, their courage, their claiming of space. And a bread that feeds cisgender bodies in their discomfort, their growth, their work of change.
No more bodies broken on the altars of ableism. Instead, a bread that feeds and nourishes disabled bodies in their justice-making, their powerful communities of care, their survival. And a bread that feeds temporarily abled bodies in their discomfort, their growth, their work of change.
No more bodies broken on the altars of capitalism. Instead, a bread that feeds and nourishes all bodies in their living, their thriving, their flourishing. And a bread that feeds those bodies that have too much in their discomfort, their growth, their work of change.
Jesus took the bread, blessed it, and broke it, and he shared it with all of them, saying,
No more broken bodies. No more.
And Jesus took the cup, blessed it, and shared it with all of them, saying,
Take, and drink, all of you. May this bread and cup nourish you, deeply. In your resistance, your claiming of space, your communities of care. In your discomfort and growth as you work towards change.
And he shared the bread and the cup with his community – and with ours today.
The table is ready . . . Come and be fed.
Kerr Mesner is a queer, trans minister and consultant living on Cayuga and Haudenosaunee land (upstate New York). He wrestles with and embraces his own discomfort in the work of change.
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