I love communion. It is a mysterious ritual that always lives a bit beyond our human understanding. I love bread. I married a man who makes bread from scratch– baguettes, pizza dough, bagels and loaves of cracked wheat fill our kitchen with flour and the smell of goodness rising. I love sharing meals with people, the special thing that happens when we take the time to break bread together. When I take communion, I am often filled with memories of all the places around the world where I have shared in the meal. Partaking helps me feel connected to people in different times and places who were searching for the same thing– to be fed. I remember work over the years in shelters and kitchens where redistributing good food brings dignity to us and neighbor. I remember the loaves and fishes story- Jesus using ordinary elements to do extraordinary things. Communion is visible and tangible, and when it is done well, the welcoming and sustaining nature can be a true glimpse of the kingdom.
I just finished Take This Bread by Sara Miles. It is a stunning spiritual memoir about food and bodies and communion. Raised atheist, Sara unexpectedly stumbles into St. Gregory’s church to receive communion. “I’d understood the world first, and best, by putting it in my mouth.” She was hungry, she was welcomed and she kept coming back for more. Communion became, for her, opening food pantries at the church and all around the neighborhood. Jesus told his followers, while gazing at the hungry crowd, to feed them. They did, and so do we. “Jesus invited notorious wrongdoers to his table, airily discarded all the religious rules of the day, and fed whoever showed up, by the thousands. In the end, he was murdered for eating with the wrong people…. I believe this God rose from the dead to have breakfast with his friends.”
Last Sunday, I helped distribute communion to a full house at our church. Fifty youth who I had worked with over the last year were getting confirmed, so we had family and friends coming in from all over to share in the worship. Some people, not used to dipping bread into wine or having a grape juice compartment as an option in the chalice or maybe taking communion at all, whispered questions about how to proceed. I helped them move through as comfortably as possible. Partaking in ritual can take courage. One woman who asked, “Which side do I use?” I answered, “Either. This is wine, this is grape juice, but it all works.” I smiled. God’s saving love is bigger than the rules, our choices, and our actions.
“This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.”
“This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.”
“This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.”
Over and over again, I looked each person in the eye and repeated the audacious claim. It is one thing to receive communion and hear the words once. It’s another to be part of the blessing for everyone who shows up. The words became meditative as I worked to not go through the motions, but engage with each person. About half way through serving the wine, I got a little emotional. The particularity of it all– shed for you, and for you, and for you– within the community of it all set in. We are all hungry, we were all welcomed, we are all saved. Young and old, committed to church and not, we all came forward and received the same gift. Communion is powerful.
I’m with Sara: “There’s a hunger beyond food that’s expressed in food,” she writes, “and that’s why feeding is always kind of a miracle.”
Keeping Faith Today 