Growing up evangelical, the tradition is that they fall on the first Sunday of every month. We're served the juice (never wine) in small individual glass or plastic cups, passed around by a select group of (almost always) men using special trays that go up and down each row of worshippers. Like the offering in reverse. Everybody takes a cup and, usually, holds it until everyone's been served. The bread, in small pieces, is distributed the same way. And we wait.
The pastor reads from the Bible, almost always 1 Corinthians 11, never from the gospel account for some reason.
We pray together and drink and eat together. Or at least at the same time.
Over the last few years I've had the chance to take communion in other types of churches, in slightly different ways. A common cup shared at the altar rail, a common cup that wafers are dipped into instead of being drunk from, standing in a circle and having the cup and bread
brought around to each person in turn.
But my favourite is the usual evangelical form.
Partly because it's familiar, because I don't have to decide whether or not to drink from the cup that everyone else is drinking from, maybe even because I don' t have to stand in line.
But mostly because I find space in the ritual to think. There's something about sitting still in a quiet room, holding that little cup of deep purple juice, seeing the light hit the darkness and make it shine just a little. Something about holding that piece of bread between my fingers, feeling the texture of it and seeing the tiny crumbs that fall off.
It's very introspective for me. Centering. Pushing the reset button on my perspective and waiting for it to all fall back into place.
Last week we visited a church I used to go to. It was communion Sunday.
The sermon was over. It had been the kind of thing that makes for interesting reading, but a dry sermon. The type of material that a good dramatist can make pop, but most preachers have a hard time bringing to life. So I was a bit restless.
The Elders began to hand out the elements of communion and the pianist played quietly, some lovely tunes. The congregation was silent, except for some rustling, waiting. Listening.
There was a picture projected at the front of the room. Kind of like a stained glass window. A simple silhouette of Jesus hanging on the cross. A yellow and orange sky behind him. Stark. Focussed.
I got thinking about it.
About the idea that what I held in my hand represented blood and body. Bleeding and brokenness. That he bled and was broken for us.
And I found myself thinking about the people at the Motel. About how, if anyone asked me, I'd tell them that I do what I can do there because it's what Jesus did for us.
That he came. Lived among us. Shared our lives, the good and the bad. Did what he could, taught what we could learn, to point us in the right direction. Loaned us his strength and health for the time when we have none of our own.
And that, in the end, he was broken and bled for us.
I was struck hard, that morning, by this question - If I'm a follower of Jesus, if I name myself after him and pursue a life that is shaped after his, does that mean I'm called to bleed and be broken for the ones I've been sent to?
Isn't that what the Bible means when it calls us to be a "living sacrifice"?
So I thought about bleeding and being broken.
It's easy for me to find ways in which I bleed for my friends. The ways my heart aches for the hurt, what I want for them, what I'd do for them if I could and if they wanted me to. Empathy, sympathy, time, mourning with those who mourn. Desiring so much on their behalf and grieving the way the wounded world has wounded them.
It's not so easy for me to see ways in which I've been broken. Actually wounded. Defeated. Weakened to the point of helplessness. The topography of my skin and soul irrevocably changed by scars and loss. Could my being broken actually serve anyone? Maybe. I don't know.
Maybe not.
Because I'm not him. Only he could be. Which is pretty much the point of the whole exercise.
That only he could come and do what he did. Be broken, so he could put everything back together.
I sat there holding that little cup of purple, and that little cube of white. Thinking about how much it must have hurt. And how much it does hurt.
And how much, how very much, it's worth it.
And how very very grateful I am to have been bled for, and to have the chance to bleed for someone else.
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