The Front Page

          We’ve decided to re-name the front page of the newsletter! Since different people write the front page article from month to month, we summoned all of our creative energies and came up with the title…The Front Page!  I know, it’s hard to believe we’re this imaginative this early in the summer! 

          Recently someone was telling me about taking communion on Sunday during worship.  They said that the person distributing the bread (and it was real bread, not wafers) gave out enormous pieces of the body of Christ.  They were so big that people had to spend a bit of time chewing before they could swallow and before they could drink from the chalice. 

          It was a great story and he was just sharing a random occurrence, but if you think about it, when we receive the body of Christ, we ought to have to “chew on it” for awhile.  Ok, not really chew on it, but we ought to have to think about it.  What does it mean that we are receiving the body of Christ, given for us? 

          Here’s what I think it doesn’t mean.  It doesn’t mean that we are now magically going to be doing everything just right, making no mistakes, doing nothing wrong.  That’s why the early church shared the Lord’s supper every time they gathered, because they knew they needed to be fed over and over and over.  It doesn’t mean that we will have all the knowledge and faith we will ever need either.  That would be like eating a meal and thinking that we’d never be hungry again.  It doesn’t mean we’ll have all the answers either.  Our journey in faith is an ongoing one and the learning doesn’t ever stop!  It doesn’t mean that we’ll never doubt.  Someone famous in theological circles (Frederick Buechner) said that doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.  It keeps us squirming and active. 

          When we receive the Body of Christ, here is what I hope we’ll “chew on”.  That through nothing we’ve ever done or will do, through no achievement, no accomplishment, no deed or test,  Jesus comes to us in the bread and in the wine and with his body and blood poured out for us, in the most generous act ever, saves us from ourselves.  Jesus saves us from our sin and from all the ways we’ve messed things up in the past and all the ways we’ll do it in the future. 

          That seems too much for a small wafer.  Give me a generous, heaping, poured out portion of love, grace, and mercy any day! 

                                                          In ministry with you,

                                                          Pastor Julie+