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Today’s text
Reflection
Strip it down to its essentials and this is all the Lord’s
Supper is: simple sharing of a bread and cup through which heaven is present on
earth as empty hands are filled and all are welcome in a circle of blessing and
belonging.
The meal makes it happen, not the music or the robes or the
fancy words spoken over the bread and wine, not these but the simple gathering
around a table where strangers and people to busy to notice each other become
brothers and sisters joined into the Christ presence anyone of them can feel if
they give it half a chance.
I prefer the simplest gatherings best. Easter blow-out
services are wonderful, but the intimacy of a few people gathered around a
table with wine and bread seems best to me, more natural to what we are doing.
Forty or so confirmation students and their teachers gather
in the sanctuary around the table, the cup and a loaf at the center. I trip
over myself telling them how special they are, how the Spirit of the Living One
in-dwells them. All are quiet. Some listen
Then the words are said, “In the night Jesus was betrayed,
he met with his friends. He wanted to be with them, just like we are are now …
.”
The bread and cup are lifted, then shared. “The body of
Christ for you… . The blood of Christ
for you.”
Empty hands are filled. Wounded hearts are touched. Students
from half a dozen junior high schools become one circle of sharing where no one
is any better or worse, richer or poorer, smarter or slower than anyone else.
They are alike, joined by their need and emptiness in one
great sharing in the life of Christ who gives himself that they might have this
moment of simple knowing, feeling the generosity and hunger of God to bless
them and fill every empty place.
No one need tell them Christ is present. They know. And so
do I. Their silence tells me. They feel it in this circle of receiving and
blessing created by bread and wine.
Pr. David L. Miller
