The Body of Christ

At my church, we have to get out of our seats for communion. I walk up the aisle and wait in line, Matt behind me with his hands on my shoulders. When it’s my turn, I approach a server. He or she stands behind a basket of bread and holds two goblets, one containing juice and the other wine.

Because I’ve been going to this church for a while, the server and I often know each other. So Eddy or Jessica or Amanda or Bill says my name.

A few weeks ago, my pastor’s wife Brandy served me. I took a bit of bread, and she said, “The body of Christ, broken for you, Melissa.” And then I dipped it into the juice goblet, and she closed her eyes and said, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

Sometimes, just before communion, I wonder—a little irritated—why we don’t pass trays of crackers and tiny cups of juice like normal churches do, why I have to get up and walk and make eye contact and receive and do all of my chewing and swallowing on the move. I’d spotted Brandy up there, ready to offer communion to a long line of people and thought, “Great. My pastor’s wife. She’ll see me indecisively hover over the bread basket, all worried I’m going to choose the piece of bread that’s stuck to another piece of bread. I’ll do my usual eyeballing of the juice and wine, sure I’m going to choose the wrong one. Maybe I’ll even drip some juice on the carpet right there in front of her. That’d be special.”

She said, “The body of Christ, broken for you, Melissa.” And, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

I forgot Brandy, just like I always forget Jessica and Bill and Amanda. Jesus rushed in and smiled at my mess, just like He always does, except He never seems to notice it. There’s only love. So I started to cry a little, like I always do when I come to His table. I do this, I think, because I am surprised that I feel so clean and free. That the only one dragging around guilt and shame in this relationship is me.

I wish I didn’t have to get out of my seat. Make eye contact. Touch hands. Chew and swallow right there in front of God and everybody. Deep down, I’m afraid that this time—this time—there will be no love. That I’ll walk away from the table feeling as much a mess as I did when I approached it.

---

When I was sick and bald, we didn’t go to church often. Every time I came into contact with fellow humans in an indoor setting, I spiked a fever, and my oncologist halted treatment. This got old for all of us, so I stopped leaving our home, even for church.

I missed church, though. I missed a lot of things, but church was one of the biggest. So on the Sundays when walking from the bed to the couch wasn’t completely draining, Matt set up my laptop on our little kitchen counter and dialed into a worship service.  We sat on the bar stools and sang along with the worship songs, and we listened to the sermon. Honestly, I found this seventy-five minutes terribly irritating. I squirmed a lot in my seat. I put the kettle on to make more tea. I scratched at my legs and found fault where I could.

Except for the Sundays we had communion. Then I jumped into action. I poured the juice into little glass tumblers and set the two halves of a slice of bread on a plate. Matt and I served each other. “The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

My crabby, anxious heart felt such peace.

---

This Holy Week has not felt so holy to me. We missed Palm Sunday service because we were taking care of our little grand-girls. Last night, I had a class, so Maundy Thursday service wasn’t possible, either.

I feel like I’m entering Easter ill prepared.

This is the Holy Week of my faith. This is the week when the worst of the news turns into the best of the news, when all that seemed forever lost is forever found. And I haven’t sat in a worship service with my fellow Jesus-followers in two solid weeks. I get to show up Sunday and receive this news once again without having done a thing to get ready.

Yes. That’s exactly how this works.

The last couple of nights, I’ve opened the Book of Common Prayer just before I go to sleep. I’m new to liturgical traditions, so finding the right pages for the Collects and Proper Liturgies has been a challenge. I’m pretty sure I’m completely gumming this up, but something in me insists on trying. If I can’t sit in a pew, I’ll at least whisper the words in my bed as my man snores gently next to me.

… on the night before he suffered …

… after he had supped with his disciples …

I give you a new commandment …

By this shall the world know …

I’ll do this again tonight, Good Friday, and tomorrow night, Holy Saturday. I’ll offer up my prayers, not on my knees in the quiet, but in the hum of walking my dog and boiling pasta and folding t-shirts. I’ll have breakfast with a dear friend, and I will ride bikes with Matt, and in the lulls of conversation and the drives to and from, I will ponder His broken body and the bread and the wine.

What I am beginning to see is the holiness in the outside of church, just as surely as the inside. Jesus didn’t prepare his disciples for his resurrection at the Temple. No, he prepared them while eating with them. And then he washed their feet.

And before that, he taught them in wheat fields and at weddings, walking from here to there, fishing, kneeling in gardens, sitting around a fire.

The table, this blessed, holy, mysterious table. I come to it in church. I come to it at a little kitchen countertop in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I come to it in liturgies whispered next to a sleeping man.

“The body of Christ, broken for you, Melissa. The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

Some faith traditions hold that the bread and wine mysteriously become the body of Christ at the moment we partake. Others view the communion act as symbolic, a tangible reminder of an intangible miracle.

I could go both ways.

What snags my heart is this: The table is here, right here. It is cleanliness and light. It is in all the days, all the joys, all the sorrows, all of the mundane, all of the worst news, and all of the best.

And that Jesus knew I’d need the walking, the tearing, the dipping, the chewing, and the swallowing. When he said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he knew I’d feel like a mess, over and over again, and he knew I’d forget that I’m not. So he said, “Do this,” and I have to tell you, I never feel like it, I never want to walk and tear and dip and chew, but every time—every single time—I feel clean and new and humbled and whole.

That is the miracle of the table. It is inside. It is outside. It is forever love. It is mine.