A Catholic friend was once
telling me about his view of the sacrament of communion, the preciousness of
the elements, and the casualness that he experiences in regard to communion
(too casual he said) in our church’s walls.
He made some good points, one in
particular that has made me pause and be more thankful every time I walk to the
front to partake of the bread and drink.
Yesterday, however, I was
thinking about communion again and began to consider this aspect of our
practice: There is someone in our
church (I don’t even know who takes care of it) who gets in a car and drives to
Kroger or Geyer’s or maybe Sam’s Club and picks up the bread and drink that we
use for communion. He or she walks
through the aisles of the store, puts the items in the cart, and gets in a line
to check out. Maybe she even buys
her weekly groceries at the same time.
Nevertheless, it is all in the context of a normal day.
To envision holy elements being
right there in every grocery store in the midst of folks stopping in to get a
few items for dinner, or an elderly, limited-income couple placing carefully
selected sale items into their basket, or moms scurrying in to pick up an extra
gallon of milk and a jar of peanut butter does my heart good. I suppose that “buying Jesus’ body and
blood” at Kroger could be seen as a negative, but I suddenly became thankful for
it. I like the idea of Him so very
present in the normal stuff of life, “Jesus” nestled in among the lettuce, the
seasonings, the box of spaghetti noodles and sauce that will be prepared and
served to the family this week.
Jesus, not a distant God who is
far above our daily grind, but a God who wants us to see His presence in life
and who came to widen and brighten all of it. Of course, it’s also good for me to keep in mind the
sacredness that my Catholic friend’s practice embraces, for Jesus’ body and
blood are surely holy elements. I
guess that’s the point…a holy God coming to earth to offer Himself into the
everyday life for the redemption of it all.
Someone in our church gets in
the grocery line and pays for “Jesus.”
And it can only happen because He paid for us first.
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