Take and Eat

A funny thing happened to me last week. I was in the middle of our Tuesday Church service getting ready to distribute communion when I noticed a piece of soft pretzel on the plate along with the thin wafers we use for communion. It wasn't on the plate before I started the service---really---and when I asked who put it there no one seemed to know. I didn't get that "I'm in trouble with the principal" kind of look; nor did anyone laugh. Rather, folks really didn't know how it got there, nor did anyone seem to think it was a particularly big deal.

So, after all these months of talking about how Jesus chose bread as a way to be present with us, I was the only one thinking it a bit odd that a piece of a Philadelphia soft pretzel appeared on the plate.

OK, it was strange.

I distributed communion, taking the pretzel off the plate and placing it on the altar. Quite a different picture from having grown up in the fifties in a tradition where I wasn't allowed to scrape the sticky wafer off the the roof of my mouth for fear of disrespecting Jesus. Back then, it was better to choke than have my fingers touch the body of Christ.

But decades later, even in the church of my childhood, communion is to be touched, cradled, and taken within...the reality of incarnation, the Word made flesh and living among us and in us.

When we first started celebrating communion together at Tuesday Church, communion was whatever bread I had in my house. Sometimes it was a stale Italian bread, sometimes leftover French, and sometimes it was even Nann. Jesus as bread, common to all of humankind, across the globe.

And last week, there was that Philadelphia pretzel. A very contextual theology.

What would Jesus look like if he came into The Welcome Church today?

I kind of think Jesus does come, every day, every where, and just to be sure I don't miss him...well, I'd better treat each one as if they were the Christ dwelling in our midst.
And somehow, we continue to be fed by the one who still invites us to "Take and eat..."

So wafer or tortilla, cracker or pretzel, I guess what really matters is that , the Word made flesh lives among us, and was given for us.

And so I say Amen!