Mark 14:22-24
While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.” (New Revised Standard Version)
On this Holy Thursday, we find ourselves separated by an unseen but deadly force known as the COVID-19 virus. We are not able to gather together to worship or to share Holy Communion as we remember the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. And I find myself wondering, what do we do when we have to miss Holy Communion? How do we really participate in this worship via website without the bread and vine? Is there something more to it than that?
Holy Communion has meant different things to me over the course of my life. I grew up Southern Baptist, and we didn’t have sacraments in the Baptist church (means of grace). We received Communion as an ordinance, a commemoration of the Last Supper. The bread and cups were passed through the congregation, as we served one another, an enactment of the priesthood of believers. Only baptized believers were permitted to receive the elements of Communion, so it was a big deal when I was able to take Communion for the first time after I was baptized at the age of 10.
When I became a United Methodist, I came to understand Communion as a sacrament, an act through which the grace of God is actually extended. John Wesley believed that it was possible to be saved simply through taking Communion; as a result, everyone present is welcome to participate, including children. The bread and cup are served by the pastor and lay leaders to people who come forward to receive them.
However I have participated in Communion, I have always understood it as an important community ritual, a means through which the Body of Christ is joined together in a special way. It is a remembering of the sacrifice of Jesus for each one of us, as he went to his death on the cross to pay for our sins. And it is especially important to celebrate Communion on Maundy Thursday.
This year things are different. This year we can’t meet together to celebrate Communion. And because we understand it to be a ritual that should take place when believers are physically present with each other, we are not advocating any kind of online communion or take-out communion (unlike some other denominations). I understand and support that decision for theological reasons. But I struggle with it for pastoral reasons. I know how important Holy Communion is to each of you and to me.
Then I read something that touched my heart and my spirit in a powerful way. It was written by Julie Peeples in a lectionary commentary that I recently added to my library. It had to do with how communion can happen in unusual ways and places. I’d like to share it with you here:
Communion can happen in all sorts of places; no white linens are required. Anxious family members and strangers crowding in a small hospital waiting room pass around the cookies someone brought; a thermos or two of coffee appears. A place of stressful waiting becomes sacred space. A table is set up under a city bridge where men and women dealing with homelessness often camp out. Sandwiches and lemonade take the place of white bread and grape juice as volunteers and guests break bread together.
Years ago, while traveling with my six-year-old daughter in Guatemala for a non-profit organization, we gathered at a local restaurant with a half dozen other staffers. Toward the end of our meal, a young boy about my daughter’s age appeared by her side and asked in Spanish if he could have her leftovers. We boxed up all that we could, and watched as he took the food outside, sat on a curb, and broke the uneaten sandwich into three portions, sharing with two other children. I have never witnessed a more powerful, more holy communion, and my daughter has never forgotten the experience.
We may not be together this year for Maundy Thursday to take Communion together. And we will not be breaking bread or taking the cup at home. But we can still be in communion with each other and with Jesus Christ when we remember the events of that Last Supper together. We can still be bound together as the Body of Christ when we read his words, “Take this bread; drink this cup,” even when we cannot take the bread or drink the cup. Communion is more than the physical elements of bread and juice. It is truly a means of grace; but then, grace is available without the tangible elements. Just pray and ask God for that grace, and it is yours. And it is ours. We are the recipients of God’s grace individually and together.
We will be back together soon. We will worship in our sanctuary. We will receive the elements of Holy Communion. But we will be no more close together then than we are now, when we remember how our faith in Jesus Christ makes us one. So hang in there! Things will get better. We will get through this. And it will make being together in person all the more precious when we have gone through this time apart.
