Empty Bowl
by Stuart Aasen
Well here we are. Lenten services have just ended and my wife and I have just helped serve communion. I love serving communion. But tonight was different. Where were the wafers? There are always enough wafers in the bowl to serve everyone and have left overs to give back to the pastors at the end. But tonight was different. We had bread. Big fluffy pieces of bread and we were given the chapel in which to serve. There are a lot of people in the chapel and this fluffy bread is taking up a lot more room in this bowl than my favorite little flat wafers. How are the pastors going to know when we are out? I can’t say, sorry I am out of “body to give for you”. There are too many people coming yet. Then I remembered the story of the Sermon on the Mount when thousands of people showed up to hear Jesus and when he asked his disciples to feed the people, they only had a few meager portions, they said “Lord we only have enough to feed ourselves, certainly not enough to feed all these people”. But Jesus knew there would be just enough and told them to bring the feast forward. And as we all know, all were fed and nothing was left. Well when my wife and I had fed everyone and turned to each other to offer our communion, we had two pieces remaining and an empty bowl to return. Thank you Jesus, I only needed to listen to you to know we had just enough.
During Lent 2011, we are encouraging the St. Philip the Deacon community to reflect on the Sacrament of Holy Communion — recalling early memories, describing memorable celebrations of Communion, or reflecting on how Communion informs daily life. This post is part of that series. We invite your reflections about Communion, as well. If you would like to submit something for this series, please send it to Pastor Cheryl Mathison at cmathison@spdlc.org.
No comments