Daniel, our son and social media guru, asked me what I thought about writing homilies or sermons to post for Sunday mornings about “encouraging people to give a s**t.” 😊 Mike and I have often said that if we ever started a church we would name it The Assembly of PIGS…People Into Giving a S**t…we figured that the name itself would let people know where we stand. So, we are going to try this…Welcome to the Assembly of PIGS…We do not care what you believe or don’t believe, we only care that you care for others.
Today is the celebration of Worldwide Communion in many Christian denominations. It is designed to be a way to connect Christians globally in an act of eating bread and drinking wine. To make us one with each other by remembering Jesus’ actions.
Jesus was Jewish. He taught in the temple. His disciples and followers were Jewish. He taught using the Torah as a way to reach those of his belief and yet, on this worldwide communion day when Christians re-enact the Last Supper, Jewish people will not be included.
As Christians we keep shutting out others. We say who will and who will not be accepted in the grace of the Divine mistakenly thinking that we have THE path to the One God through Jesus Christ.
Mike and I attended a Presbyterian Peace Conference more than 30 years ago. It was on peace in the Middle East…still a topic needing to be addressed. During the week they had a Christian pastor, a rabbi, and an imam teaching us about all the ins and outs of the blockades to peace within the Middle East.
On the closing night, theologian Walter Wink spoke about how to achieve peace in the Middle East. His common idea was that basically, all three faiths needed to check all their bad beliefs at the door of dialogue. Following his talk, a conference leader said that we were now moving into worship and worship included communion. She said that “all baptized Christians were welcomed to the Lord’s Table”.
Walter Wink from the floor of the auditorium shouted, “If all are not welcomed, then it is NOT the Lord’s Table.”
The elements of communion in the protestant faith are different from The Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants believe that the bread and wine represent Jesus’s body broken and blood shed for the world. Catholics believe that the bread becomes Christ’s body and the wine becomes Christ’s blood and as a result that communion is closed to non-Catholics.
Yet, here in Nicaragua I, a non-Catholic, have been welcomed to The Mass. The first time I did, I was part of a Witness for Peace delegation that included Jewish women, agnostics, and a score of non-Catholics during the Contra War in 1985. We shared the bread and wine with a hundred or so Nicaraguan war refugees and I felt a love and a bond with those poor refugees that I had not felt before I took the Mass with them.
At the Passover dinner, Jesus took bread…a common food. A life-giving food made from grain grown in fields that need rain, sun, sweat, and labor…a food baked in ovens fueled by wood grown in green forests and chopped by calloused hands. He broke it and shared it with his followers.
After the supper he took wine…a common drink. Wine that gladdens our hearts. Wine, that was cleaner than water because it has no parasites or bacteria. Wine that is made from grapes…carefully tilled and tended, smashed, filtered, and fermented. He took the cup and shared it with his friends.
These were the basics: bread and wine. Just like body and blood are basics. We share the basics on this day with all. We want everyone to have enough to eat and drink especially clean water. We want to understand that we too are called - if need be - to have our own bodies broken and bloodied for the salvation of others as Jesus did.
As we eat the bread and drink the wine, we remember that we do this act indeed with Christians worldwide, but let us also as we eat the bread and wine throw open our arms and hearts and yes! The Table. The Banquet. to all of the Divine’s children…Jewish people, Islamic people, Hindi people, Buddhist people, theists of all kinds and atheists of all kinds.
Communion is basic. Sharing is basic. We are ONE WORLD. We are ONE FAMILY. We give. We receive. We love. We work together. Today and all days.
May it be so.
-Kathleen
