So tonight at church we had the Lord’s Supper followed by a fellowship to get to know our new members. It was a great success. However, I was thisclose to not being able to participate in the Lord’s Supper, which would have been very conspicuous given that I’m married to the worship pastor.
Why, you ask, did I have such difficulty participating in so important a remembrance as the Lord’s Supper? Was I not in the right spiritual state of mind? Did I have some kind of sin standing in the way of my communion? No… it was the bread.
Bread? Yes, the bread.
I’m not necessarily a traditionalist. I try to respect the traditions of the past while at the same time being open to new things and ways of doing things. I don’t get all bent out of shape with the details of Church as long as the main points stay the same. As long as there is truth in the teaching, I could care less what order the service goes in, if I’m in a chair or a pew, if the Pastor is wearing jeans, or if the Doxology is sung at the end or not… you get the picture. But, don’t mess with the communion wafers. Let me explain…
Our pastor has a thing with the ‘community’ part of communion. He likes to ask someone in the church to make a loaf of unleavened bread, and have everyone take a piece of it. Good concept, and probably more true to the idea. BUT… this means that everyone is passing around the loaf of bread and taking a piece… through the whole congregation… the normal communion wafers are at least individual, and you just take one off the plate and pass it on. I just try not to think about everyone’s hands hovering over the plate as they pass… but for the most part, I get a wafer that no one else has touched.
The loaf method means that dozens of people are touching the bread… which we are then supposed to eat.
I would not classify myself as insane about germs… but I have a healthy awareness of cleanliness… I’ve already confessed my dislike of the whole handshake greeting during church, etc. I’m very diligent about hand washing, I don’t touch public toilets, etc.
So, to my horror, the Pastor pulls out the loaf tonight. I begin praying ‘please hand it to me first….’ He then proceeds to start passing it around on the opposite side of the room from where I’m sitting. This means that every single person in the room will touch the bread tonight before I do… every single one. This is my own personal communion hell… AND I’m sitting next to all of the youth guys… teenage boys who I KNOW for a fact aren’t as diligent about hand washing as I am…
I’m sitting there with what is probably a look of abject horror… and a very nice woman, a new member, catches my eye, and I know she knows my pain… she even came up to me later and patted me on the back in solidarity.
BUT… I accomplished the Lord’s Supper, germy bread and all… I took the smallest piece I could scrape by with and still call it the Body… minuscule. But, it’s the thought that counts, right?
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