Lenten Words

What expectations have been formed and fashioned in your soul as we move through this holy week?  Any new or surprising ones?

This week we are letting the following words guide and ground us:

34.  Expectations
35.  Hunger
36.  Thirst
37.  Communion
38.  Death
39.  Silence
40.  Resurrection/New Life

We spent some time with expectations in the last post...

The next three point toward tomorrow, Thursday.

Hunger...thirst...communion.

On one level Maundy (which means commandment and refers to Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of John 13 - "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
At the Last Supper table Jesus gives us a glimpse of God's grace found in bread, juice, and connections to others.  At the Last Supper table Jesus offers us love that we can hold in our hands, sweet grace we can taste on the tip of our tongue.  At the Last Supper table, Jesus connects us not only to the Holy One, but to the holy in everyone.  The table is always open to all.  As a communion hymn says, "This is Christ's table, not just yours or mine...come to the table of grace."  On this level, communion meets us in our hunger and thirst.

It is amazing to me that such small piece of bread and sip of juice can satisfy us.  It is amazing to me that we are connected to a global movement through this holy act. Christ offers his friends life, full life, found in taking a bread and sip of juice.  Of course, this is what Jesus was up to his entire life.  He sought to share all of God's love with the disciples every moment of each day.  It wasn't like he got near the end and thought, "Boy, I better do something to get through to these guys."  Jesus had been healing and helping, curing and communing, sharing and caring every day.  He had fed five thousand, met people in their brokenness, over turned barriers between God and us.  Every story in the gospel is one of hunger...thirst...communion.

On another level, communion is always a ritual that is about more than us...more than bread.  Communion is encountering the body of Christ...we are experiencing the holy in a tactile and tangible way.  Often we think that we encounter the holy in the bread and juice.  Yes.

And

In each other!  In that other church member who you see tomorrow night and sent you a card when you were sick.  In that church member who you sat with at the potluck.  And even in that church member who seems to never run out of material to frustrate you.  Seriously, it is like the person is an endless store of ways to push your buttons.  I imagine Christ saying at communion, especially, in that person!

Connections to each other.
Connections to Christ and God's self-giving Spirit.
Connections to creation which brings forth grain and wheat.
Connections to our deepest self that God so loves and knows.
Connections...
Community....
Communion...

That is where we sense more than just a trace of God's amazing and abundant grace.

May God meet you in the hunger and thirst of this week ~ finding community and communion in life giving ways.

Blessings ~~