Today was the communion chapel at my upstanding, Christian college. I wasn’t going to go. I didn’t want communion to become something trivial or habitual. But God prompted me to go. So I did. I sat by myself, feeling spatially isolated. The choir sang today. I love it when the choir sings. They drew me in with their four-tiered harmonies. I felt my soul stir. I felt like I was a part of something greater than my isolated self. It struck me how personal, yet overwhelmingly unifying, communion is. I’m sure a lot of people in that room that took communion gave it no second thought. To them, it has already slipped into the category of routine. But as I watched, there were many who just had this look on their face, and you knew their soul was stirring too. Christ didn’t set up communion to be taken behind the closed doors that he speaks of regarding prayer. No, communion is a community recognition of the fact that Christ’s bodily sacrifice covers all of us, Jew or Gentile, white or black, Republican or Democrat, if we just voluntarily receive it. We can remember Christ’s sacrifice on our own, but he calls us to feast together in remembrance of Him. The service was beautiful, but underneath it all it just felt like a bunch of hollow people trying to fill up on bread and Welch’s grape juice. A bunch of broken people filing towards the man-made altar, trying to remember why exactly they were doing this in the first place. We come to him with questions, some not knowing what they believe anymore. We come to him with tears, some desperate for someone to love them. We come to him, all of us, together… and out of all the “community” themed chapels this semester that I’ve sat through, never have I understood it more than I did this morning. As I sat there, I felt connected to all these broken people, all bound together by our humanity. I saw the pain, the stories, and the vulnerability that taking (or not taking) communion requires… and I saw it as beautiful. Messed up, yes. Shattered, yes. But at the same time, beautiful. We are a broken generation, like all the generations before us… and maybe when we own that and expose that to each other, maybe then we can begin to love and heal like God intended. Maybe we can fill each other… instead of relying on bread and grape juice.
*******
Broken pieces of pottery.
Once molded by the crafter’s great hands.
Now abandoned in a junk yard,
Buried deep beneath the sand.
Broken pieces of pottery,
Once admired, now we’re scorned.
We used to fill the temples,
Until we became weary and worn.
Terrified by our condition,
We began to ask around,
But no one else seemed to be broken,
So we sunk deeper into the ground.
There must be something wrong, we thought,
As smiling faces kept passing by.
So we hid the cracks beginning to form,
We made sure no one would see us cry.
Slowly the cracks began to grow,
Until we couldn’t hide them anymore.
This temple is for things of beauty, we thought,
So we walked out the door.
We banished ourselves to this wasteland,
But as we looked, we began to find,
There were others, banished, just like us,
Broken pieces, just like mine.
It was in this darkest valley,
That we finally understood,
Everyone is broken,
We just don’t show it like we should.
Broken pieces of pottery,
The true beauty is ours.
The crafter’s hand can heal us,
If we’re willing to bare our scars.
*******
PSALM 31:11-12
I am a dread to my friends—
those who see me on the street flee from me.
12 I am forgotten by them as though I were dead;
I have become like broken pottery.
