More Communion, Please

On catching the light

For Lent I have given up sleeping through the dark. Each night, I check the weather app for the exact time of the next morning’s sunrise and set my alarm for 6:30 or 6:42 or 7:01. I make the morning’s coffee by moonlight. I drink my first cup as the pinks and purples spread across the sky. Some mornings the sun rises slow or time slows to give the birds a moment to enjoy it. Some mornings I miss sunrise entirely, usually because I’m looking for my reading glasses. Other mornings the sun hardly rises at all. Or maybe it rises like normal but the clouds toss it into the back of their van.

Sometimes I notice. Sometimes I don’t. I try to notice.

I didn’t pick this practice of pre-dawn waking off a menu of Lent offerings, but it does seem right—giving up a little sleep, meeting the world in its chilly, colorless dark, the way it is each day before the sun does its work. And then witnessing—Aha! Yes. Again today. Let there be light.

Allison Boyd Justus, one of my favorite poets, spent a year waking before dawn to watch the sun break like an egg (her phrase—mmm…). She wrote a poem every morning. She said “I need to see the day breaking—over and over and over again.” I think I understand something of what she meant. Every day requires fresh proof.

That the world waits in darkness

That sunlight comes

That ordinary things, things that happen again and again and again, can feel like miracles

That life keeps going

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I took a vacation in March. I skipped a couple sunrises and didn’t skip a couple more. I read Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyassi in my hotel room after long days waiting in line to ride roller coasters. I talked about racism in the church and the chemistry of addiction over pizza dinner. My husband said, Maybe choose something lighter next vacation.

We flew home. Justin and Eve fell ill. It was harder to get out bed in the morning because the air was cold and the bed was so warm, warm like a sauna from the combination of fever and hot flashes. I got out anyway, shivering.

That week I started back on a book project that had me aching and fighting and receiving and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. In the mornings, on the couch with my coffee, God and I mostly avoided talking about the book and just enjoyed being together.

Also in March, I listened to a podcast that left me disquieted and riled up for days. But then I helped my husband pick out plants for a new garden. I bought Easter dresses. I helped my oldest daughter imagine possible futures. I sent my youngest on a mission trip. I welcomed friends into our home and held their children.

I also prayed a lot. And read Numbers and Deuteronomy. Yesterday I read Romans because I worried maybe I was liking Deuteronomy too much. I read the whole book in one glorious gulp. I literally pumped my fist. And cried. I didn’t even bother to wipe the tears off my face.

Romans is a sunrise. Deuteronomy, too.

Back to the tears—I shed many tears in March. Which wasn’t much different from February. These days I’m crying all the time. “Happy” tears mostly. Though happy is an imprecise label. I prefer “homesick.” They’re the tears that surprise you, brought on by a snatch of a smell or song, maybe the way the air feels on your skin, maybe that one line of Scripture like a hand lifting your chin… I cry when Heaven sneaks through and I remember I’m from there and I’m not there and I’m going there.

Allison, the poet, says of sunrises, “This is a confrontation.” Yes. A surf. A place where one thing breaks in upon another, the collision of two worlds. This is where I live, Christian that I am, citizen of light exiled in darkness, lighting my torch each morning like Moses on Sinai, made radiant.

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“Hold it steady, everybody, we’ll all turn toward the light—We’ll catch the light and carry it all day. In the morning your skin will tell stories; your hair will smell like campfire.”

Allison Boyd Justus, “Sunrise 83 / 5:56 am / March 13”

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Have you ever seen a priest hold the wafer above the cup and break it? It looks a little like the sun.

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It’s holy week, and I will take communion four times—once on Maundy Thursday to remember the meal at which Jesus broke bread with his apostles, the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and three times on Easter day, once at a sunrise service, once more at our usual church, and finally at the Easter feast we’ll share with friends at a long table on the porch in our backyard.

Some people might say that’s too much communion. I say, Give me all the Jesus.

Growing up, I thought communion was a time to be sad—both about my sins and about the fact that my sins made Jesus die. I would close my eyes and reflect back on my week and remember all the times I’d been mean to my brother or disrespectful to my parents, and then I’d try to picture Jesus on the cross covered in blood. If I did a good job I might cry. Tears were proof I had “examined” myself well.

These days I take communion differently, though my 9 year old self would be very impressed by the quantity of tears. So many homesick tears.

For forty-three-year-old Jennifer, communion is about recommitting to the way of the cross, “participating in the Lord’s death” by drinking the Kool-Aid. It’s about being united with the people of God, my blood kin. And it’s about living forever. Jesus said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:54).

Take me to the table.

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I’ve been reading the Torah lately, and I think it’s helpful, as we consider Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, to remember that the Israelites ate many of the animals they sacrificed to God. The point of the sacrifices, burnt offerings, and tithes wasn’t simply to prove your devotion to Yahweh and make you clean. The offerings also drew God’s people together in celebration. By law, the meat of the animal was to be consumed in a timely fashion, requiring the Israelites to invite friends and family to feast at their tables. Of course those tables were sometimes far from home, because God required that his people, wherever they lived, travel to the temple in Jerusalem to make their sacrifices. If they lived far from the temple they could sell the animals and wheat and other tithe-able goods for silver, easier to carry on a journey. Moses tells them, “Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice” (Deaut. 14:26). “You are to eat them in the presence of the Lord your God” (Deut. 12:18).

Sacrifices were an opportunity for the people to be with God and for God to be with the people.

That is also the point of the cross.

And what happens when we take communion.

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I’m taking communion and before I eat the bread or drink the wine I pray with the church, “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of our dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood.” I remember Jesus’s words in John’s gospel, and I ask God, “Show me what it means to feed on You.”

Immediately I think of my mornings reading Scripture on the couch as dawn breaks, every morning as good as the last. And then I take the bread, and I feel like the answer is simple: Eat this boring piece of bread. And eat it again next week. And the week after. Eat it with me and (ah the mystery!) eat Me.

I have heard Christians say communion is precious, and because it’s precious we should save it for special occasions. I agree.

Can we agree sunrise is a special occasion? Isn’t any moment with God special? Can’t any moment become special with God?

Taking communion ritually, the same simple cracker again and again, is like waking up at dawn every day. It’s a reminder that life goes on, that new mercies are on offer, that light has the power to push back the dark, and that simple things like eating and drinking, things that must be repeated, can be portals into the unseen world. Taking communion is remembering how things are when you’re tempted to forget. It’s re-witnessing the love, mercy, and power of God.

Communion is confrontation. Fresh proof.

“Hold it steady, everybody, we’ll all turn toward the light—We’ll catch the light and carry it all day…”