November 7, 2005
Bread
Among our parish’s rare lapses into biblical inerrancy, we use a real loaf of freshly baked bread at the Eucharist each Sunday, not to mention the nectar of the grape once-removed into what it was fermeant for. As our All Saints Sunday multiple baptisms added another fifty percent to the congregants yesterday, we soon ran out of bread and into the handy fish-food reserve.
Just at that turn, a lad of six or so presented himself to receive. I placed a wafer in his outstretched hands. Quite so that all could hear, he said, “That’s not bread. I want bread.” A few small pieces were left. I gave him one, took his wafer, gave it to his father, then silently (and irreverently) thought, “Next!”
A while later during the following cover-dish gathering, someone who’d overheard the lad’s request remembered a rather penchant theological reflection once attributed to Madeleine L’Engel that it was easier for her to believe those wafers were the Body of Christ than that they were bread.
[Visit Episcopal Relief and Development at http://www.er-d.org/ to make a donation to catastrophe relief or Episcopal Migration Ministries at emm@episcopalchurch.org to volunteer to assist displaced people with housing.]