Each
order of service had a small cut out picture of bread and wine with
double sided sticky tape on the back. Around the worship area the
days newspapers had been hung with a few photographs too. Having
received the Eucharist 'I will receive you now' from 'Eucharist' the
music from Greenbelt Sunday Service 1999 plays in the background
along with slides.
There
is something quite unique about intercessions during communion. For
what we share together, is a sharing for the world.
As
we take the grain and the grape, we acknowledge there is more to
these than buying them in a shop. There is the baker, the
wine-merchant, the labourer and the farmer, the tiller of soil and
the family that works the land caring for the wheat and nurturing the
grape. But also the people who transport it in Del Monte boxes from
Monsanto fields to the shelves of Safeway. We remember plantation
workers of some far off country, often without human rights, their
family displaced from their own land, through multi-nationalists,
war, famine, growing wheat or fruit for us to eat and break and drink
and share so they can survive. Indeed we acknowledge we're the
privileged ones with bread to eat and wine to drink.
Bread
and wine aren't simple. They gather up the whole human condition:
justice, peace, war, want, work, survival. It is these things we
share at this table.
After
receiving the elements, please do not go directly to your seats, but
consider these things in the headlines and photos covering the walls.
What we have just received is shared with the whole world. It is the
promise of the kingdom. Please take your time to place the image of
bread and wine beside the story you will hold close over the next few
days. It is a prayer, a symbol, a sharing of the gift for the world.
