Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends,

We are in the middle of a stretch of readings that center on Bread.  One of the things that always strikes me about Christianity is the utter simplicity of its signs and wonders.  God enters the human condition as a baby.  Jesus uses spit and mud to heal people.  Jesus speaks in parables that we’re immediately recognizable to the people among whom he ministered - he speaks of fishing, farming, and shepherding.  And, in his lasting gift of Presence among us, he speaks of taking bread and receiving his own Self for nourishment.

Each person, Christian or otherwise, is born and needs food to live.  This is the basic cycle of restoration, recovery, renewal, and sustenance.  Christians, however, are truly born at Baptism.  It is then that we are called “dead to sin” and “alive in Christ.” We have new lives and need a new food - we are given a spiritual food for our now living spirit.  

Richard Hooker, the Anglican theologian often credited with weaving together the essence of the reformers’ impulses and the essential of the catholic tradition to craft a theological balance we still live into today once said of Communion that only baptized Christians need it because we don’t feed the dead.  His point was that our baptism is that point at which we become truly alive in union with God and need the food that Christ offers to keep that faith renewed, refreshed, and sustained - we need him to keep alive.

Again - this is Jesus still speaking, moving, and present to us as he was in the stories of Scripture.  He comes to us in the simplest of ways, in bread and wine, so that we who have been given a new start with water might grow into the full measure of the stature of Christ by receiving him week by week, year by year, decade by decade, until others see that we truly are what we eat.  

So as we come for Communion today may we receive it remembering that we come to grow, to change, to be transformed - we come because God is using simple things, even us, to reveal Love to the world.

Robert