This is Christ’s body and blood given for you.
I serve as a Sunday morning greeter at my local church. This role also involves serving communion, which in our faith expression is served to the congregation as they come up to be served one at a time—a walk-through line.
Although I am relatively new at this, as is often the case in volunteer work, being one step ahead in experience puts you in a position of knowing and guiding others. A newer volunteer expressed her concern with feeling the pressure to get everyone through the line and saying the words fast enough to each person. I shared:
Your task is not to get people through the line.
You control the pace as the person serving communion.
The most important person is the one in front of you, not the line forming behind them.
I was surprised with my clarity of approach to serving communion. Still, it has been born out of so many years of creating and sharing experiences with my communication work in the ICC community. Communion, communication, and community have at their root – a shared experience of going together.
Embedded in my communion guidance is the gentle influence of presence. My full attention-on-you presence is the key to creating the experience of being served, being heard, and being seen. Without being creepy or forceful, during communion, I seek to meet a person’s eyes and say with the authenticity of belief, “This is Christ’s body and blood given for you.” and to place in their hands the communion elements as if together, even for a few seconds we are with each other in this exceedingly brief moment.
Your task, my task, our task is to be present to the person standing right in front of us and not rushing to the next but in the here and now, giving the other the dignity of presence- heart, mind, and soul. That is communion. That is communication. That is community.
Your blog post is a great reminder and provides valuable insight into the gift it is to look at others and even linger (even if just for a few seconds) as you share a moment with someone. We can choose to be present, but we often have to slow ourselves down and be intentional to do so. Communion at our church in Colleyville, TX is a weekly blessing to us. As we come up front to pick up the elements for communion, our pastor greets us by NAME and then says similar words… Imagine weekly hearing “Mary, this is Christ’s body and blood, broken and poured out for you”. Or “Mary, the body and blood of Christ given for you for your salvation”. It is indeed a precious gift. If our pastor doesn’t know someone who comes forward, he greets them as “friend”. We love also how he takes the time to bless the babies, by name, and little ones who are not yet communing members. This is a precious practice in the life of our church and I’m so grateful for it.
Mary, Thanks for adding such grace to the conversation. I too will say someone’s name – 🙂 and it is helping know the people in our body! I have to resist my temptation and desire to bless babies – I have been pondering if that is radical – who is this person who assumes they can bless? :-). We all can bless each other!
Well spoken, Mary, and a good reminder to be present and intentional to the people God places in our lives—from a spouse to a neighbor to a store clerk.
Just beautiful! Mary, so simply, elegantly, beautiful.