A Promise as Physical as a Bullet

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Addshore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

My first week of internship at St. John’s Pimlico was rough. Someone took a crowbar and bent open my mailbox and took all my remaining things I’d shipped to myself from Seminary. I was mugged at knife point in front of my apartment. Finally, I witnessed a shooting.

As you might imagine, by that first Sunday I was shook! We worshipped together, and we reached the point of the service where I came up to receive Holy Communion. Pastor Gregg said the words, “The body of Christ, for you! The blood of Christ, for you!” And in receiving that wafer and wine, I finally understood what no Confessions class could teach—the existential nature of the physicality of the sacraments.

I needed a promise of God’s goodness as physical as all those signs of dread and death that permeate this world. I needed a promise that I could consume, a promise that gave a little warmth to the body going down. I needed God’s love for the world to be as physical as a crowbar, a knife, a bullet. And thanks be to God the Lord’s Table delivers!

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