Wednesday, March 31, 2021

The Cup of Blessing

 

The celebration of Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday evening during Holy Week is unique, even if your church administers the sacrament regularly and often. This time, it is the night when we most closely remember the actual Last Supper of our Lord before he went to be crucified. One such Maundy Thursday night ended in a way that gave it a special place in my memory.

It had been a very meaningful Maundy Thursday service and now it was late and everyone had gone home. I walked through the now-empty building as I usually do at the end of the day, readjusting thermostats and turning off lights and making sure all the doors were locked. As I walked back into the sanctuary, I noticed that the little glass cups from the Communion service were still there, standing up along the chancel rail as if in formation. Our people had gotten a little sloppy that evening, and the juice had spattered here and there, with little drops spilled along the wooden rail like the blood on the doorposts of the Israelites. In the bottom of each little cup was a crimson spot where the last dregs of the precious liquid lay. Since I didn’t want that grape juice to stay in the cups overnight, I decided to take them into the kitchen and wash them.

I didn’t mind. I felt I would enjoy the quiet time in the kitchen: no phone ringing, no emails to answer, no one demanding my attention. Just me and God in the kitchen. A nice mid-Holy Week respite.

As I spread out the cups to wash them, I thought of putting them in the dishwasher but decided against it. It seemed to me the best way to wash them was one by one, picking up each cup individually, washing it out, then turning it over to dry.

After I got started, I began to think about the medieval monk known as Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. Brother Lawrence was a very godly man, a person who had given it all to go and live in the monastery and serve God all his days. He took his vows, made his commitment, and got his initial training in the kitchen. Now the kitchen was the last place Brother Lawrence wanted to be! He reportedly said to himself something like, “Oh, I could be so much more useful to God anywhere other than in this kitchen, peeling potatoes and washing dishes and cutting cabbage and boiling onions! Why me? Why here?”

We all want to be great for God and sometimes think we should get to choose our places of service. But we forget that even Jesus showed his greatness by washing the disciples’ feet and by giving his life for others. Brother Lawrence learned to practice the presence of God wherever God put him, and he found God in the kitchen. Likewise, that night in that church kitchen I found God unexpectedly among the dozens of tiny shot glasses stained with grape juice.

What happened was this: as I picked them up and began to wash them one by one, I counted them. There were about 110, and I was a little disappointed in the number. But continuing to wash them and place them on the towel to dry, the total number became less important to me. Gradually the cups began to look different, and as I handled them individually, I began to look closely at each little cup. It dawned on me that each and every cup represented a life, a person, a human being, someone I know, someone for whom Christ died. Suddenly the total number didn’t seem to matter as much. What mattered the most at that moment was each individual little cup and the beloved child of God who had partaken of its contents.

You’ve heard it said that sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. True, but the reverse is also true: sometimes we can’t see the trees for the forest! We see the numbers and the unified whole but we overlook the precious individuals that it contains.

I’m glad to be reminded that we have all the little cups that make the sacrament possible even in the pandemic, and that we serve and partake of Holy Communion individually, one by one. Christ died not just for the church but for each life, each soul, saying, “This is my body, given for you.” There is a cup with your name on it. Thanks be to God.