Capes and Aprons
It's Vacation Bible School week this week at church. We are using the Cokesbury curriculum, Hero Central, so yesterday the kids all made capes in crafts. I have taken a more back seat role in VBS this year, opting to primarily serve on the media team during the opening and closing, but I did offer my game-leading experience to any crew leaders who wanted them. So last night I met up with the 2nd and 3rd graders who had just come from making their capes, and I noticed that a couple of the kids had chosen to turn their capes around, and I commented that they were more like aprons - and that I was totally ok with that because people who cook are certainly superheroes in my book.
Fast forward to today. I am off on Mondays so I went to the pool to enjoy some of this gorgeous Ohio weather we have been having, and I picked up a book that I have been reading off and on: Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans. And as I picked up where I left off, I found myself reading about communion, specifically the origins of the communion ritual.
Back in the early days of the church, communion was not a short rite performed on the first Sunday of the month as we United Methodists tend to do. It wasn't just bread dipped in juice after a prayer. It was meal. Communion was church. It was the community of faith gathered around a common table, remembering the life of Jesus. Rachel says, "The first thing the world knew about Christians was that they ate together." And then she tells a story of when her aunt died suddenly and after the funeral they were at her uncle's home, and the people flooding in bringing food. Her dad notices a woman standing in the doorway and says, "That's the lady who served us communion at church this morning," as the woman hugs her uncle while balancing Tupperware, and Rachel replied, "And here she is, serving it again."
And as I read those words, I thought of those kids, turning their capes into aprons. So often we want to be the hero that gets the glory. But the true heroes are those who show up, ready to serve. Those who offer communion, and community, in the most simple ways. Because while we think of communion as the time when the pastor or priest stands at the front of a church sanctuary blessing bread and cup, it happens so much more often. This is what the church has to offer, because it is Christians who recognize this act as a holy.
The truth is, the apron is so much more valuable than a cape. It is those people who show up in our lives over and over again, loving us, supporting us, feeding us - literally and figuratively - who make the most difference in our lives.
In her book, Rachel quotes New Testament scholar N.T. Wright who wrote, "When [Jesus] wanted to fully explain what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give a theory. He didn't even give them a set of scriptural texts. He gave them a meal."
Let us go, and do likewise.
Fast forward to today. I am off on Mondays so I went to the pool to enjoy some of this gorgeous Ohio weather we have been having, and I picked up a book that I have been reading off and on: Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans. And as I picked up where I left off, I found myself reading about communion, specifically the origins of the communion ritual.
Back in the early days of the church, communion was not a short rite performed on the first Sunday of the month as we United Methodists tend to do. It wasn't just bread dipped in juice after a prayer. It was meal. Communion was church. It was the community of faith gathered around a common table, remembering the life of Jesus. Rachel says, "The first thing the world knew about Christians was that they ate together." And then she tells a story of when her aunt died suddenly and after the funeral they were at her uncle's home, and the people flooding in bringing food. Her dad notices a woman standing in the doorway and says, "That's the lady who served us communion at church this morning," as the woman hugs her uncle while balancing Tupperware, and Rachel replied, "And here she is, serving it again."
And as I read those words, I thought of those kids, turning their capes into aprons. So often we want to be the hero that gets the glory. But the true heroes are those who show up, ready to serve. Those who offer communion, and community, in the most simple ways. Because while we think of communion as the time when the pastor or priest stands at the front of a church sanctuary blessing bread and cup, it happens so much more often. This is what the church has to offer, because it is Christians who recognize this act as a holy.
The truth is, the apron is so much more valuable than a cape. It is those people who show up in our lives over and over again, loving us, supporting us, feeding us - literally and figuratively - who make the most difference in our lives.
In her book, Rachel quotes New Testament scholar N.T. Wright who wrote, "When [Jesus] wanted to fully explain what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give a theory. He didn't even give them a set of scriptural texts. He gave them a meal."
Let us go, and do likewise.
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