One loaf, one body, one community...

Keep us faithful to Christ’s teaching and fellowship,

to the breaking of bread and the prayers, sharing our goods with one another,

and giving our possessions to those who are in need,

so that all people may have their daily bread, this day and every day.

Sunday October 6 is World Communion Sunday. On this day, Christian churches around the world celebrate our oneness in Christ, the Prince of Peace, in the midst of the world we are called to serve, in a time when fear, poverty, violence, and religion itself threaten to tear the world apart.

Standing around the table with us this Sunday will be brothers and sisters in Christ in all the lands where following Christ can quite literally mean following him to one’s death.  As we share one loaf at Christ’s table on the corner of Meadowbrook Avenue and Lawrence Road, we’ll break bread with those sharing a loaf in Egypt and Syria and China, with those walking miles across the desert to share a loaf, with those for whom that bite of Christ’s body may be the only thing they eat that day.  In the midst of so much, we’ll break bread with those who are in need and reach deeper, both in prayer and in substance, that we might share our bread with the world.

 

And standing at the table with us this Sunday will be absent friends, too, friends who are breaking the bread of Christ’s body in so many places, friends who have shared the table with us and who now share with so many others, gretchen in Connecticut, and Todd and Erinn in Grand Rapids, David and Moira in Bloomsburg, Jon and Christina in North Carolina.  As we break the bread for the community gathered around the table on Lawrence Road, we’ll be breaking bread with Cambria and Jared in Tubingen, with Lana in Dubuque, with Christine in Milwaukee, with John in South Carolina, and Jean in Kentucky, with Lauren and Daniel in Seattle, with so many others who are and always will be a part of the Lawrence Road family, no matter where they are.

One loaf, one body, one community, one communion.  And one hope for all the world.

Just as the grain, once scattered across the hills,
was gathered together in this loaf of bread,

gather your people from the ends of the earth,

so that we may feast with you in glory in the joy of your new creation.