Communion Anywhere

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

—1 Peter 2:9

Body of Christ, broken for you. Blood of Christ, shed for you. “Every time you eat the bread and drink the wine,” Jesus says, “remember me.” Communion is connection, remembrance.

In our tradition, we take communion as a part of the church service every month or so. We pass a plate of bread, and another with tiny cups of wine—juice, actually. We also celebrate communion in less formal places—at a camp, or on a retreat. It isn’t terribly uncommon to take communion together in a makeshift way, in a home or a backyard or on a beach, one person reading the scripture, another passing the bread and wine around a circle of friends, a small group, or a team that serves together.

I believe the bread and wine is for all of us, for every person, an invitation to believe, a hand extended from divine to human. I believe it’s to be torn and handled, gulped. I believe that we can practice the sacrament of communion anywhere at all, that a forest clearing can become a church and any one of us a priest as we bless the bread and the wine.