Supper of the Lord

by Richard Stoltzfoos

I.
Our communion bread is flat like a cracker, probably
unleavened, but crumbly and not as dry, and it is
a little bit sweet, like cornbread. This is a meal
of remembrance, like Passover was. Our pastor teaches
about the three pieces of matzah in Passover. The middle
piece is broken, then folded in a napkin and hidden
somewhere in the house. After some hours, it is
brought out and reinstated to complete the three.
Matzah isn’t sweet at all. It’s harder, very flat,
and dry, with stripes of burnt, pierced with holes
in straight perforated lines. And so we remember.
I’ll admit that I sometimes wonder, as I cup the crumbly
sweet piece in my hands and wait for the prayer, whether
it’s true what Chris, or Gavin Ortlund, or even
the oddities of Catholic doctrine say: that this bread has
changed somehow during the prayer. But I love to watch
the young children crowd around the deacon as he
hands out to them after the service the pieces that are left,
and forbids them not.

II.
We also drink the vine’s fruit, laden with a hundred pounds
of preservatives to keep the juice from spoiling, and doubtless
some artificial colorings to keep it looking sensible. We
have yet to revert to a common cup after the virus,
and still drink from small plastic cups. Again I wonder
whether real presence is true, whether this cup especially
is a means of grace.
Is not Christ present in this cup, as He is present in all things?
Is not this ceremony a means of grace,
in the same way that all ecclesial activities, indeed, that
every work done in charity can be called means of grace?
To me this cup has never tasted like death.
We pray, we drain our cups.

III.
Poets have been notoriously silent on the subject of towels,
but not, perhaps, on the water that cleanses our feet;
while upon the subject of our behaired, shy,
sock-dwelling feet, poets have also perhaps enjoyed
silence. The men and the women go to separate rooms.
I suppose that’s for modesty’s sake, since socks cover
the calves. We take off our shoes and socks. We look
around and, amid songs sung from memory,
apprehensively try to make eye contact with someone
without being obvious, without being rejected and without
openly rejecting anyone. I would not want it to be said that
there is anyone whose feet I avoid. Everyone finds,
through various combinations of eyebrow-raising and nods,
a brother with whom he can go to the bowl.
And there is a second uncertainty that tugs at my sleeve
as we go forward: should I be the first of us to pick up
the towel, appearing eager to serve, or would it perhaps
overcome the sense of false humility to sit first and be served?
And we motion to each other: You can take the seat; be seated:
our gestures speak simultaneously, but only a moment,
and then we each chuckle quietly, embarrassed at our
selves, and at the second delay, and me flushed at my
overthought, and I seat myself on the chair, feeling
completely ridiculous, and this also somehow feels like
participating in Jesus.

Richard Stoltzfoos is the son of Adin,
son of Wilmer,
son of Elam,
son of Moses,
son of Samuel,
son of John,
son of Christian,
son of Nicholas Stoltzfus,
who in the year 1766 emigrated from Europe,
being born of Christian Gottlieb Stoltzfus,
of the Saxon line of that name
which began in the year of our Lord 400,
by the provision of God, in German Saxony.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy