Monthly Church Pot Lucks - Good for Body and Soul

An e-mail I received after the feast on Autumn Leaf Harvest Sunday this past week said it all. "The celebration was absolutely fabulous. I'm thinking it's time to reconsider a monthly potluck after worship." - Stephanie.

It truly was fabulous - both the worship and the harvest meal! My mouth waters as I remember the taste of the communion bread, baked using the whole wheat flour grown in the church's JCGarden wheat patch. Others thought so too. "...that was the sweetest wheat bread that I have ever tasted. Amazing how the flavor lingered – a beautiful gift…." - Susan. Then there was the harvest meal. It featured locally raised organic beef patties, church baked hamburger rolls, bean soup made from plants grown from seeds passed out during the Blessing of Seeds and Gardens Sunday, and many other local dishes lovingly prepared by members of the congregation. All were tasty and made more so because we knew whose hands had prepared them.

As the e-mailer noted, it is time to reconsider monthly church potlucks! I agree, for two things happened on Sunday. Firstly, Christ Jesus was made known in the breaking of bread during holy communion. And secondly, Christ Jesus was made known in the "breaking of bread" during the harvest meal as we experienced him in table fellowship with each other. And that was good!

It IS time to get back to regular church potlucks. These should be held on communion Sundays, so that monthly, bread is broken in sacrament and, after worship, table fellowship too. For Jesus longs to make us one with him (communion) and one with each other (table fellowship) that we might live in relationship with God and neighbor as the starting place for Christian living.

Each monthly potluck could be flavored in some way with one of the four different herbs that grow in the four little crosses. The devotion and worship herbs, processed into herbal vinegar or herbal oil as salad dressing, would remind us how these two works of piety draw us ever deeper into relationship with God. And the compassion and justice herbs could remind us how these two works of mercy connect us not only to friends but to all who stand in need of love and care. A brief story could introduce the herb of the day and share how the act it represents (devotion, worship, compassion or justice) was practiced and found meaningful.

In this fashion, springing directly from the centrality of the cross, the potluck might allow us to sacramentally ingest the very truth of God, that we might be one with Him in purpose and prayer, "Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." Amen!

From JCGarden "Wheat Field" to Communion Loaf

Today, a sunny Sunday in the fall of 2009, a full year after sowing tiny wheat seeds in the Fall of 2008, a "miracle" loaf of communion bread, home-grown, -ground, -baked and promise-filled, lay upon the altar.

Leavenworth - the village - celebrated Autumn Leaf Festival this weekend. Leavenworth United Methodist - the church - joined in and celebrated Autumn Leaf Harvest Sunday. And the Sunday celebration made the weekend festivities complete.

During the worship hour, thanks was given for the fullness of the earth - apple and pear trees laden with fruit in our valley - evident in our own Jerusalem Cross Garden with its' red tomatoes and mini wheat field. Then the special home grown loaf of bread was broken, the wine poured, and on our knees the heavenly feast partaken of. This is my body broken for you. This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you eat this bread and drink this wine in remembrance of me. And we were reminded that fullness came and comes, not in harvesting more and more of worldly pleasures and things, but in the constant planting, through self-emptying love and sacrifice, of acts of compassion and justice.

More than the harvest of pears and apples and grapes and veggies was celebrated this Autumn Leaf Festival as the surrounding hills change color. For this weekend our lives were colored with the divine as we took our place at both the banquet table of creation (in the harvest meal of local food following worship) and the heavenly banquet of holy communion, while in my own mind sounded the words and refrain of the Taize Alleluia:
Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word,
that proceeds from the mouth of God
Allelu alleluia.
Truly, we were fed in both body and soul.

Salmon Watch

Gilfillan, an energetic Brittany Spaniel pup, still learning how to follow his bird dog instincts, takes me for an early walk most mornings. Our destination of choice lately has been the Wenatchee River, for we are on salmon watch. Salmon Sunday which included a salmon bake on the lawn beside the Jerusalem Cross Garden this past Sunday, along with Leavenworth's Wenatchee River Salmon Festival, have come and gone. Still we wait with a lenten-type expectation for the annual re-enactment of a life-giving sacrifice in our waters.

Soon the beautifully sad, and sadly beautiful procession will begin. The summer run of salmon, arriving in the fall, will rise and turn in our shallow waters, each sleek fish having swum hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean, to spawn in the gravel bottoms of our crystal clear rivers. Then they will die, their flesh torn, their bodies scarred. And hundreds of emaciated carcasses will litter our river banks, mere shadows of the magnificent creatures they once were, to be picked over by crows and ravens, raccoons and other critters.

It's difficult to accept death in such large numbers. The grandson of one member, his little soul unable and unwilling to process death in such mutilated fashion, is troubled by the sadness it engenders in his still sensitive heart. I picture Mary, Jesus' mother feeling much the same as she saw her son hanging on the cross with nails through his hands and feet, his possessions being picked over by the soldiers on Golgothan duty.

Yet beyond the death of the salmon will come the miracle of new life, as hundreds of thousands of little salmon hatch to cavort and grow in Pacific Northwest waters. Similarly, beyond the cross came the resurrection, life beyond the grave. And the good news is that the Lenten and Easter event of long ago still brings resurrection life today. It comes to people who learn to die their own deaths, so that rising with Christ as new creations, their Godly living can help redeem the world. The salmon remind us so graphically of this truth each year.

The Jerusalem Cross, laid out so beautifully in garden form at the church and planted and tended by the Harvest Team to bring forth life - red tomatoes, orange carrots, green squash - as "bread of the earth," reminds us of these deeper things. That through the cross we learn to die to self, and, nourished by the "bread of heaven," we are empowered to live resurrection lives by joyously engaging the four acts of devotion, worship, compassion and justice.

It feels good to be "devoting" weekly with a small group where, watching over each other in love, we extend support in the gardening of both our souls and the soil of God's creation. This is Jerusalem Cross gardening, filled with promise.