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 partak
en 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.
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