A Calamitous Communion

Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord's Supper: all of these are names for one of the two holy sacraments in the reformed church. This practice, modeled by Jesus at the Last Supper and described by the Apostle Paul in his epistles, is a solemn occasion where Christians remember Christ's death on the cross. Christ, the God-man, willingly suffered cruel and unjust torment to atone for the sins of all who repent and believe. This action on the part of our Savior is the core event of history. God's chosen people before Christ looked forward to the Messiah's deliverance, and God's chosen people after Christ look back to his work on the cross. Thus, observing the sacrament that some call communion is a serious endeavor worthy of an attitude of reverence and humility.

Switching gears to my morning at church, we celebrated communion during the morning worship service today. To minimize the time and effort in distributing the elements (juice and wafer, in our case), our local church recently switched to a prepackaged combination of juice and wafer. The juice is in a plastic cup, sealed by a layer of plastic across the top. Above that layer of plastic is a thin wafer, above which lies another layer of practice. After removing and eating the wafer this morning, I encountered a challenge I had not previously encountered with these conveniently packaged elements: I was unable to remove the layer of plastic that sealed the juice! Suddenly, my solemn, reflective experience morphed into a battle with out-of-spec adhesive. Eventually, I separated the plastic into two layers, with the lower thin layer still sealing the grape juice in the container. Unfortunately, I was not aware that I had failed to break the seal. To make a long story short, as I squeezed the plastic cup with expectations of transferring every last drop into my mouth, I instead produced a high pressure stream of the juice focused directly on my lovely wife's favorite white and pink polka dot sweater.

My questions: Why did God mandate this distraction? Why did He choose to direct that stream at her sweater rather than my clothes? Was this God's sense of humor or a test for us?