Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ,

This Sunday, January 29, when you come to worship, don't forget to bring your favorite coffee cup/mug/glass.   You'll need it for communion.  Let me explain...

On Annual Meeting Sunday, during both the 8:30 and 11:00 worship times, we will be having another "Eucharistic Experience".  These experiences are designed to inspire and inform our understanding of the Meal and make connections between table in sanctuary and the other tables in our lives.  They also seek to broaden our perspective for mission.   For this week's experience, you will need to bring in a cup from your home or office - something you use on a regular basis.   At the time of communion, your cup will be the vessel that you will use to receive Christ.  

This experience comes to us from South America where a local priest, whose parish was a poor country village, he invited his parishoners to bring a cup to worship.  These cups were among the villager's limited posessions.  At the table their cups were used to receive the wine.  Afterwards, when the priest visited to their homes, he noticed that these cups - ordinary vessels - were now in promient places on shelves, etc.  A connection was made between the sacred and the ordinary/every day places of life.  The Christ who came in sacrament, continued to come in kitchen.  The mug and chipped cups of the people reminded them of the sacramental nature of their whole lives before God.

What Sunday's experience will hopefully do for you (and me) is to make the important, life-giving connection between what we do together in worship and the life that we live from Monday to Saturday.  When you fill your coffee cup on Wednesday morning in the middle of a rough week, I want us to be reminded that Christ has been given for us.  May the simple ordinary things that we use on a daily basis remind us that we are God's children and that we have a role to play in living out our faith - around kitchen tables, school cafeterias, break rooms, conference tables, etc.  May we be transformed by the sacrament that we share together in worship so that we might be a sacrament of Christ's love to neighbors, family, and strangers alike.

So don't forget your coffee mug and I look forward to see you in worship.

In Christ,

Pastor Walt