Beating Heart

Brothers and sisters:
As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.
—1 Corinthians 12:12-30

We are your living body, Lord—
your hands and fingertips.
Your blood into our veins is poured;
your breath is on our lips,
and whatsoever we have held
you have, through all our senses, felt.

Then, Savior, empty these our hands
of all things hard and sharp,
to hold each other as your lambs
against your murm'ring heart
and feel you nothing else but this:
the “yes” of all God's promises.

Then we shall not be “yes” and “no”—
as changeable as wind
and torn and tattered as it blows—
but only, “Yes, amen”
when every echo of your heart
reverberates in every part.

And give us eyes at last to see
what prophets longed to know:
your eyes again, your hands and feet,
alive in every soul,
your beating heart in every chest—
and where we find it, there to rest.

detail study for the “Heller Altarpiece” By Albrecht Dürer – Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21792217

Pilgrim Table

For All Saints Day, on which the prayer after communion reads,
“As we adore you, O God, who alone are holy
and wonderful in all your Saints,
we implore your grace,
so that, coming to perfect holiness in the fullness of your love,
we may pass from this pilgrim table
to the banquet of our heavenly homeland.
Through Christ our Lord.”

You call us from the north, O Lord,
and call us from the south.
From east afar we heard your word;
from west we sought it out.

Through deserts you have led the way
and over ocean deeps;
the forests hold you not at bay
nor any mountain steeps.

And we have travelled by your road,
have followed day and night 
in search of our eternal home,
on pathways you make right.

At every step a fest you spread:
a table where we find
your heav'nly manna for our bread;
your living water, wine.

You give us strength to journey on
in plate and chalice laid,
a foretaste of the feast to come
in your unending day.

Then at this pilgrim table, Lord,
come fill us with your grace
to seek the banquet more and more
where we shall see your face.

Fractio panis (“the ceremonial breaking of the eucharistic bread for distribution” during the meal of Holy Communion) in the Greek chapel (Capella Greca) of the Catacombe di Priscilla in Rome. Fresco of a Christian Agape feast. 2nd – 4th century. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=566562

Be With Us There

Not only in the broken bread,
the cup we bless and share:
Be present in the feasts we spread
and in the blessing prayer.
Where hunger and your gifts are wed,
where tables once were bare,
wherever we are truly fed,
O Lord, be with us there.

From Eden we were sent away
but you were not cast out,
and yet down every road we take
we find you there somehow.
You scatter food along the way
and rain into our drought.
You are the light of each new day
and manna on the ground.

And somehow, too, you are the road
and you the journey's end,
and everywhere we come and go
you journey as a friend.
Then when the sky with sunset glows,
Lord, stay with us and rest.
We know you as we've always known:
in breaking of the bread.

Carl Moll – Speisezimmer I By Carl Moll – Lempertz, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46035613

Bitter Bread

The harvest of our sorrows—
the bitter dust we tilled,
the anguish of the harrows—
this grain we took and milled.
We leavened it with ashes
and kneaded it with tears
to lay it on your altar.
O Christ, come meet us here.

We long to bring you glories,
the bread of finest wheat
and wine to send us soaring,
and lay them at your feet,
to make our best our offering
for you to make divine—
Here is the bread of suffering
and tears distilled as wine.

O higher than the angels,
above all earthly crowns,
you did not spurn the manger—
You do not spurn us now.
When all that we can give you
is brokenness as bread,
you take what you are given
and fill it with yourself.

A Kremikovtsi Monastery fresco (15th century) depicting the Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and his disciples. The early Christians too would have celebrated this meal to commemorate Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection. Photo By Edal Anton Lefterov – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15129262

Hunger

So they said to him,
“Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them,
“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
–John 6:24-35

I believe, but still I hunger;
Lord, I trust you and I thirst
as if all we have are crumbs here
in the desert of our hurt.
There are days that have no comfort,
nights when all is at its worst,
and we long for signs and wonders,
manna scattered on the dirt.

Bread of life, true bread from heaven,
every day I eat my fill
yet I wake each morning empty,
hunger crying for you still.
Let me take the bread you give me,
take the cup where mercy spills;
let it tell me of forgiveness,
that my cries shall yet be stilled.

For the bread is you, O Savior:
We will eat and we will live,
and the wine we are partaking
is your life upon our lips.
Though I rise again unsated,
let me kneel today for this:
heaven's feast of your own making
that some day shall be my bliss.

The Gathering of the Manna by James Tissot – https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/26365-the-gathering-of-the-manna, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8849141

What Good?

When Jesus raised his eyes
and saw that a large crowd was coming to him,
he said to Philip,
“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”
He said this to test him,
because he himself knew what he was going to do.
Philip answered him,
“Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough
for each of them to have a little.”
One of his disciples,
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him,
“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish;
but what good are these for so many?”
—John 6:1-15

To the tune FINLANDIA:

What good is this, the little I can offer?
All I can give, O God, is just myself:
This heart fails love; this body breaks and suffers;
this mind sees not, turned inward on itself.
As nothing worth, this pittance that I proffer,
as these few loaves and fish you take and bless.

As once you took the mud that I am made of
and clothed yourself in human littleness.
You laid it out as bread for us to savor,
poured out as wine, salvation on our lips.
They were so small—five wounds that pierced two natures—
how can you feed a multitude with this?

Yet it is so, O bread come down from heaven:
You took our life and clothed yourself in dust,
yet not our sin; untainted by our leaven,
poured yourself out to fill the blessing cup
that we might drink and live and be forgiven.
Our weaknesses transformed into your love.

Then take these gifts that in my hands are nothing.
Take for your own my heart and mind and strength.
If you transform them to a wondrous something,
let it be so, for you can do all things.
Or leave me still my self as you'd begun it:
It is still good, and yours in every length.

The feeding of the five thousand; Christ blessing fishes in left background; the apostles with large baskets in foreground; illustration to William of Auvergne, ‘Postilla super Epistolas et Evangelia’, Basel; Michael Furter, 1511. 1511 Woodcut By Print made by: Urs Graf – https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1927-0614-125, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89886988

Feed

You feed me, and I hunger still.
You give me drink, and still I thirst
as if my cup will never fill.
I am as hungry as at first.

So I must call to you again,
you who have given o'er and o'er,
world without end, amen, amen.
I still must ask you more and more.

You daily hear, and daily give.
You pour anew the blood-red wine
and bless the bread I need to live.
You fill again these hands of mine,

for you have made me hollow, Lord,
this earthen vessel from your hand.
You chose the substance, chose the form:
Forever empty I shall stand.

Forever you will fill my need.
Forevermore I shall not want.
In verdant pastures where you lead,
I'll drink forever from the font

and I will eat the bread you made.
Forever you will nourish me
there at the table you have laid
and laid again eternally.

Woman baking bread (c. 2200 BC); Louvre, Photo By Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69938567

Table Song For Exiles

As you broke bread in Nazareth
before your desert road,
O Christ incarnate, bone and breath,
I long to taste my home.
The tables where I learned to eat,
to listen and to talk,
they held the bread of finest wheat
and honey from the rock.

The tears that fill your water jars,
now let them be transformed:
Pour out the wine that cheers my heart
in memory and hope.
Give me the bread of earthly love,
the flavors I have known,
and let it be the savor of
my everlasting home.

If I forget Jerusalem—
O Lord, if I forget,
remind me of myself again
in every taste of bread,
and let it tell me of the home
where you have made a place,
where every tribe and tongue is known,
and every feast is grace.

By Sapp0512 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113655277

Come, Sojourners and Strangers

Mashing up Ephesians 2, Psalm 87, and a few other things:

Come, sojourners and strangers
who pass through Zion's gate,
and sit down at the table:
Our welcome here awaits.

For Christ has torn the heavens
to sink into our deaths;
he gives himself, unleavened,
to us as broken bread.

Sit down to all he gives you,
for he prepared this feast.
Sit down to him, he bids you,
and let him wash your feet.

Then, baptized in his dying,
we rise into his life
and he, the grace supplying,
takes us to be his bride.

And we who had been outcasts
are honored at this feast.
Christ lays himself in our hands
and tells us, Take and eat.

We are exiles no longer
but citizens in him
who makes our shelter stronger
and comes to dwell within.

Marriage at Cana, 1561, By Jacopo Tintoretto – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15542127

Pilgrim Hearts

On the Eucharist, to the tune LAND OF REST:

We search for you with pilgrim hearts
and hunger for your grace.
We seek you, Lord, both near and far:
When will we see your face?

So weary when we took the road,
where will we find our rest?
Draw near to us, our hidden God,
and show yourself at last!

Oh, set a table on the way—
your feast alone redeems—
worth more than we could ever pay,
near your refreshing streams.

And call the weary pilgrims in
where mercies never cease
to rest from all their anxious din,
in comfort and in peace.

The wonder of this aching world
is this, your wedding feast,
where you kneel down—creation's Lord!—
to wash the pilgrims' feet.

So all our wand'ring ways have led
your weary trav'lers here
to know you in the broken bread,
our savior, ever near!

Early Christian painting of an Agape feast. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=566566