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             There is something of Jesus himself present in Communion.

Susan had never really understood about the Lord’s Supper. The church in which she had grown up and was confirmed had talked a lot about Jesus’ "real presence." "This is my body. This is my blood of the new covenant." The true body and blood of Christ were "in, with and under" the bread and wine, she had been taught. What did that mean? She kind of wanted it to be true, but how could it be? Susan learned the right answers to the questions the pastor asked but she still didn’t understand it.

She attended another church when she went away to college, and there they said that the bread and wine were visible signs of an inner spiritual grace — which was the body and blood of Christ. People talked and acted as if Communion was very important. They looked very serious when they went forward to receive the bread and wine. But the trouble was that it was bread and wine — looked like it and tasted like it.

The clergy and all the other church members — at least the adult ones — they must understand, she thought. Susan hated to feel dumb or disrespectful but she just didn’t get it. "Do this for the remembrance of me" — that made sense. But "This is my body" just didn’t make sense, no matter how hard she tried. Once, a pastor at another church had said that the bread and wine were symbols, but not mere symbols, and that in the end "It’s a mystery." That didn’t help much. She knew that it was important and she wanted to understand. But after she’d grown up in the church and was supposed to have learned about the Lord’s Supper, it would be too embarrassing to ask someone to explain it to her. So she went on pretending.

Other Christians, she was sure, didn’t have problems like that. Certainly her grandmother never had. She remembered how Grandma had always looked forward to Communion, and had been one of the people to urge the congregation to have it every Sunday and not just a couple of times a month. Some people complained that it wasn’t "special" if you did it too often, but it was always special for Grandma. No matter how busy the weekend might be, she always managed to find some time for prayer before the service and sometimes there would be a tear in her eye when she came back to her seat after receiving Communion. Grandma must have known the secret.

What Grandma thought and believed was important for Susan. She was the center, the one who held their big extended family together. The symbols of the family, the things they thought of as theirs and that defined them as a family, were connected with her. Hers was the house where the presents were opened on Christmas Eve and where other important family events took place. It was her homemade bread and cookies that made even ordinary days special. As people had said more than once, Grandma always seemed to put something of herself into everything that she made. There was always something distinctive, something just a little different, when you ate one of her cookies or cut a slice of her fresh bread.

Grandma had been a woman of the church — not a "churchy" woman, always folding her hands and saying pious things but a person with a serious commitment to Christ and his church. And it wasn’t an old-fashioned "We’ve always done it this way" commitment either. She had been the first woman in the congregation to assist in distributing Communion. But when Grandma gave her the cup and said "The blood of Christ" — well, it was nice, but it was still wine.

Grandma was important for the whole family, and especially so for Susan. Grandma had better sense than to say "She’s my special granddaughter," but Susan always felt that she was. She could talk to her grandmother about anything — dates, her job and whether she should get a new apartment, about prayer and what Christians were supposed to do when they were faced with hard choices. But for some reason, she had never been able to bring herself to ask Grandma how the Lord’s Supper could be anything more than bread and wine.

Now it was too late — Grandma was gone. She had died six months ago, "old and full of days" as the Bible says. Susan still missed her a lot. Situations would come up, questions would arise, and she’d think "I’ll talk to Grandma about that." But then she’d remember that Grandma wasn’t there to help her anymore.

That had happened again today, Sunday. For the last few weeks the gospel readings had been from John, with the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus talking about the bread of life. "I am the living bread that came down from heaven" Jesus had said in the reading this morning. "Whoever eats of this bread will live forever." It sounded like Communion, but receiving the bread and wine this morning was still something she did without understanding it. "Maybe I don’t have to understand," she thought. "Maybe some of these other people don’t get it either. I could ask Grandma." But it was too late for that.

She couldn’t brood about that forever though. It was time to find something for dinner and she hadn’t gone to the store yet. Maybe she’d feel like shopping after she’d had something to eat. Without enthusiasm she went into the kitchen and opened the freezer to see if there was anything she could make a meal of.

The usual suspects — nothing very promising. There were frozen orange juice, hard little collections of pasta and chicken pieces to heat and scramble together, a lump of mystery meat. And — what was that big package in the back, covered with frost? She pulled it out and shook the ice crystals off it into the sink.

It was a loaf of bread — one of the loaves Grandma had baked, carefully wrapped in foil and plastic. It must have been in the back of the freezer for seven or eight months, since before she’d died. The thought came to Susan that this was probably the last loaf of Grandma’s bread anywhere. She ought to keep it — but then she thought how Grandma would laugh at the idea of a loaf of her bread being preserved as a relic or a museum display.

No, that wasn’t the way to remember her. Susan unwrapped the frozen loaf, carefully cut two slices off and put them in the microwave on low power to thaw. She found a couple of other things to make a meal and then sat down to eat.

It was definitely Grandma’s bread. Susan smiled. It was as they’d always said — Grandma always put something of herself into everything that she made. Suddenly she stopped. "Put something of herself into ... "Oh, but that only meant ... . That was nothing but a way of saying ...

Only? Nothing but? There was no "only" or "nothing but" about the food she ate or the memory and presence that flooded over her.

"This is the bread that came down from heaven." And it was no great jump from that little kitchen table to coming to the front of the church for Communion, to Jesus and his disciples around the table at the Last Supper. It was a little step to Jesus standing on a hillside in Galilee, surrounded by hungry people, reaching out to satisfy them, standing in the synagogue telling them who he was.

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

They put something of themselves into everything that they made — Grandma, and J.S. Bach, and Emily Dickinson, and all those people we call "creative" do that. They put something of themselves into their creation, and are remembered with it, and live in it. And Jesus — but he wasn’t just "creative." He was the Creator, the one who gives food to all living things, who inspired Grandma and Bach and Dickinson and all the others. He was the one whose Spirit makes people a new creation. So when he said, "Take and eat. This is my body ...."