Half Ounce Communion Cups

About a year ago at this time, I did not exist. But, somehow I made it to my Aunt's church in Boise to be with family after I had just been murdered.  Those puny plastic, single serving communion cups have always bothered me.  Something went awry theologically when churches started using those I think.  Thankfully, that little half ounce communion cup held all I could stomach.  When the time came and we were served, I froze.  And Jesus' prayer melted me and poured out...

How can such a small cup, filled with so little hold so much?

How do you use that sip of juice to stare back at me

and pierce my heart with that question once again?

It’s enough that I see my reflection in your blood so clearly. 

I am fully exposed. 

Isn’t it my place, my responsibility to simply be humble?

To thank you for offering the cup?

To worship you for the gift of grace

I could never find or manufacture on my own?

And yet you ask me before I drink in thanks, if I can even drink it?

If I am willing?  Will I drink at all?

Must I drink it to the dregs

to receive the love and graced promised within?

I don’t even want to look again…

Though I need to know some of my reflection will remain. 

I need that painful anger in my eyes! I want that rage and desire for vindication!

I cannot bear to drink knowing what it calls me to reconcile.

If I drink the cup, if I wash your broken body down with it,

I know I will be left to feel the emptiness...then I must feel.

Then I would see my lonely, empty cup,

the one that is cracked and damaged beyond repair.

I need the dregs Jesus!  To be safe, to hold on, to survive…

Mark…can you drink this cup…Will you?

Finally, I saw in my reflection not only my sorrow but yours again.

It was indeed the deepest darkest dregs of your anger and your pain.

LORD, only you know how one can suffer to drink this cup.

Only you know how to face the true state of things

where everything is painfully connected…

Sorrow and joy, pain and beauty,

the end and a new beginning, even death and life!

I can hardly stand to look into my own eyes here,

for I know once I do I will be undone.

Take the bread and eat it, giving thanks.  And take the cup and drink it with your brothers and sisters, with whom you are united in heart, mind and spirit through Christ.  Give thanks!

So, I eat the bread.  And I drink.  With great fear and miniscule faith, I drink

every last drop 

and in the moment grace shocked my tastebuds, I realize…

This little cup was yours long before it was ever mine.

And you still choose this cup as your own simply because it would be my cup.

I’m so reluctant, yet you have gone so far, so willingly, that you allow me

to be united with you in your suffering, your death, even your resurrection!

My sorrow is still your sorrow!  You suffer with me as I drink.  

I have not been totally abandoned!

You hear my doubt and fear.  My not wanting or knowing how I can bear to go on…

I can drink this cup, Jesus.  I am willing.  I must. 

As much as I wish it to be taken from me,                       

I will drink my cup of grief and follow you.