I wrote this Pastoral Letter for people whose faces and presence and voices I am missing. Their absence feels like a hunger that won't go away.
John 6.35. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” trusting God to nourish our bodies. But what feeds our hearts and strengthens our souls is Jesus himself. Our inner hungers of longing for love, waiting for hope, searching for meaning and life in its fullness, can only be satisfied when we come to Christ, and believe in him.
Amongst the most difficult experiences over these past weeks of lock down has been the loss of other people’s company, companionship and presence. We are nourished by relationships of love and affection, and we hunger for conversation face to face. To be with people who share our lives, laugh at our jokes, sympathise when life is difficult and who understand us, is one of the most human forms of inner nourishment.
That’s because over years of memories and friendship, talking and walking together, caring and taking an interest in each other, they have become the soil in which our lives have taken root. We hunger for that communion of spirit, and thirst for the presence of those in whose friendship, love and presence we grow and flourish.
Baptists don’t tend to talk much about the communion of saints. Yet our way of being the church is based on Paul’s idea of being the Body of Christ. Each one of us is a member, joined together, muscle, joint and sinew, into a co-ordinated body with Christ as the head. Even when we are not together, we are joined by being in Christ and Christ in us, a communion of saints.
So, yes, social distancing makes our gatherings impossible for now, and will make them difficult for quite a while into the future when lock down is eased. But we are nourished by the bread of life, we belong to the Body of Christ, and though we hunger for each other’s company and fellowship, the Body is kept strong by the Spirit of the living Christ. Through all this disruption and interruption of our lives, the joints, sinews and muscles that join us are kept healthy by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit.”
Reflection: My guess is we will never again take for granted the freedom to meet together as the Body of Christ. We will appreciate more than ever how much our congregational praise and singing strengthen our faith, and nurture the bonds of fellowship in Christ. The communion service will be a regular recalibrating of what is most important in our lives. When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” that wasn’t just a stated fact; it is an invitation, now, to belong within the Body of Christ, and to be nourished within the fellowship of Christ’s people.
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