Reflection March 20, 2008

Today is Resurrection Sunday. My first Easter in prison. Surely the regime can’t continue to keep almost 10,000 political prisoners in its gaols! In here, it is much easier to understand how the men in the Bible felt, stripping themselves of everything that was superfluous. Many of the prisoners have already heard that they have lost their homes, their furniture, and everything they owned. Our families are broken up. Many of our children are wandering the streets, their father in one prison, their mother in another.
There is not a single cup. But a score of Christian prisoners experienced the joy of celebrating communion – without bread or wine. The communion of empty hands. The non-Christians said: “We will help you; we will talk quietly so that you can meet.” Too dense a silence would have drawn the guards’ attention as surely as the lone voice of the preacher. “We have no bread, nor water to use instead of wine,” I told them, “but we will act as though we had.”
“This meal in which we take part,” I said, “reminds us of the prison, the torture, the death and final victory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The bread is the body which he gave for humanity. The fact that we have none represents very well the lack of bread in the hunger of so many millions of human beings. The wine, which we don’t have today, is his blood and represents our dream of a united humanity, of a just society, without difference of race or class.”
I held out my empty hand to the first person on my right, and placed it over his open hand, and the same with the others: “Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Afterward, all of us raised our hands to our mouths, receiving the body of Christ in silence. “Take, drink, this is the blood of Christ which was shed to seal the new covenant of God with men. Let us give thanks, sure that Christ is here with us, strengthening us.”
We gave thanks to God, and finally stood up and embraced each other. A while later, another non-Christian prisoner said to me: “You people have something special, which I would like to have.” The father of the dead girl came up to me and said: “Pastor, this was a real experience! I believe today I discovered what faith is. Now, I believe I am on the road.”
-From Visions of a World Hungry by Thomas G. Pettepiece

Lord, you amaze me as I read this today I thought of your glory and am reminded of what it is that you have called me to. You have called me to the office of Word and Sacrament and here I see the Word proclaimed to a people in the ugliness of a prison that is far worse, I’m sure, than any prison that people in the United States could ever imagine and the sacraments were present not directly in the elements, but in the lack of the elements which were being kept from these men. The hope that resonates in this is that God is present in spite of the actions of men that desire to keep that hope quenched. The simpleness of the act here is the great evangelistic tool that is given to those that are open to the action of God, the Word that is written on the hearts of those that truly love the Lord.
I feel called to feed a world hungry for the Gospel of the Lord and the fellowship given alone in God! Many of those are sitting within the pews in the congregation and many more are outside of the doors making noise. What can make faith real in the hearts of the hearers? That is the work of God and the work of our Lord is amazing!