Parable

COHORT 7

Luke knew it was a bad sign when he discovered—at age five—that he was allergic to the body of Christ. His fellow Presbyterians would try to console him by pointing out that the bread wasn’t Jesus’ actual body—after all, they weren’t Catholic—but calling it the Bread of Life only further convinced Luke that he’d been forsaken by God. For him, it might as well have been called the Bread of Anaphylaxis. Within minutes of his first communion, he was writhing on the carpeted sanctuary floor like a Pentecostalist as his parents called 911—so he hadn’t been ready for the sacrament, they reflected—and the congregation stared at the apparent exorcism in consternation. A doctor at the hospital informed Luke’s parents that if it weren’t for epinephrine, the cursed challah might have killed him.

Despite his near-death experience, Luke learned to love communion. There was Toby from the choir, Karen with her kids, and Mary with the mysterious accent. There were kids whose parents scolded them for taking too much, and seniors whose pastor scolded them for taking too little. It was calming, Luke thought, to watch the line of bodies inch forward in gossamer light subdivided by the stained-glass windows. People wore a certain face when they were waiting for something.

Eventually, in an effort to be more inclusive, the Session invested in gluten-free wafers which, as it happened, were also eggless. What they did contain was a mystery, but each month Luke dipped his wafer into the wine with the zeal of a convert. After he turned 13, the pastor asked him if he wouldn’t mind serving. As he held the chalice in one hand and the pristine cloth in the other, half-whispering to each congregant that this was the Cup of Salvation, shed for you, then tipping the liquid toward each person’s lips, adjusting for height, he could imagine that he was the pyramidal Jesus in Leonardo’s famous painting. Or rather—he corrected himself—its Protestant equivalent.

When he was sixteen, a plague engulfed the earth. The church doors shut indefinitely; the pastor started recording videos of herself and posting them on YouTube. Worshiping before a screen with his parents on their living room couch, Luke was depressed to see that the most popular Worship Experience had four views. Just Toby, Karen, Mary, and his family, he imagined. The pastor began driving to congregants’ homes and delivering tablespoons of sourdough starter which had been passed down through the church for 150 years. The starter had the pallor and consistency of glue, but Luke fed it diligently and kneaded the mature dough according to the pastor’s instructions. The dough grew by itself, just as the pastor had said it would. In another dimension, he considered, leaven might have been the past participle of leave.

Luke baked the dough and let it cool and served it to his family. Now, at home, he could tear off as big a piece as he wanted. Though newly baked, the bread tasted stale, but his mother reminded him as she rebooted the WiFi that the taste was never the point of communion. Luke rolled his eyes. Somewhere, he figured, there was already a parable about this.