REAL BREAD, REAL WINE, AND THE TRAYS THAT TRAVELED 8000 KILOMETERS

Nothing was left untouched by COVID. Not even the way we do the Lord’s Supper.

As a church, we grieved when we could not participate in communion during the height of the pandemic. And as restrictions slowly eased, we sought to reinstate the practice of the Lord’s Supper as quickly as possible. In our church tradition, the Lord’s Supper is more than a periodic memorial of the death of Jesus, it is a regular spiritual encounter with the crucified Savior in which He feeds and strengthens us for faithful living. Thus, we turned early to prefilled communion cups with wafers, all neatly self-contained. It was not our preferred way to serve communion; the plastic seals were not always easy to remove, it was all grape juice, and the wafers had no taste or texture to speak of. Nonetheless, our Lord Jesus faithfully met us week after week.

When your elders began discussing a return to a more “normal” way of doing the Lord’s Supper last year, we began a conversation with Peter and Diana Scholtens, Jeff and Laura Wiersma, Len and Tracey Vis, and Marg DeBoer about rebooting the New City Communion Team. In those conversations, we discovered a strong desire to provide real bread and real wine (alongside grape juice) for our church. Additionally, there was a desire to move away from dipping the bread into the cups (a practice called “intinction”), as well as a desire to continue eating and drinking at the same time as a church.

In the end, we are deeply grateful to Peter and Diana for agreeing to coordinate the Communion Support Team (procuring the bread and wine and coordinating the serving team), and to Jeff and Laura for agreeing to coordinate the Communion Preparation Team (preparing the bread and wine before each service).

Yuliya and her husband

As we prepared to roll out the new way of doing communion (at least new for our congregation), we discovered that we needed wine and bread trays. I was tasked with obtaining them, and I quickly found myself looking at hundreds of expensive metal trays that looked exactly the same. I was curious to see what else was out there and I found some wooden trays that looked nicer but were even more expensive. My wife Miranda, hearing of my fruitless pursuit, soon found a vendor on Etsy (an online marketplace where independent artists and artisans can sell handmade products) that was selling custom laser cut communion trays made of wood. Happily, these wooden trays were actually less expensive than the standard metal ones and they looked nicer (at least to me).

I contacted the vendor about custom trays and our conversation soon revealed that the vendor was a young woman by the name of Yuliya who lived in the eastern region of Ukraine. When I asked about when we could expect shipment of the trays, she replied, “Shipping takes 2-5 weeks and manufacturing 3 weeks. Because of the war, we don’t have electricity most of the day.” It was a sobering moment and a reminder of the senseless war that still rages in Ukraine.

Oasis Church in the City of Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine

I asked Yuliya what made her start making laser cut wooden supplies for churches in Ukraine. And she replied that she started making wooden trays for her own small Baptist church called Oasis in the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk Oblast region of Ukraine. The church leaders of Oasis, like me, looked at buying standard metal trays and found them to be very expensive. So, Yuliya volunteered to make their trays out of wood. People from other churches saw their communion trays and started ordering custom trays from Yuliya.

Sadly, due to the war, members of the church had to flee the city and the church had to stop meeting shortly thereafter.

I received the trays a few weeks ago, which, according to my calculations, traveled 8,174 km from Donetsk to Hamilton. The trays were beautifully crafted and carefully packaged. They survived the long journey without any noticeable damage. I thanked Yuliya for the trays and I promised her that we would pray for her and her family, for an end to the war, and that her church would soon be able to regather in worship.

We will celebrate the Lord’s Supper with our new trays, with real bread and wine, on Sunday, April 2nd, the first day of Holy Week. To mark this special occasion, our Senior Pastor Connan Kublik will preach a sermon about the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Be sure to taste the flavor and texture of the bread in your mouth as you consider how Christ offered up His body for you. Be sure to allow the bittersweetness of the wine to linger in your mouth as you consider how Christ bled for you.

We will be employing five servers to expedite the serving of the bread and wine. All cups will be filled with wine except for the sealed cups which are filled with grape juice. All bread will be gluten-free. As the trays are passed from seat to seat, please hold on to the elements until everyone has been served. We will eat and drink together when prompted. After the service, please be considerate and dispose of the used cups in the plastics recycling bin just outside our worship space.

Church, as you participate in the sacrament this coming Sunday, will you please pray for Oasis Church as well as the many other churches in Ukraine who have had their lives upended by war? Will you please thank the Scholtens and the Wiersmas for stepping up to make this happen? And will you please pray for our own church and yourselves, that the eyes of our hearts will be opened anew to the wonders of what Jesus subjected himself to as he approached Good Friday, the grim glory of his suffering on the cross, and the world-changing reality of his bodily resurrection on Easter Sunday?

Friends, may this Holy Week be a wondrously meaningful one for us all!

Yuliya’s Etsy Storefront (BobrLaserCut): Click here!

Oasis Church’s Instagram Page: Click here!