Dear Friends of the Pilgrim Letter,

Could it be that the simple practice of sharing Holy Communion can change us? If so, can this strange, counter-cultural weekly ritual change the world? The fact that Jesus meticulously planned his last Passover with his disciples so he could spend his precious last hours sharing a meal with them should set us to thinking about the repeated practices we prioritize.

Seismic fissures are erupting in our country at the hand of our national leaders that are now adversely affecting the countries we once called friends and allies. Holy Communion, at the very least, demonstrates Christians’ radical refusal to participate in the evil wrought by empires.

Thank you for joining me in the Great Adventure, Patrick

DINNER PLANS

Supper at our house was always the result of detailed planning. Not the kind you think. Dispel visions of the Italian mama adding pinches of oregano and basil leaves to her slow simmering tomato sauce before she takes a tantalizing sip of her steaming, aromatic concoction from a wooden spoon. No, our family’s preparation had little to do with the cooking and everything to do with the grocery list.

Mondays at 5:30 PM mother would plod in the door of our crumbling white frame house on Crescent Avenue, put a pan of water to the boil for a cup of tea, and summon me to her side for my nightly run to the A&P Grocery Store. After she pressed the last drop of brown liquid from the Lipton tea bag into her cup, she would write her list on the back of an envelope or corner of a printed advertisement:

1 lb. ground beef for $.59 (definitely not ground chuck at $.69)

1 can of Le Sueur French Cut Green Beans for $.16

1 jar of Ann Page apple sauce for $.29;

a quart of milk for $.28

1 loaf of Holsum white bread for $.21

Mother would hand me a five dollar bill and add, “With six cents tax that comes to a $1.59. Bring home every penny.”

By the time I was eleven, I had memorized the weekday grocery lists and mother’s prescribed prices, but that did not keep her from writing out the lists and reciting her exacting instructions. We lived on the knife edge of eviction, which I realized even then. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had Spanish Rice — my least favorite but the prodigious vat of orange rice could be stretched to cover two meals and sometimes three. To this day I can hardly smell the dish without feeling sick. Thursday was Spaghetti, my second favorite. Friday was frozen fish sticks and tater tots. Saturday and Sunday we lived in rapt expectation that grandmother would invite us over for a meal.

Mother insisted we shop every night just in case we had an emergency — say fifty cents for a school field trip or a $5 antibiotic prescription to treat strep throat. In that case, we would cut back a dish or two or just stretch the Spanish rice rations one day longer. LBJ signed the Permanent Food Stamp Bill into law in 1964 as part of his War on Poverty. I was ten and already making my nightly rounds to the A&P, but Alabama did not adopt the Food Stamp program until it was instituted across the entire nation ten years later.

Undeterred, Mother eked out our spartan menus, with Monday night remaining my favorite weekday meal. We had hamburger patties, green beans, apple sauce, two pieces of bread, and a small glass of milk. Mother was never a premier cook. She was too tired and too broke. Nevertheless, she made sure the five of us sat down together for our evening repast. Forsaking her weariness, she would inquire about our school day and describe some humorous encounter she had at work. No one could embroider a story with flamboyant hand motions and colorfully mimicked voices better than Mom. Realizing how tired she was and how terribly poor we were, I consider her dinner preparations and table antics near miraculous. Sitting around the table with Mom was a daily practice that connected us to her love and kept us from the despair that could have swallowed us.

PASSOVER PREPARATIONS Luke 22:1-34

Evil gets a foothold - 22:1-6

Because of my weekday grocery store runs, I feel a special affinity for John and Peter, whom Jesus entrusts with his careful preparations for their Passover dinner. Jesus is well aware that this is the last meal he will share with the disciples. Resentment about his words and actions are escalating amongst religious leaders. Any threat to their favorable social and economic positions is met with brutal reprisals. Secrecy is of the essence, for while the ‘chief priests and scribes are seeking a way to kill Jesus,’ they are cognizant that many of the common people are drawn to Jesus. Their conspiracy picks up steam when one of Jesus’ inner circle, Judas Iscariot, volunteers to secretly deliver his rabbi into their hands. In Luke’s telling of the story, Judas’s motivation to destroy Jesus differs from the political leaders. They want to save face and keep their privileged standing. Judas, on the other hand, is suddenly possessed by Satan. Evil has literally taken control of him and directs his actions.

Shopping list - 22:7-13

In the meantime, John and Peter are dispatched to finalize the festive dinner. Finding a private room and getting provisions would have been quite a task. Both the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover were historically rooted in Israel’s ancient agrarian practices. By Jesus’ time, however, the two feasts had been combined and were primarily connected to Israel’s liberation from Egypt and comprised seven full days of celebrations. Rome despised the week of Passover because it aroused extreme nationalistic fervor amongst the populace, which sometimes turned violent. That’s why Governor Pontius Pilate rides into town with his armed retinue. Like most Roman officials in Palestine, he spent the majority of his time seventy-five miles north of Jerusalem at his luxurious quarters at Caesarea Maritima, situated on the sparkling Mediterranean coast halfway between modern day Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Luke does not share John’s and Peter’s Passover grocery list with us, but we can assume the shopping would have entailed several stops. We are privy to the painstaking instructions Jesus gives the two regarding the acquisition of a room — ‘be on the lookout for a man carrying a water jar (an unusual sight given that lugging around water was traditionally women’s work), trail him to his house, and ask for the “upper room” he earlier reserved for the “teacher.”’ It seems that Jesus has previously spent a significant amount of time in Jerusalem for him to have made these advanced preparations. Also, it is equally apparent that Jesus is leaving nothing to chance regarding the meal. He is determined to spend this uninterrupted time with his disciples before “all Hell breaks lose.”

Bread and wine - 22:14-20

Jesus begins the meal by assuring the twelve how much he has looked forward to sharing it with them ‘before he suffers.’ If that statement does not confuse them enough, he then adds that ‘he will not eat another Passover until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.’ In days to come, the disciples will remember these two statements as a way of both looking back and looking forward. Looking back on Jesus’ crucifixion, they will understand why he so desired to eat the Passover lamb with them. They will come to realize that Jesus is God’s Passover lamb who frees them, once and for all, from sin and death. Looking forward, the disciples will eventually see that Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are not his final acts. He will return to gather God’s people around his table in the new Jerusalem.

Traditionally, three blessings accompanied the sharing of wine during the Passover meal. Luke records two of those given by Jesus that night. First, he gives thanks and tells the disciples ‘to share the cup with one another.’ Then, after supper, he takes up the cup again and tells them that the wine is ‘his blood of the new covenant that is shed for them.’ In fifty days time, perhaps even in the same room where they are sharing supper, all of the disciples will personally experience this new covenant at Pentecost in a fiery hurricane gale of the Spirit. Just as Jeremiah predicted 600 years earlier, ‘the law of God, His will for humanity, will be written across their hearts, such that people will know God intimately from the inside out’ (Jeremiah 31:33-34). Believers’ relationship with God will become more charismatic than cerebral.

Jesus takes the bread and breaks it in front of the disciples before he shares it with them. ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ The disciples will remember Jesus rending the bread as a forecast of how the soldiers tortured and destroyed Jesus’ body only twelve hours after their dinner together. What’s more, the disciples are told to repeat the ‘breaking of the bread to remember Jesus and his sacrifice.’ Personifying our charismatic relationship with God is Luke’s teacher, Paul, who describes Jesus’ last supper fully thirty-five years before Luke and twenty years before Mark, the earliest Gospel account. Paul, who never met Jesus, insists the Lord mysteriously described the meal he shared with his disciples on that night in Jerusalem and how he expected believers to continue the practice:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Practice makes…people - 22:21-42

Whole libraries of books have been dedicated to complex questions regarding the Last Supper and Jesus’ command that we continue its observance. Even the name of the meal has been up for grabs — the Holy Eucharist, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Breaking of the Bread, and the Blessed Sacrament. Questions regarding the substance of the meal have evoked heated debate throughout the centuries. Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, a memorial feast, the real presence, the real spiritual presence, and the Eastern Orthodox term metousiosis, meaning “change of being.” More maddening still are the stifling ordinances church bodies have erected around Holy Communion delineating who has enough insider status to share the meal, which sins restrict individuals from the meal, and what ritual gymnastics must be completed before partaking of the meal. A few years ago I stumbled into some of the hurt wrought by these artificial ramparts constructed by ecclesiastical bodies. Kay asked me to visit one of her nurse friends in the hospital before she underwent serious cardiac surgery. When I asked her if she would like to receive Holy Communion, she began to weep. Her church had barred her from the table because she was divorced…twenty-five years before. When we are broken, we need the broken body of Jesus more than ever. Church officials, just like the temple elders of Jesus’ day, can fall terribly out of step with the Lord we serve.

I do not discount the discussions orbiting these multi-syllable terms and complicated debates, but my interest is in the repeated concrete practice of sharing the meal. The practice is disarmingly simple and requires nothing more than a few people praying around a table set with bread and wine, and yet this simple practice gradually changes us into God’s unique people. Is there a better portrait of Christians, during this season of painful division, than of us sitting at the table with our Lord and with each other?

It’s not all sweetness and light. Our need for change is glaringly exposed the night of the Last Supper, as well. No sooner does Jesus share the wine and bread with the disciples than he reveals that one of them sitting at the table will betray him. Moments after this partial disclosure of Judas, Jesus will castigate Peter, of all people. In a few hours’ time, Peter will publicly deny any connection with Jesus — not once but three times. Peter’s cowardice will get the better of him again over ten years later when he single-handedly almost fractures a fellowship of new Gentile Christians at Antioch (Galatians 2:11-21).

Following this unsettling revelation, Jesus describes the character of those who will share the table with him. He explains that they will be fashioned to be more and more like him. ‘In the world, leaders like to exercise power over others and garner fancy titles like patron or benefactor. That’s not the way it is going to be with you. Instead, the greatest one among you must be like the youngest, and the leader must be like the servant. Who is greater, the one who sits down to eat or the one who serves? The one who sits down, of course. But I am among you as one who serves.’

Not dogma but practice transforms Christians. Generously serving others does not come naturally. Greed and self-preservation do. Therefore, practice is essential. A small book by Nora Gallagher, The Sacred Meal, illustrates the importance of practice. Gallagher begins her book about Holy Communion with a quote by Heda Kovaly, an Auschwitz survivor who returned to her native Prague after the Nazi’s surrender. The revelation of what she experienced once back at home is sobering:

Two months after liberation, people had stopped cheering and embracing. They had stopped giving away food and had started selling it on the black market. Those who had compromised their integrity during the Occupation, now began to calculate and plan, to watch and spy on each other, to cover their tracks…It was becoming evident to many that while evil grows all by itself, good can be achieved only through hard struggle and maintained through tireless effort. (Kovaly, Prague)

Reflecting on Kovaly’s words, Gallagher declares that the practice of Holy Communion has the same intention as other spiritual practices such as prayer, fasting, or pilgrimage: “to gradually move us out of one place and into another.” Considered that way, the practice of Holy Communion is akin to athletic practice. We venture to the track, the field, or the gym to move beyond our lousy physical condition to pursue better health. In the current milieu, our spiritual condition requires similar practice. Looking around us, we nod our heads that “evil does seem to grow all by itself” — and fast! What’s more alarming is when we “open the hoods” of our own personal life and find that evil is flourishing there, too. Rejecting evil and living in a different way requires persistent spiritual practice. (Gallagher, Meal)

I am not prescribing a theology of works. Far from it. We are redeemed and made right with God, not by our own faithfulness, but by the faithfulness of Christ. The centerpiece of the New Testament is succinctly expressed with just eighteen words in Romans 5:8: ‘God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ Nevertheless, my growing concern is the same as Gallagher’s — how do we daily live as those redeemed by Christ and not participate in the proliferating evil “growing” all around us? The answer is practice, and the most customary act we practice alongside other Christians is Holy Communion. We can scarcely overlook that Jesus spends his last fleeting hours with the disciples sharing an intimate meal with them and punctuates the experience with this command, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ Afterwards, with the clock ticking before his arrest, he invites them to pray with him so that ‘they will not enter into temptation.’ The light of the Holy Communion the disciples share with Jesus in the upper room is meant to illuminate their darkness at Gethsemane and the procession of dark Gethsemanes that they will experience in days to come.

Dark empires

Darkness surrounded the table in the upper room where Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples. The religious authorities had orchestrated a sordid conspiracy to destroy Jesus and would soon enlist the Roman Empire to complete their dirty work. Walter Brueggemann, the leading Christian scholar on the Hebrew prophets, declares, “Empires are never built nor are they maintained on the basis of compassion.” That is true of the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day and of the United States presently. (Brueggemann, Prophetic)

The new administration seems to delight in sowing division both internationally and domestically. Shortly before Pearl Harbor Day, the White House published its New Security Strategy. The thirty-three page document was gleefully received by Moscow, Beijing, and Hungary but received strong rebuke from most European Union nations. The White House criticized Europe for its “civilization erasure,” counseled them to not expand NATO, and warned that the U.S. will begin “cultivating resistance” within the European Union. The warning is a threat that the U.S. may support far right and Neo-Nazi groups plaguing their democracies. The security document was so demeaning that a French government official declared, “this is an extremely brutal clarification” of the White House’s ideological posture. More painful still was the response from Norbert Röttgen, a senior legislator in the German Conservative Party: “For the first time since the end of WWII, American is not on our side on a matter of war and peace in Europe. It has sided with the aggressor against the interests of the attacked country, Ukraine, and against European security in general. It want to mediate between NATO and Russia, which means the U.S. no longer defines itself as the leading member of NATO and defines Europe as a strategic target.” When considered through the lens of Pearl Harbor and our alliances with Europe that saved the world from Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, the administration’s posture is a backhanded slap heard around the world. (Reuters, Brutal; NY Times, European Security)

At approximately the same time, the Department of the Interior announced that America’s National Parks would no longer offer free admission on January 19, Martin Luther King Day, nor will free admission be granted on June 19, Juneteenth. In their place, free admission to the National Parks will be honored on June 14, Flag Day…which, coincidentally, is President Trump’s birthday. Consider for a moment the gravity of these changes. Martin Luther King, Jr. is an American Christian martyr in the cause of freedom and the gospel. Juneteenth celebrates June 19, 1865, the date that black slaves were liberated in Galveston, TX — the last major territory held by Confederates. This was more than two years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. At last, on that day in Galveston, all 4 million slaves gained their freedom in a country that was founded on the promise of liberty eighty-nine years before. Flag Day in place of the four-year crucible of the Civil War where the United States finally lived up to its foundation? Trump’s birthday in place of Martin Luther King’s? This is flagrant American apostasy. (Department of the Interior, Park Access)

Finally, this morning I read that the administration is allowing factories to double the amount of formaldehyde that is considered safe to inhale. The chemical is related to cancer, such that no amount of exposure is acceptable. The World Health Organization has asserted that breathing in the chemical leads to both Leukemia and nasopharynx cancer. Formaldehyde is also known to cause severe respiratory problems. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was already moving to repeal substantial rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions and fine particulate matter emitted from factories, as well as roll back emission and fuel standards from automobiles. Nearly seventy coal plants have been exempted from rules targeting emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants. Deregulation and weakening of EPA oversight was begun during the first Trump administration, and the march continues. Furthermore, the EPA is cutting the protection for millions of miles of streams and wetlands, such that they will be vulnerable to a host of pollutants and pesticides. Protections for 59 million acres of national forest land (that is roadless wilderness areas) have been rescinded to allow logging and road building. At the same time, many wildlife refuges are losing their protections from mining, as well as oil and gas drilling. All this is being done to Americans and to future Americans while the plutocrats implementing these regressive actions retreat to their pristine, isolated havens. (NY Times, Politico, Washington Post, AP News, People, Brookings, The Guardian, NRDC)

Choosing the Light

Christ knows the world he bequeaths to us is shot through with darkness, such that we are almost choking on it. Yet the darkness is no match for his love: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ (John 1:5). To yoke ourselves to the light and dispel the darkness, he gave us the practice of Holy Communion to share with others. When Jesus commands the disciples, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ Gallagher muses if he really meant, ‘Do this to remember what we did together’ — healing the sick, curing lepers, relieving those possessed by demons, feeding the poor, traveling together, eating together, crying together, laughing together — and doing it all as friends. Gallagher muses a bit more about Jesus’ statement, ‘This is my body given for you.’ She recommends that instead of solely contemplating Jesus’ dead body, consider lifting your eyes to see others kneeling along the altar rail with you and see Jesus’ living body. When we do, a small miracle may begin within us:

A practice is meant to connect you with what is deeply alive, to stir you with the same kind of aliveness that the disciples of Jesus must have felt around him. A practice trains and disciplines the mind to head toward compassion instead of greed. A practice is not about finding exactly the right set of rules that will make you “good” but it is meant to establish a connection to a world that is both tenuous and surprising, outside of time and in it. A practice is designed to train the mind to think about something other than (ourselves), and to recover the thread, the meaning. (Gallagher, Meal)

SOURCES

Ajasa, Amudalat, “EPA to abandon air pollution rule that would prevent thousands of U.S. deaths,” The Washington Post, Nov. 25. 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/11/25/pm25-air-pollution-rule-trump-epa/

Axelrod, Josh, “Trump Interior Secretary’s Orders Make Public Lands Ground Zero for Drilling & Mining,” NRDC, Feb. 20, 2025. https://www.nrdc.org/media/trump-interior-secretarys-orders-make-public-lands-ground-zero-drilling-mining

Baker, Cayli, “The Trump administration’s major environmental deregulations,” Brookings, Dec. 15, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trump-administrations-major-environmental-deregulations/

Brueggemann, Walter, The Prophetic Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1978. As cited by Nora Gallagher.

Coleman, Zach, Guillén, Alex, “EPA launches attack on ‘holy grail’ of climate science — and dozens of enviro rules,” Politico, Mar. 12, 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/12/epa-launches-attack-on-holy-grail-of-climate-science-and-dozens-of-enviro-rules-00226731

Daly, Matthew, “Trump exempts nearly 70 coal plants from Biden-era rule on mercury and other toxic air pollution,” Apr. 15, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/trump-coal-power-plants-epa-exemptions-zeldin-2cd9f2697b5f46a88ab9882ab6fd1641

Department of the Interior, “Department of the Interior Announces Modernized, More Affordable National Park Access,” Nov. 25, 2025. https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/department-interior-announces-modernized-more-affordable-national-park-access

Domonske, Camila, “Trump administration rolls back fuel economy standards,” NPR, Dec. 3, 2025.

Erlanger, Steven, “Challenges to European Security God Beyond Trump’s Disdain,” NY Times, Dec. 10, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/world/europe/europe-security-russia-us.html?

Gallagher, Nora, The Sacred Meal, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009.

Kovaly, Heda, Under a Cruel Star: Life in Prague, 1941-1968, Teaneck, NJ: Holmes and Meier, 1997. As citied by Nora Gallagher.

Hiroko, Tabuchi, “Starting With Formaldehyde, Trump Administration Reassesses Chemical Risks, NY Times, Dec. 10, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/climate/starting-with-formaldehyde-trump-administration-reassesses-chemical-risks.html?

Nowell, Cecilia, “Trump rescinds protections on 59m acres of national forest to allow logging,” The Guardian, Jun. 24, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/trump-administration-national-forests-logging

Patella, Michael F., The Gospel According to Luke, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005.

Reuters, “France calls new US security doctrine ‘brutal clarification,’” Dec. 10, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/france-calls-new-us-security-doctrine-brutal-clarification-2025-12-09/

Shultz, Lynn Cara, “Trump Administration Rolls Back Limits on ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Water. Experts Say It’s ‘Harmful’ and ‘Illegal,’” People, May 14, 2025. https://people.com/trump-administration-rolls-back-limits-forever-chemicals-water-11734763

PHOTO CREDITS

Mother with Children, Art Institute of Chicago

Broken Bread, Brittany Martin

Polluting Factory, Chris LeBoutillier