A Dancing Communion

We attend Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. It is no longer a Southern Baptist church. We pulled out of the Southern Baptist Convention a few years ago when the dangerously fundamental faction of the Southern Baptist Convention reared it ugly head, again, and started trying to mandate yet another of its idiotic ideologies.

As a result of our no longer being a Southern Baptist church, I enjoy adding the line, “We’re not that kind of Baptist,” to any conversation in which I happen to tell someone what church I am a member of. While, “We’re not that kind of Baptist,” isn’t Wilshire’s official mantra, for me it says a lot about the church I choose to be a part of. Especially when I get to say it to someone who happens to be Southern Baptist. I guess that’s the evil preacher’s kid in me.

Anyway, we’re not that kind of Baptist, however, we do observe communion, or Lord’s Supper as we sometimes call it, in a similar fashion. In case you’re not familiar with Baptist communion, in a nutshell, here’s how it usually works:

The minister stands at the communion table at the front of the sanctuary and leads communion. What is actually said and done varies from church to church, and minister to minister. Then ushers move to the communion table, take plates with the communion wafers and pass them to the people in the pews. When everyone has their communion wafer the minister, quoting Jesus, says something like, “This is my body, do this in remembrance of me,” and congregates eat their wafers.

And the whole thing is repeated with the wine. (but really juice…we may not be that kind of Baptist, but we’re still Baptist!) But this time the pastor says, “This is my blood, do this in remembrance of me.”

I had never taken communion any other way until I was well into my teens. Truth be known, I had no idea that there was any other way for a good portion of my life.

Baptists do not observe communion every Sunday. We could if we wanted to, but I like the fact that whenever we have communion it is a special Sunday. It’s usually a very worshipful experience for me.

However, last week’s communion wasn’t worshipful like it usually is. It wasn’t because of any kind of funky mood that I was in, but believe me my mood has caused more than one Lord’s Supper Sunday morning to come and go without my feeling or experiencing much of anything.

This Sunday it was due to an odd, almost scientific happening.

The plates, you see, that are used to carry the wafers and juice are highly polished silver. I mean they’re practically using mirrors as trays to carry both the body and the blood of Christ to the congregation.

We were sitting in the balcony when I noticed the reflection of a circle dancing on the ceiling of the sanctuary. The first thing I saw was a kind of a glare bouncing off the plate that the usher was bringing in my direction. Then I looked up to see the circular pattern on the ceiling.

After getting my communion wafer, I watched the pattern from his plate glide back and forth along the ceiling as he served the last couple of rows in the balcony.

It wasn’t until I was watching the usher, or rather the reflection from his plate, leave the balcony that I saw the rest of the ceiling. Everywhere I looked dancing circles of reflecting light adorned the sanctuary’s ceiling. They were swaying, and rocking to their own silent tune as they gracefully moved around the ceiling.

Eventually, the ushers stacked all the plates back into two piles on the communion table. All that was left was two motionless overlapping circles making a giant venn diagram on the ceiling.

I sat there staring at these now motionless circles resting peacefully on the ceiling. I couldn’t stop thinking about these circles. Circles that, only moments before, had been doing their secret dance across the ceiling. It was the same dance they do every communion Sunday, I assume, but this time they had an audience.

That’s when my thinking started to shift from the circles of light to the apostles and the Lord’s Supper. I don’t really know what caused the shift in my focus. Maybe the light, maybe the dancing, maybe the complicated simplicity of the circles. Whatever it was, I sat there thinking about these guys who were, unbeknownst to them, sharing a last meal with my Lord and Savior.

What was going through their minds?

What did they think was going on?

Did any of them really understand who Jesus was?

The trays holding the tiny cups of juice, juice that symbolizes Christ’s blood, didn’t make any circles on the ceiling. My best guess is that the juice and the cups absorb light rather than reflect it.

Whatever the reason, I wasn’t able to sink my thoughts into the dancing circles a second time that morning.


No, last week’s communion wasn’t worshipful like it usually is…and I’m kind of glad.