Something mysteriously other

It's a question I'd never really faced before my spouse was given the job, an odd but inescapable job whose detritus sits on our counter once a week these days: what do you do with left-over communion bread? My wife was assigned the blessed task of gathering the bread, cutting it up, putting it on plates on the table at the front of the church. And, she picks what's left up and takes it along home. So here 'tis.

But what do you do with left-over elements that, for an instant at least, were the body of our Lord?

Just try to imagine any particular physical thing that carries as much relevant reverence, that has such a glorious Galilean history, that has, in its clear innocence, created such immense conflict. This bread changed the world, and that was long before the Reformation. When it's touched by one of God's servants, some say it becomes--it actually becomes--the body of Christ. It's no longer bread; it's the body of our Lord, broken for us.

To be clear, that's not a sacrament that's all that strange. Tons of communities throughout history believed religiously in similar bloody transformations. The Pawnees, right next door in Nebraska, once upon a time carried out human sacrifice, not because they enjoyed taking note of some enemy girl's agony, but because they believed her blood would nurture their husbandry and bless them thereby with good fortunes. 

The Protestant Reformation blew up the church for more than theological reasons. More than a few German land barons were thrilled with this loose canon named Luther, not because they were attuned to his justification-by-faith theology, but because he threatened the omnipotence of the Roman Catholic oligarchy. 

Still, people--my people too--fought hard to say that the bread and wine was not the actual body and blood of Christ, but a symbol thereof, the belief with which I was born and reared (which doesn't mean it was right). If this bread, when it stood in the plate, is just a symbol, then I can toss this bag full of leftovers beneath the bird feeder, right? 

Somehow I can't help thinking that's sacrilege. 

It sounds scriptural to give what's left to the poor, but that would be a gesture far more persuasive in theory than practice. I mean, it's less than a quarter of a loaf.

Okay, I'm not a total Catholic, but let's just say it's not just bread but something mysteriously other. If that's true, is it true only when the little cubes are in church, only when the preacher says it is, only when people come up and take one of these in their fingers and, on command, eat it? Is that what I should be thinking? Once the last chords of the doxology have ended, at that moment, I'm to believe that what has been magically transformed is no longer the astute mystery it's just been? What's changed?

And if that's true, then haven't we really finally--after 500 long and bloody years--simply returned to the Mother Church we left when Luther took up hammer and nail? If the only force that can make this bread into something mysteriously other is the preacher, in the church, in worship, then haven't we left the Reformation's roots? All this "sola" stuff from last week's reformation service, that's just old hat, right? 

I don't know what my wife is going to do, and it's her problem. She's the elder. I don't think she's been throwing it out. I'm quite sure we have some in our freezer from previous sacraments. 

Me?--I just don't know. It's all a mystery.

Bread pudding maybe? She loves it. I didn't know what it was until she made some not long ago. Sweeten it up nice, and it makes a darling Depression-era dessert. Besides, it's already been blessed. I know. I was there.

Bread pudding. Maybe that's it. 

I'll bring it up.