by Shannon Hess

Our short time in El Salvador left me with a lot to process and a lot to reflect on, much of which I haven’t even tried to begin to put into words. I can’t honestly say that I really put much thought into Communion before our congregation started asking questions and making it a part of regular conversation. It’s a routine practice that I had simply taken for granted having grown up going to church regularly. I noticed different variances as I got older and found my “home church” in several different denominations over the years, but usually found myself taking a quick sip of wine from a tiny plastic cup while trying to think of the recent mistakes I made and needed to repent of.

El Salvador was the first time that I began to see that Communion is more than a rote taking of two elements. It’s more than mini plastic cups of grape juice with stale crackers or goblets of wine with a pinch of bread. It’s a remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice and remembering that we are part of the active body of Christ. It is a time to remember that we are called to continuously work to meet one another’s needs and sometimes to sacrifice personal things in order to do so. In the Base Communities, the people shared much of what they had, and they shared each other’s burdens. It was no different with us. They provided the group of us, strangers in a foreign land, with a place to stay. The offered us pupusas (bread) and corn coffee (wine). They let us into their homes and into their lives. They gave us what they had to meet our needs, an example of when Christ gave what he had to meet our need of closeness with God.

There seems to true blending between hospitality and communion. I was astounded by the warm hospitality we were extended in the small Central American country. I found it a stark contrast to the superficial hospitality that the US south is known for. In a sermon preached in August 2019, Melissa Florer-Bixler said something along the lines of “within hospitality we meet the Divine.” In El Salvador, I saw a Jesus and a faith I had never previously seen or felt. I tasted a Communion different from any other before, an experience that will probably never be quite replicated again.