Virtual real presence
A child tore off a piece of bread and fed it to her mother, saying, “This is for you, because God loves you.” The mother took the morsel into her mouth, swallowed it, and promptly posted news of the feeding on Facebook.
The mother’s report wasn’t a disrespectful act, born out of a short attention span or the urge to disrupt a service through the vanities of social media. The post was part of her worship; she was sharing the beauty of that sacred moment with her community.
The worshipers surrounded her, even though her daughter was the only other person in the room. They celebrated communion, even though the walls enclosing them were not constructed of cold limestone and lacked the glimmers of stained glass. The mother and daughter fed one another with the consecrated bread of life, even though the minister had never broken their particular loaf. They joined in a chorus of prayer, even though the only voices reverberating in the room were their own. The mother and daughter prayed with Extravagance, an online congregation of the United Church of Christ.
