Weevils in the Wafers
The first time I officiated over communion was in a small rural church.
The communion stewards prepared little crackers and individual cups of juice, brought them into the small sanctuary, and set the table. During communion, the practice of that congregation was for the minister to serve the crackers and juice to each person as they knelt at the altar rail.
I took the little silver tray of crackers, started at one end of the rail, and made my way along, serving each person the means of grace.
The body of Christ for you…
The body of Christ for you…
The body of Christ for you…
About halfway through the second pass, I looked down at the tray and thought, What the heck is that? Are those crackers … crawling?
Turning away from the rail to get a closer look, I had a brief internal freak-out. Mixed in with the crackers were a bunch of little black bugs moving underneath the pile. Weevils, I figured.
Weevils in the wafers.
Of course, a lot was going through my head.
Okay, this has the potential to unravel.
Do I stop the service?
Do I say something?
Do I pretend this isn’t happening and hope no one notices a little added protein?
I don’t remember every detail from preacher school, but I’m pretty sure this situation wasn’t covered in the clergy training manual.
What am I supposed to do here?
I know. Awkward, right?
But it was a lesson learned.
I guess I expected a holy moment to be more—oh, I don’t know—orderly? Controlled? Predictable?
This was not that.
Nevertheless, something holy showed up in the middle of our very human lives—unwilling to behave the way I thought sacred moments were supposed to behave.
This isn’t just true of communion. It’s often true of grace itself.
God’s grace tends to move into our lives in ways where we get more than we bargained for. More truth. More love. More life.
We often come to grace hoping it will soothe us without disturbing us—bless us without changing us. But grace doesn’t stay neatly where we put it. It keeps moving, working its way beneath the surface, stretching us beyond what we thought we were ready for.
Not exactly like weevils moving through wafers. But still… something is happening in us, around us, and through us.
The apostle Paul says this is the kind of grace by which we stand. It shows up in ordinary moments—the conversations we didn’t plan, the interruptions we didn’t choose, the seasons of life that refuse to stay tidy or predictable.
And in those moments, this grace invites us not just to receive, but to respond—to step into a way of being in the world different from anything we had imagined.
Much love,
Pastor Gregg
