On the corner of 12th and Veneta is an empty church in which stands an old communion table. The table does not look old because it was designed to look modern with angular, geometric lines. When built, the table was not put together for quality but for price, made of oak laminate covered pressboard, making it heavy and hard to move. It sits at the back of an eight-inch elevated stage, waiting for people to gather around once again and remember.

I first encountered that communion table after a summer-long cocaine binge which left me depressed and suicidal. I called my father in Japan with no warning and, in desperation, blurted out, “Dad, I just spent twelve-hundred dollars on cocaine, and I’m in Scientology.” I expected my father, a Dr. Jekyll of fatherly love and a Mr. Hyde of hidden rage in our home, to blast me with his always at ready temper. Instead, all he said was, “I’m flying home tomorrow.” The next day, I rode from the Wallingford district in Seattle out to the Seattle Tacoma airport to meet my dad.

My brother and sister joined me on the international concourse. We sat waiting for him as he was delayed for over an hour in customs. All along, I expected him to lose his temper in public, making a scene in the crowded airport. I longed to see him while dreading to see him. Finally, he came through the double doors opening from international customs, carrying a large suitcase in each hand. When he caught sight of me, gaunt and skeletal at a hundred and twelve pounds, he didn’t say a word. He just set down his bags, rushed over, and swept me into his arms: no rage, no words, only grace.

He spent a month with me, moving me out of the drug-infested house in which I had been living and into an apartment overlooking Lake Union and downtown Seattle. He arranged for me to seek counseling with a friend and colleague, Reverend Carl Taylor of Interbay Covenant Church. In those days, I was as unstable as a wagonload of nitroglycerin. Repeated thoughts of profanity against the Holy Spirit plagued my mind, frazzled and paranoid from a summer-long cocaine binge. Rev. Carl Taylor came to my apartment, where he and my father had me kneel on the carpet. They both laid hands on me and prayed, resulting in quietness and peace that settled into my thoughts; the profanity has never returned.

After spending a month with him, I rode my motorcycle back out to SeaTac to see my father off on his return to Japan. I remember riding back to my new apartment, determined to stay sober but doubting if I could. I continued attending Interbay Covenant Church for their Sunday services and a midweek men’s Bible study. On the next Communion Sunday, I had my first encounter with a then new, modern-looking communion table with geometric, angular lines. I don’t remember anything about the service, what sermon Pastor Carl preached, or the music sung; I do remember a profound sense of forgiveness received as I took of the shed blood of Jesus and His broken body. I attended Interbay for another six weeks until my friends invited me to the dance bars in Pioneer Square. One drink led to another, which led to another, with led to another two years of wild drinking and drugging.

My wild living culminated in a serious head injury with five bleeds in my brain--leaving me unable to speak. Ironically, the head injury brought me to my senses. Twenty or so years later, I had been serving First Covenant Church in Bremerton, Washington for about seven years. I received an email from the conference saying that Interbay had an old communion table they were giving away. Whoever wanted the table should contact the church and arrange to pick it up. Our communion table at First Covenant had wobbly legs and had been repaired and glued so often that it was now on the verge of being beyond repair. I quickly called the secretary at Interbay and said that we would be grateful to come and pick up the table.

A friend from church, who had himself recently come out of a prolonged addiction to crystal meth, helped me hook up our small utility trailer to our car and then joined me to drive down to Tacoma, across the Narrows Bridge, then back north again to Seattle.

When we arrived at Interbay, I asked in the church office where to pick up the communion table. The secretary directed me to a covered parking area behind the church in the alley. They had carried the table out to one of the parking spaces and covered it with an old tarp. When my friend David and I uncovered the table, I immediately recognized the communion table from my youth. I told David the story of my short stay at Interbay. We laughed. Two old recovering drug addicts picking up a communion table in a back alley might have looked a bit suspicious.

On the following Communion Sunday, as I stood before our new but old communion table, I was overwhelmed by the powerful grace of Jesus that had brought both David and me out of uncontrollable lives, enslaved to drugs and alcohol, into the fullness of forgiveness, peace, and restored lives. When David came forward, I offered him the cup, saying, “Take and drink, the blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.” Our eyes locked as we remembered from whence we had been rescued. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus’ presence beckoning at the table, “Remember my grace. Bring back to mind what I have done for you on the cross. Take of my body and blood, broken and shed for you, remembering my complete forgiveness and pardon.” David and my eyes glistened with tears, not out of guilt or shame, but out of gratitude for the sheer, extravagant, and generous-to-a-fault grace of Jesus.

Now, over forty years after I received communion served from a table at Interbay Covenant Church, that table stands in an empty church building, abandoned for nearly a year now. We at Grace Covenant Church long to be together once again, praising our God in song, hearing the word read and preached, gathering around an old communion table to remember the shed blood of Jesus and His body broken for us, and living into the embrace of a loving community of a ragtag bunch of redeemed and forgiven sinners made saints. I do not know when that time might come.

But just as we long for the embrace of the body of Christ, so Jesus longs for us. We wonder why He takes people home; I am wondering why He leaves us here. These days I have an overwhelming sense of the immeasurable, boundless, unconditional love of Jesus for us all. The one who so loved us that He gave Himself for us is sitting on the edge of His throne, restraining Himself from bringing us immediately into His loving presence. I suspect that He loves us so much He can hardly wait to bring us home. On that day, He will rush to us, sweeping us into His arms and embrace, wiping every tear from our eyes, whispering to us that “there will no longer be any death, no longer any mourning, or crying, or pain,” no longer having to remember, but at last face-to-face. No rage, no harsh words, only grace.