Querida Theda,

That July evening, a few hours before our Mennonite assembly began, as we worshiped God together in Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral, when you took your place at the Lord’s Table with Christ’s broken body in your hands, as I stood in front of you with my open hands, you glanced at my name tag and my stomach churned.

I watched your eyes as you read my name, as you noticed the blue stripe indicating I’m on the denominational board, the board that refused to recognize your pastoral calling: “we will not recognize Theda Good’s licensing,” we’ve declared, because you are married to a woman.

I was afraid that you might not offer me the bread in your hand because, why would you? I’m part of a leadership committee that rejected your ministry; how dare I come to you and ask you to be my priest?

My hands trembled as I stood there, waiting to find out if you knew who I was, waiting to see if you would give me bread. When your eyes met mine, you must have noticed my eyes swimming in tears, tears dripping down my cheeks, down to my quivering chin. You whispered to me as you placed communion in my cupped hands—“the body of Christ broken for you, Isaac.” You recognized me as your brother, someone in need of Jesus, in need of what you held in your hands: Christ for me, communion with God and you.

There, at the Lord’s Table, my vision blurred with tears, I saw your face aglow with the countenance of God, radiant with the Spirit.

“To see your face is like seeing the face of God,” Jacob said to Esau, estranged siblings, “since you have received me with such favor.” You and I are estranged. Yet, to see your face was to see the face of Christ, as you received from our Lord what you were now handing on to me. The Lord’s Supper—that’s where I met you, where I saw you, where I recognized Christ in you, in the grace of communion: where, as the apostle Paul says, “with unveiled faces we see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror.” Did you see Christ in me?

After communion I blinked away the tears that welled under my eyelids and wiped my eyes and cheeks, but those tears came back to me every day that week, every day of our Mennonite convention, every day when our people, our church, spoke and prayed and sang and voted. And the tears return to me now, back home, as I write to you.

Teresa of Avila once said that some tears were gifts from God, el don de lágrimas. “God gives them to us without any merit on our part,” explained the sixteenth-century theologian. “And if we do not acknowledge we are receiving them, we will not awaken ourselves to love.”

The tears I received when you offered me communion were divine gifts, perhaps, Teresa’s regalos de Dios awakening me to love, to Christ’s love: “spiritual consolations,” signs of God’s gentle presence, bearing witness to God’s peace flowing through us, through you to me, through the bread you gave me, as I ate it and cried—a communion of tears, Christ’s love pouring out my eyes.

I saw you again, later, in the delegate hall.

You stood in line, waiting for your turn at the microphone, but you weren’t allowed to speak. Yesterday I saw your prayer online—the prayer you had prepared for us. Here at home, as I read your prayer on my computer, your words sound like the voice I heard when you gave me communion, when you said, “The body of Christ, broken for you, Isaac.”

I’ll always remember your words for me, your prayer for our church, for all of us. I’ll write your prayer here, below, and hope that others, reading my letter to you, will also see in it good news.

Que Dios te bendiga,
Isaac

“Divine Light, Creator of Love, we come to you in need, in need of your touch as beloved daughters and sons, held in your unending love… Let us not rob one another of our joy in the spirit, the joy of our relationships, the joy of worshiping you together… May your gracious love and merciful justice seep into our community, so that others will know of your love when they see all the fruits of the Spirit pouring from our lives. Have mercy upon us, this is our time of need. Amen.”

Isaac Villegas is pastor of Chapel Hill (N.C.) Mennonite Church.