Take and eat: the story of three Christmas Eve communion loaves

"This is a sacred thing. This is a sacred process and sacred product."

This afternoon, Heather Allison will quietly unlock the Mission Red Bank and walk into the empty kitchen. The sanctuary nearby will be silent, hours before any one arrives.

She'll preheat the oven to 450, pull out yeast dough from an orange bowl where it's been rising, then scoop out onto the silver countertop a few handfuls of hard red wheat flour from a five gallon bucket below.

She'll work gently and alone, moving in that unencumbered way for whom work is disconnected from ego. Midnight janitors, 4 am farmers, solitary bakers – all laboring without credit or limelight.

"I'm more comfortable working than talking," Heather said.

She'll roll out enough dough for three loaves, adding more flour, a little at a time.

The Mission Red Bank opened its doors nine years ago at the intersection of Dayton Boulevard and Morrison Springs Road in the old Meek's Auction warehouse.

Five days a week, it operates as The Meeting House, a coffeeshop where folks play chess, drink French press over Macbooks near bookshelves that hold jigsaw puzzles, a Sarah Young devotional, Skunk and Badger, The New Jim Crow, Square Foot Gardening. Heather serves as the lead baker.

On Sundays, the coffeehouse turns into The Mission, as the church opens its doors to 150 or so congregants. There's a praise band, a cross made by a Red Bank metalworker, soft rugs, black folding chairs and wooden altar with candles, port, Welch's juice and loaves of communion bread.

Heather, too, is the lead baker, having baked the communion bread for years. Often, a dear friend joins her; this is their faith in action.

"This is a sacred thing," Heather said. "This is a sacred process and sacred product."

The communion experience is common within Christian churches, yet there is a wide range of what counts as communion: wafers, store-bought bread, even tiny crackers, the body of Christ barely bigger than a Chiclet.

Heather bakes whole loaves, using King Arthur or regional flour and wheat berries. The recipe Heather keeps stored on the quiet shelves of her heart.

"It is a very simple recipe," she said. "Water, yeast, salt, flour. I love that all of those come straight from creation."

She uses yeast to make leavened bread.

"It's not a traditional sourdough. But not traditional yeast," she said. "It's a hybrid."

Heather grew up in Arkansas, and was "never not watching" her mother cook and bake. College in Texas, then, she and her husband moved to Chattanooga, where, raising two young kids, she found baking as a spiritual discipline, her own form of liturgy and prayer.

Once, she and her daughter entered a pie contest. Her daughter Katie won with an apple pie. Heather came in second: bumbleberry.

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She's been making English toffee for 20 years. Her bread will go as gifts to friends; often, they'll eat the entire loaf right then and there.

The three loaves formed, she then takes a thin razor blade and etches two dozen small marks and one large cross in the dough's center.

She places a pan of water in the oven bottom. The steam begins to rise.

"So the crust gets crusty," she said.

The entire process cultivates what she calls "heart attitude."

"It is very much in front of my mind what this is going to," she said. "It will be on the altar, consecrated into his hands then into the hands of each congregant who comes forward for communion."

Oh yes.

Passing out the consecrated bread?

Her husband, Al.

He's the Anglican priest at The Mission.

This Christmas Eve afternoon at 5pm, Al Allison – he and Heather have been married 28 years – will drape his purple stole around his neck, approach the wooden altar and begin Christmas Eve communion service by placing into the hands of all who come to receive the very bread his wife just made.

Allison is a tall 6'5'' native Texan who wears Berne overalls and a black beanie with wooden African beads on his wrist; he looks as comfortable laying brick as reading Thomas of Aquinas. In his office: a St. Francis statue next to Picasso's Blue Guitar alongside rosary beads.

He and Heather helped start Northshore Fellowship in 2003, then were called to plant the Mission Red Bank, working with other businesses to build community, even helping launch its public Oktoberfest last fall. Clever Alehouse, BeCaffeinated, Pizzeria Cortile – all friends of theirs. You may see some folks even playing in the worship band.

He picks up the communion bread with tenderness, his priest's hands also tough and scarred like working class hands. When Al serves communion, it feels like a feast. "We like to give hunks," he likes to say.

To worship with Al is to follow him like a good jazz drummer; he begins the liturgy, detouring here and there through a ceremony that's not memorized, but alive.

And honest.

"Let that honesty come out. It's raw and real," said Al. "When people see it, because it's real, then maybe they feel a little less afraid to be honest."

This afternoon, Christmas Eve children will come forward, dressed in nativity costumes; some may even carry stuffed animals, small hands holding cotton teddy bear paws as they dip bread into juice. Al receives them all with love.

"This bread my wife has made, this wine, this juice have been set apart for celebration," he said. "We are called into his presence; we receive and feast on him in our hearts."

Placing bread into their hands, Al will kiss his children – Katie, 25, Caleb, 22 – on the cheek and forehead, as Heather approaches the altar.

"His hands wrap around mine," Heather said.

The couple met at Baylor University. Moving to Chattanooga to work at Bethel Bible Village, Al connected with Joe Novenson – "he's my spiritual father" – at Lookout Mountain Presbyterian, then Chris Sorensen, who started the original Mission church inside The Camp House.

In 2013, Al and Chris planted Red Bank's Mission; Al received unanimous support from North Shore Fellowship as he changed not only churches, but denominations, becoming an Anglican priest.

Watching his wife bake bread, he is reminded of ministry.

"It’s messy. It’s sticky. It gets all over you. You've got to embrace that or do something else," he said.

We walk into the sanctuary, where the air feels calm and settled. Heather carries the hot bread that just emerged from the oven; Al asks if he can consecrate the elements.

Can I serve you all communion?

He pours port; the loaves of bread sit warm in pottery bowl from Kettner's Mill. He takes three white clothes and layers them one by one; cloth, bowl, cloth, bread, cloth.

"These are common elements now set apart to be holy," he said.

His purple stole draped down below the table, Al intones the words spoken by countless people over the last 2000 years.

On the night he was crucified ... Al breaks the warm bread open ... Jesus said: this is my body ... curls of steam, rising from the loaves ... given for you. Take and eat ... the soft sound of bread-crust being torn apart ... and do this in remembrance of me.

We each step forward, palms open, the candle flames swaying; outside the sanctuary windows, at the traffic lights, cars stop-go-stop-go in the midday rush.

Heather steps forward; Al returns a piece of bread she'd baked into her palm, transformed now, they believe, into something holy and precious.

This is the bread of life — hands wrapped around hers, he kisses her forehead – and the cup of salvation.

On the coffeeshop stereo, a jazz trumpeter finishes his song. Outside, the traffic light turns red, then green.

We are new creations — eyes closed, breathing, the bread still warm and dense, sopped with port as it dances heavy across taste buds — our sins scattered as far from us as the east is from the west.

Al smiles.

The sanctuary is silent.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

All photography by Sarah Unger. Visit SarahCatherinePhoto.com

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