This is Christ’s body, broken for you…

December 5, 2012 Rachel Held Evans

“Oh I was just a baby when that happened,” she said before stacking my plate and cup onto her own tray to take them to the cafeteria dishwasher.

These kids are so polite, so confident. Not how I remember junior high.

We were talking about September 11—a date that for this eighth grader marked history, not memory. For her it was a picture in a textbook, some old video footage. For me it was a clear, cool day that seemed too beautiful to contain the fear and horror caught in my chest.

“Maybe I should use a different illustration,” I said, second-guessing myself for the hundredth time that day.

She laughed, patted my arm like the grownup in the situation and said, “You’ve got this. Don’t worry. Just say something funny and everyone will love you.”

Funny. Got it.

When the first group of junior high students arrived for the weekend retreat, streaming out of their crammed First United Methodist Church buses like ants out of a disturbed bed, I marveled at their young faces. These were just kids, former babies whose September 11, 2001 included a naptime.

I’d spent the week before reworking all my usual talks for a younger audience, whittling them down to their essence, working in more stories and updating my illustrations, taking out any references to menstruation. When I asked Dan for advice, he made a crack about Gangnam Style…which I had to google.

“Oh man, I’m screwed,” I said, dropping my head to the dining room table as an Asian man danced on my computer screen. “I don’t even know if this is supposed to be ironic or cool! These kids are going to hate me.”

I worried, and reworked, and stayed up late arranging PowerPoints. I solicited advice on Facebook, which included several gentle reminders not to try too hard with the whole relevance thing; they can see through that.

Don’t try too hard. Got it.

Despite all my preparation, I felt panicked when I took the stage after the band finished the first night, steams of vapor from the fog machine still clinging to the set, 500 young faces looking eagerly back at me. I’d gotten up at 4 a.m. that morning to catch my flight and had consumed about five cups of coffee since then. The week before I’d been interviewed by Barabara-freaking-Walters in New York City. No problem. But 500 junior high students? I might just pee in my pants.

I felt inadequate for the task. I wanted to do right by these kids. I wanted them to know how much they were loved—by God, by their church, by me. The Methodists, I was sure, had chosen the wrong speaker. And only a few parents had had the good sense to call and warn them ahead of time.

Fortunately, I’d planned a fun audience-participation-style game as an opener, complete with a Gangnam Style reference, which the students loved. They were laughing, hard. Maybe this would work out after all.

I muddled through four presentations that weekend, and four more a few weekends later when 600 high schoolers attended the same event. It wasn’t my best work, I knew that, but the kids really seemed to connect with it, and I got good feedback from the youth pastors.

“You’re so real!” one 14-year-old girl marveled. “Like one of us!”

Real. Got it.

The climax of each weekend happened on Saturday night with a communion service following my presentation. A pastor led the service, but I had the privilege of joining some of the student leaders in serving the bread and juice.

And this is when everything changed.

I held a loaf of bread in my hands, tearing off a piece for each pair of cupped hands that went by, slowly, as music played.