A few years ago I would have told you that I had no desire to ever serve at the altar for Eucharist. I could not have been more truthful. In fact, the way I ended up serving as a Lay Eucharistic Minister was less about what I wanted, and more about trying to be faithful to what seemed like God’s calling...and the urging of a pushy cleric.
It wasn’t that the mass didn’t capture my imagination, I was passionate! I’d watch every movement; of the priest, the acolytes, sometimes other congregants, and those serving. I had memorized the liturgy...not merely the congregational responses encouraged in preparation for confirmation, but every word of the presider in Rite II, and much of Rite I. There are passages where I beg time to slow down so I may savor the poetry of our Book of Common Prayer! I could have coached a neophyte in any of the roles at the altar. (However, it must be said: coaching from the pew, and performing at the altar have always been and probably always will be...completely different things! Ask anyone who has gone blank in the middle of their 27th mass!) But the thought of donning a white robe, marching in procession, standing up front while everyone watches, holding a costly and heavy silver chalice, attempting to serve fellow parishioners without spilling the seriously precious blood of Christ down the front of them, or my own white vestments...held little appeal. Yet I watched with awe and a critical eye. I privately had preferences of style in priest’s performances. I thrilled at the earnestness of some of the young people as they served for the first time, and admired the finesse of those who had been carrying the chalice for decades. I was not indifferent!
I am now in a new church and things are not the same. Instead of the variety of using both the beautiful reredos and high altar and a communal table in the crossing, we use the high altar only. Readers (something else I’d come to realize I loved doing only after doing it) are sometimes, but not necessarily chalice bearers. And there are Sanctus bells! But more importantly...I’m new. Who am I to aspire to serving at the altar! And so for months I’ve occasionally fought back tears as I watch...just as I have always watched the people going to and fro at the altar during the mass...vicariously. Sometimes it barely registers, or I turn the energy into a complimentary notice of how well some young person serves in an adult role. Sometimes, not being a cradle Episcopalian, I watch the younger ones as they fidget or look bored (or more often than you’d think...earnest) and wonder what being an acolyte would have felt like. Once in awhile it feels like grief, like a piercing of the heart that will never heal.
This weekend the pangs came. Not during communion, thankfully. I was probably distracted by the fact that our deacon, who had preached, served me the chalice and that’s really unusual. Perhaps I was feeling relief that I wasn’t the one who had spilled wine down the front of the pristine robe he was wearing. It’s possible that the spill was what got my brain spinning. It echoed a service a couple of years ago where I’d been the one baptized in hot wax while carrying the Paschal candle back from the font when an over-eager acolyte jumped the line in front of me...and trying to protect the six-month-old candidate inches away in his godfather's arms, I’d served the rest of the mass in a ruined robe and a veil of wax dripping from my hair.
Later on Sunday a friend posted on Facebook a quote of St John Vianney: “If we truly understood the Mass, we would die of joy.” My heart leapt in recognition. I have felt that Joy, that indescribable, unimaginable joy...standing at His altar, caught in a shaft of stained-glass light, serving the chalice, saying the words, “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” I have known that unknowable Joy, for a breath or two, that I would willingly claim as my last moment on Earth. That kind of Joy may well be a Heavenly moment only loaned to us on Earth! But staring at that quote, in my humanity, I felt the loss like a slice through me. I had to acknowledge that I might never feel that Joy again.
CS Lewis has an interesting take on this feeling in Surprised by Joy. He talks of having touched joy for only a moment and then it being associated more with the ache, the longing to recapture that feeling again. In one of his letters Lewis writes, “Our best havings are wantings.” As I read Surprised by Joy, some of the strongest tugs at my heart were memories of being caught up in God’s palpable presence while serving at the altar.
I went through the next day occasionally feeling a sadness that went beyond the blues, a feeling I am acquainted with….grief. I reasoned with it, I justified it, I wished I had that flash device that blanked out memories in the movie Men In Black. Had I never known that Joy I would not miss it now! Yet none of us humans can go back to a time before something happened and reverse or erase it from our memories...and we should not, I suppose... lest our cowardly human chaos would certainly unmake the world! And anyway, hadn’t I given it up to God months ago?
The next morning I found a quote, from the Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore:
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I woke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”
I stared at the page as I had the Facebook post two days before, stunned with recognition. The bane of existence for all who put pen to paper to attempt to find meaning...someone else had written my life! But in that moment, all this journey from Sunday mass and Joy and poets…suddenly made sense!
On Saturdays, at the free community lunch my church hosts, I am fortunate enough to do table ministry with people I might not otherwise encounter. Some are hungry, but many come for more than the food. The lonely and the broken, the forgotten and the elderly and those whose minds don’t function quickly, who are losing their memories...or find themselves lost in them; they all come. They come to be a part of the community that has formed around the lunches, and it is a wonderful place! I’ve been involved in a “feeding program” before, but this one is something special! It feels to me at times, most times, that the exchanges, the smiles, the touch of a hand, the laughter, the tears, the prayers shared at those tables...are truly sacramental. It’s come to be that the ministry of Saturday far outweighs the worship of Sunday in shaping me, in pruning me, in feeding my soul...despite engaging Sunday worship and excellent sermons.
I’ve exchanged a silver chalice for a simple cup of coffee. I serve at a table that draws people who might never come to our Sunday altar...people who might be in greater need of the Great Mystery than any of our parishioners; and who might teach me much more about truth and love. I may not wear a robe of white, but I share in that holy feast of God’s Love with them in a more meaningful way than I ever could as a LEM, reciting “The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation” however convincing my delivery. It makes my eyes tear to think of it. I swallow down the lump of regret that I whined (though only to myself) at the loss of the symbolic role...totally missing what I’d been doing all along. I am serving at God’s table each and every Saturday!
And I’ve come to an even more shocking thought. The question: What is church? has been passed about a lot lately. We’ve been challenged with : To whom are we sent? In light of all that debate, I’ll take this metaphor one step further, begging forgiveness for what might be construed as a religious overreach.
Putting on a white robe and walking in a procession is a wonderful role to play in the glorious pageant that is Sunday morning Eucharist. We are all called to play a part in the theatre of worship, performing for the Creator of the Universe. I’m just enough of a church nerd to enjoy all that pomp and circumstance, it’s part of why I fell in love with the Mass and the Episcopal church on my very first visit two decades ago. And passing a heavy silver chalice without spilling wine (and not just any wine but consecrated wine mind you) down someone’s brand new silk blouse, down the pristine robe you are wearing, or even onto the more forgiving flagstones, is a feat of daring that thousands of LEM’s do every Sunday morning around the world. It is noble. It is a beautiful symbol, a tradition I hope continues. And I know I’ll be caught up in watching the majesty of it again some Sunday soon!
But the ministry of meeting the “other” face to face, of listening to their story, their struggles, their fears...of taking the hit of their confession of all we ourselves run from: financial uncertainty, loneliness, Cancer, the death of a loved one... without flinching outwardly, holding to their hand, praying our feeble prayers...it is more than symbolic. We are not only SERVING at table...I’m beginning to believe that we find ourselves right INSIDE the whole ritual...like singing a Bach piece in performance with a swelling organ in the chancel stalls rather than the rehearsal hall makes you feel you’ve been transported inside the music. We BECOME the BODY OF CHRIST to be shared. Our own hearts are BROKEN as we listen, bear witness, fight down our own fears of “there but for the grace of God…”. And we POUR OUT God’s love and compassion, and our own imperfect attempts to console, our insufficient understanding of the God of the Eucharist. St John Vianney was absolutely right…”If we truly understood the mass, we would die of Joy!”
Maybe I’m way off...but I think ministering to the “other” in this intimate way calls us to BECOME the EUCHARIST by which God meets a broken world in His transformative Mystery. Maybe this is heresy, but I will never look at either role in quite the same way again. And I am grateful for the opportunity to witness the Mystery transform faces...and sometimes even lives, in such a mundane, and extraordinary way. Thanks be to God!
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