Worship – Page 3 – Where the Wind…

He wore a grey t-shirt sporting the American flag, shorts, and velcro sandals. When we entered the apartment, he was sitting on one of those big exercise balls and staring through the blinds into the yards beyond the fence. His supervisor greeted us at the door and called out to him to welcome us visitors. The young man at the door — bleached-blond, tattoed, pierced — looked more like a roadie for Alice Cooper than a 24-hour supervisor for a man with Fragile X syndrome.*

My friend had asked me to accompany her to visit her brother and bring him communion. He is not able to get to church much, she had explained, because of his condition, but the Eucharist means a lot to him. She had also explained that Fragile X is a genetic mental impairment that, in her brother’s case, manifested in cognitive disabilities and, on occasion, uncontrolled violent behavior. He will repeat the same phrases over and over again, she had said, and he’ll probably ignore you this visit — he usually ignores strangers.

She and I sat on the futon in the small living room, and she attempted to engage her brother in conversation. I kept my communion kit (which looks like a camera bag) slung across my back, and I leaned forward to catch what they were saying. Instead of talking with his sister, he continued to stare out the window and converse with his supervisor about the comings and goings of various neighbors. After a few minutes, he stood up and I realized how big he is — he could have played power forward at Duke, I’m sure. He went over to the dining table and sat down again, musing about his dinner options. He wanted french fries with ketchup. My friend was patient, and every time she tried to engage him, he responded a bit more. After a while, I could tell that the two siblings had started playing an old game — she knew he was listening and now he was just pretending to ignore her. His responses to her queries, randomly nonsensical moments ago, were now humorously nonsensical. We all laughed about french fries and ketchup and about the lady in the apartment upstairs.

After a few minutes at the dining table, he wandered back to the exercise ball, produced a pack of bent playing cards, and began to shuffle them. My friend asked him if wanted communion. He started staring out the window again. She turned to me and suggested I start unpacking my kit. I unzipped the bag and took out the corporal — sort of a liturgical placemat. On the corporal, I placed the paten (plate) and chalice (cup). As I set out the vessels and tipped some wine into the chalice, he stopped shuffling and started watching. He picked up the Bible and leafed through it while I turned the pages in my prayer book. As I prayed the prayer of consecration, I found myself unconciously emphasizing the simple words in the prayer — words such as food and drink and life. I finished the prayer, my friend and I prayed the Lord’s Prayer with her brother, still holding my Bible, looking on, and then I broke the Bread. I brushed his hand as I gave him the Body of Christ, and, in that touch, I could feel the presence of Christ in our midst. He was there, as he had been our whole visit, and he made himself known in the sharing of his Body and Blood.

After sipping from the cup, I cleaned up the kit and repacked it. I found myself wondering how much my friend’s brother had understood of what we had just done. Then I stopped short. How much had I understood? I said the prayers. I laid my hands on the bread and wine. I asked the Holy Spirit to sanctify the gifts. But even with all my schooling and all my study, I still don’t know exactly what happens in those holy moments of sharing in Christ’s Body and Blood. I don’t know how Jesus indwells those elements with his Spirit. I don’t know how ordinary bread and wine are changed to something that connects us bodily with the grace of our Lord Jesus. But I know that connection exists, that relationship is real. I felt it when my friend, her brother, and I shared that Holy Eucharist.

We do not have to understand fully to participate in the life of Christ. In fact, living a life in Christ is not about understanding at all. It’s about following, about having faith that Christ is one step ahead of you, guiding you. As Paul says, right now I know only in part, but I will know fully, even as I am fully known. God is the one who understands. God is the one who, indeed, stands under and holds up everything that we hold true and good. Living a life in Christ cultivates that deep relationship with God that both brings some understanding, but also (and happily) removes the need to understand.

There’s a phrase in one of the postcommunion prayers in the Episcopal prayerbook: “Almighty and everliving God, we thank you…for assuring us in these holy mysteries…” I’ve asked myself many times how a mystery can be assuring. Mysteries usually thrive by keeping you wondering. But I think that’s the very point. If we understood everything about God there is to understand, God wouldn’t be God, and we’d be deluding ourselves. That was the problem with carved gods and graven images that were both worshiped and controlled. God reveals God’s very majesty and glory in the fact that the mystery abides. And the assurance comes when we cross that fine line between wondering and being lost in wonder.

I still wonder how much my friend’s brother understood about what we were doing. But I know now that understanding is a distant second to sharing — the sharing of the presence of Christ in our midst. My friend’s brother hugged her when we got up to leave. We said goodbye to the roadie-supervisor. As I left the room, I glanced back, and for a split-second, I saw Jesus balancing on that exercise ball.

Footnotes

*For more information about Fragile X syndrome, click here.

I woke up this morning with my heart racing. I clutched my pillow (which sports faded images of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, C3PO, R2D2, and Darth Vader), took several ragged breaths, and waited for my heart to slow down. I had been sleeping. I wasn’t active at all. I don’t remember dreaming. I don’t have a heart condition. So why was my heart racing?

I had words going through my mind as I awoke: “On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said: ‘Take, eat: this is my Body which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.’ ”

These aren’t just any words. In the Episcopal Church, these are some of the “words of institution,” which are part of the Eucharistic prayer. This is the prayer we pray to remember our place in God’s story of salvation and grace, to fulfill Jesus’ wish at the Last Supper, and to ask Christ to indwell the bread and wine with his presence so that they become to us his Body and Blood. “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving”; therefore, when we participate in the Eucharistic prayer, we corporately thank God for all the gifts God has given us, most especially the gift of Jesus Christ our Lord. It’s no coincidence that the word “corporate” comes from the Latin word for “body.” We come together as the body of Christ to share the Body and Blood of Christ (Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians). This sharing of Christ opens our eyes and hearts to the presence of Christ already around and within us. We are nourished to renew our commitment to our Lord, to proclaim the love of God, and to do the work God has given us to do.

In the final chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, Cleopas and his companion meet a wayfarer on the road. They are leaving Jerusalem, defeated and despairing. But the wayfarer sees their predicament from another perspective. They have the story all wrong, he says. And he reframes the story they know into a new story in which violence doesn’t overcome peace, hate can’t snuff out love, and life kicks death in the teeth. They reach their destination and ask the wayfarer to eat with them. When he breaks the bread, they realize Jesus has been with them all this time. They remember feeling like their hearts were on fire when he was speaking to them on the road. And they race back to Jerusalem to proclaim that they have seen the Lord!

Maybe that’s what happened to me this morning when I awoke with Jesus’ words in my head. My racing heart was burning within me as I thought about what I will do for the first time this Sunday. I am being ordained to the priesthood tomorrow, and I am overjoyed to be celebrating the Eucharist for the first time this weekend. If idly thinking the words of institution gets my heart racing, how will I feel in two days time? Nervous, I have no doubt (in all the gesturing, I’m convinced I’m going to knock over a chalice). Nervous, yes, but my joy is overriding my nerves. This joy springs from deep within me, from the place where Christ dwells, speaking words of love and grace into the very core of my being. Now I have the opportunity to preside at a celebration of this joy with other people. This fills me with awe–awe that God would use me to make known God’s love in the world, would ask me to serve God’s people as a priest.

One of the Eucharistic prayers prays these words: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”

Lord Jesus, please dwell in us so we can share your love in the world. Let us dwell in your presence, which infuses life with your nourishing grace and sets our racing hearts on fire.