Serving Eucharist on Paper Plates 11-10-12

Anderson, South Carolina


For some months now I’ve considered myself essentially unchurched; a radical departure for one once embedded in ecclesiastical culture on a daily basis. There was a season in which I served at the altar every week, wearing a fine cassock and surplice given to me by a dear friend. Spindles on my dresser mirror hold a large assortment of processional crosses and crucifixes. Perhaps dearest of these is one given to me by a Catholic priest working in the Vatican as a gift for my serving with him while conducting masses at sea.

There was something wondrous to me about staring down into that heavy silver and gold chalice. The refraction of the consecrated wine seemed as a lens to another universe. In some respects it’s hard to remember those years when I carried my red oak communion chest into nursing homes and shared the Holy elements with our confined parishioners and any other nearby inmates in need of an infusion of Hope.

Faded are memories of those days given over to dismantling large altar flower arrangements and leaving a contrail of botanical delights in a dozen destinations. There was great pleasure in saving these beautiful flowers from their once inevitable final journey to the trash bin in the sacristy. My once abundant sources of flowers have dried up and my rotating supply of flower vases long given to thrift stores. It’s been an extended time since my kitchen floor was littered with flower cuttings.

Those knowing me well know I like feeding people, a whole lot. There’s something sacred about it. Taking the oversupply of semi-stale hamburger and hot dog buns accreting in the church kitchen, slathering them with butter, broiling them, and carrying them around the parish hall on battered aluminum cookie sheets was nearly the equal of serving people at the altar from silver and gold. More than once I was still in my vestments while doing this. How many times people faces lit up when I brought these red-hot offerings around the hall. One day I think I broiled nine pans of these. For a season there never was a problem with finding a higher purpose for those ubiquitous bags of buns. Those hard-frozen semi-desiccated buns softened nicely and came to life when heated up with God’s love and passed out.

There was a season when showing the world to older members of the parish was a really big deal to me. Taking senior citizens to Russia or for a walk in Hyde Park was sublime. Taking them for a Sunday afternoon outing in the nearby public garden and a fast food meal was as rewarding. There’s something about showing beauty to others that ranks high on my list of motivators. Looking down in the center of a rose in a garden in St Petersburg, Russia can produce the same effect as staring down in the center of a silver and gold chalice, perhaps more so. Showing someone a crystalline sunrise over the glaciers of Norway is as compelling as watching sunrise through the gothic Shepherd window in the apse behind the altar.

We have our seasons of life. Embracing new chapters can be daunting. We all bask in the alizarin, aureate, and crimson wonders of autumn but don’t want to ante up for the monochromatic barrenness soon coming with winter. Yet winter precedes the lime, jade, pink, white, and lavender delights coming with Southern spring. Ancient writings tell us there’s an order and seasons to the affairs of our lives.

Barbara Brown Taylor in her eloquent Leaving Church describes her call to ordination and her subsequent departure from it, perhaps redefining it. She carefully, without rancor, describes how she came to a place of depletion and exhaustion. “My quest to serve in the church had exhausted my spiritual savings. My dedication to being good had cost me a fortune in being whole. My desire to do all things well had kept me from doing the one thing within my power to do, which was to discover what it meant to be fully human.” It would not be a stretch to suggest Barbara Taylor eventually discovered in being fully human that she had her best chance of truly reflecting what it is to be made in His image. For her, it became clear ‘clothes don’t make the man.’

Even a cursory examination of Christian scriptures reveals Jesus’ priorities. He made it clear the poor, widowed, displaced, and disaffected had first place in his heart. He gave no mention to the merits of silver and gold chalices or cut crystal vases filled with vast numbers of long-stemmed tropical wonders. I often suspect the cup used at the Last Supper was a small low-fire clay affair more akin to a non-descript plastic drinking cup than to a silver and gold chalice. The least of these, those who are dying of thirst in a desert will see a plastic cup of cold water as every bit the equal to a hand-chased wonder from the goldsmith.

For about six years I’ve been participating in the daily assembly of those seeking their way clear of the bondages of addiction and alcoholism. On Sundays we convene to tell each other how God is working in our lives here in the 21st century. Somehow we hear better about God’s interest in our lowly lives when one tells of the miraculous means by which he was granted a job in the past week than in learning how God might have aided and abetted a military exploit in Middle Eastern deserts forty centuries ago.

Many of the prominent miracles ascribed to Jesus had to do with the provision of stale buns and a speck of fish or decent wine to those assembled. I can’ but wonder if our group of alcoholics and addicts on Sunday morning are not effectively participating in the Eucharist when Steve brings in his box of donuts each week, or when Chris’s wife sends breakfast with him for those present. Instead of a chased goblet with fine wine, we offer Styrofoam cups of coffee of uncertain vintage with cheap Wal-Mart creamer.

Several times this week I came into unexpected sources of really fine restaurant food. I had the rather rewarding opportunity of taking it in battered aluminum pans and Styrofoam to the meetings rooms. Watching a ravenous young mother and her daughter inhale my offerings was equal or greater than any time standing at the altar rail holding silver and gold. I felt as if I was again standing on the hills of Capernaum at the feeding of the five thousand. Unlike the five thousand at Capernaum who got a young boy’s bits of fish and rolls, on another day a dozen marginalized men were granted a hot restaurant meal they never would have been afforded in the Ecclesiastical realm. It occurred to me I had just served Eucharist, sans altar, Shepherd window, vestments, crosses, chalices, ciboriums, and fine linen.

In reading Taylor’s memoir I find myself challenged to consider exactly what ordination is, what it looks like. I’m fairly certain it has little to do with study, examination, one’s manner of dress, one’s choice of tableware, one’s Ecclesiastical supplier. Perhaps God’s ordination is something all of us are called to and has nothing to do with my church licenses lapsing.

Taylor has brought me around to realizing I am perhaps not unchurched after all. I’ve never felt as connected, purposed, or fulfilled as I do when serving the Eucharist on paper plates and in Styrofoam cups. I hear of God’s manifest presence in our lives every single day. I have fellowship with the saints every day – those learning to trust God in all of their affairs.

I need to check on my supply of aluminum pans and turkeys. We’re expecting one hundred for dinner next Thursday and I don’t want to come up short. Jesus never did.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Blessings,

Craig C. Johnson