For Those Who Prepare the Space

For Those Who Prepare the Space
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

     The legend of the early church was that if you partook the bread and wine and were not a believer, were not worthy, the legend was the elements would swell in your throat and you would choke and die.  For this reason, the early church would dismiss everyone who was not baptized, they would send all non-members away before the eucharist took place.  Priests would walk through the sanctuary and say, “catacumens, be gone.” 

     Catacumens are those taking the catacetical training required before you became a member of the church— ready to receive the Lord’s supper. Kind of like confirmation.

     A few weeks after my ordination, I led my first communion service.  It was a hot August Sunday and I was unprepared for the length of the liturgy not yet knowing not everything needed to be read.  Droning on for quite some time I reached the moment of the elements, holding up the bread I said, “the body of Christ broken for you.”  Putting the bread in my very dry mouth I panicked.  It was stuck in my throat. 

     Newspaper headlines flashed in my mind: Young Pastor dies in First Communion.  New Pastor Deemed Heretic in Communion Tragedy.  Fortunately for me I was able to swallow and no one noticed the heresy. 

     The bread and the cup have lots of legends and lore.  Perhaps the greatest is the Holy Grail as the cup that caught the blood of Christ.  But there are many legends from the simple stamp on the communion wafer to resemble a coin and thus preparing the dead to pay the boatman at the River Styx to things as strange as werewolves and ferries and feasts.  An odd tradition of the eucharist is something most people have said without knowing the connection to communion: hocus pocus.

     Hocus pocus comes from children in the Middle Ages, imitating the priest's words in Latin “hoc est meum corpus” this is my body.  Children would mimic these words saying hocus pocus to signify the magical transformation of the elements and thus what we say when we convey an act of magic.  Hocus pocus.

     There is in our reading today a bit of lore, a kind of magical quality.  Where do you want to eat the Passover?  Jesus says, you will find a guy and say, we are eating at your place tonight.  Although no Latin phrases comes to mind, a Jedi mind trick does.  “These are not the droids you are looking for, let them pass.”  I would have loved to have been in the streets of the old city when these disciples found the certain guy. We are coming to your house tonight.  

     Scholars have tried very hard to demythologize this passage.  The certain man must have been part of a sect or would have been recognizable by the time of day or was a secret disciple.  The house must have been a good size to hold Jesus and all his disciples and the certain man must have been a person of means given the ability to offer a meal at such short notice. Hence the certain man might have been code for a wealthy, anonymous supporter.

     I don’t know about all that.  I certainly don’t feel the need to demythologize scripture.  The mythical and magical have their place, you’ll find a guy.  The passage has an ease, a simple beauty of hospitality that is lost with too much explanation.  There is also a freedom here, the random and the unprepared that was part of the Galilean ministry.  Jerusalem comes across as frenetic and edgy and controlled.  Galilee, where they lived and roamed, had a “it-will-all-work-out” vibe. How Jesus instructs the disciples about preparing the Passover meal is true to how he fed the 5000 and the 4000: it was on the fly, without preparation, magical, or miraculous if that fits your theology better.

     There is also the echo of Zacchaeus and his feast.  Jesus tells the tax collector, “hey, we're eating at your house tonight.”  There is an “oh by the way” quality.  Again, a sense of hocus pocus.  Even the betrayal has this feeling.  It is as if Jesus just randomly mentions, one of you will betray me.  One of you will break my heart and hand me over.  Just saying.  As an aside, to dip one’s hand in the bowl is not to suggest Judas was dipping his hand in the bowl at the same time as Jesus.  Dipping one’s hand in the bowl is to say, “someone who is my close companion.”  We might say, someone who is a good friend as opposed to just a friend. A dear friend will betray me.

     For many years I included this exchange, what Jesus says to Judas, in the communion liturgy.  We must remember, all were at the table.  Judas was welcome and partook.  Therefore so are we.  I would say this to be reminded of how we often keep people outside, exclude, even shun.  So before we come to the table, remember this is an extravagant embrace.  This is good to remember because we get angry or offended or someone is just not our taste and we push them aside.  Following Jesus is to recognize how often we discard people, how often we disdain.   You hear the opposite of disdain in our reading.  Jesus doesn’t accuse the disciples of betrayal or cut them off. His words are more of an acknowledgment. This is a hard thing, but I am sticking with you. 

     The moment the eucharist came alive for me wasn’t magical or even as a matter of compassion.  The Lord’s Supper came alive to me as balance, the balance of the week, of life.  The writers of Genesis saw this, believed this.  Six days of creation (work), one day of rest. The Sabbath was built upon this structure.  On the sabbath you are to rest each week.  That I understood.  But it was not until I saw how Jesus changed the sabbath, was the lord of the sabbath, redeemed the order of creation, it was not until I saw balance in the bread and the wine that my life changed forever.

     The change came from the simplicity, the beauty, elegance of its clarity.  The bread is work; the cup is rest.  The body is the toil and strain and the hardship; the blood is the joy, the celebration, the eternal life in us here and now. What I had never seen before was how the meal, this rite of the church, is not a question of magic or change of substance, this meal is what it means to live a good life.  And by good life I mean this: we do good work and rest in joy.  Not one day out of seven or for a couple of weeks in the summer down the shore.  A good life is a continuous balance of work and rest, challenge and joy.

     For many years I had a magic plant in my office.  After a funeral a family sent me a nice plant for my office and it grew and was healthy and required nothing of me.  It was in a special kind of pot I figured; it had moss at the base.  I thought this must be part of the magic.

     When the housekeeper, Julia, retired she came into my office on her last day and said, “let me tell you how to take care of your plant.”  “What do you mean?” I asked.  “How and when to water it.  What!  Did you think the plant was magical?”  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did.”

     For the last few months we have been working to find these magic plants in our office.  So many things Sue Harmon does in her day, her week, her month just happen.  When I go away she waters the plants in my office, and if truth be told, she often waters them when I don’t go away.  Sue knows where things can be found and can tell you who put them there, especially if they are not where they should be.  In the lingo of organized crime, she knows where the bodies are buried.  In practical terms she actually does keep the map of the cemetery current.  She knows where the bodies are buried.

     Her time as treasurer is part of a long legacy of church members who kept the books, and thus, kept the confidence of who gives what and when.  To do this is not only to keep a deep trust, it is also to treat all people without judgment.  Such knowledge can ruin you if judge people in terms of money. 

     And then there are the phones and the insurance and the endowment, security system and the schedules we keep.  Recently we had a bit of a moment over who is going to keep track of who has keys to the church?  There was a moment of well I don’t know.  We don’t know because it was done magically, they are magic keys that simply appear and are used and work.  None of that is true, but it’s a lovely idea.

     I have seen this before.  Someone who serves the church does so much and makes it appear as if it just happens and then he or she retires or dies and all of a sudden you realize the magic, what just seemed to happen, was the profound faithfulness of a person making sacrifices, doing more than was asked or expected.  Nietzsche called this the marker of true life, a transcendent life.  He called it a long obedience in the same direction.  By this he meant the persistence of character, the tenacity to endure, the strength to overcome adversity, not once, but again and again.  There are many parts of the last three years that were simply endured.  And in Sue we all saw the way challenge doesn’t make character; challenge reveals it.

     In the coming months we are going find more magic plants.  And each time there will be a need to figure it out, to learn how and where and what needs to be watered and what does not require watering.  With the magic plants we will need to achieve a level of adequate response to what she did so well.  Yet, the real change is not something we can hire or outsource or find a volunteer.  We will need to find the way to make things work, the bread.  But what we cannot fill or replace is the joy she gave, how she prepared the room, not just with tablecloths or with budgets or with a zoom link, we will feel the absence of her joy.

     Sue Harmon gave her time and her talent for decades to First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen and for this we are a better church, a better place, equipped and enabled.  This is true.  She prepared the room.  But then she also lived the second half of our reading.  She gave the bread, but she also gave the wine.  Sue filled the office with joy and laughter and a look that was meant to convey I was in need of a greater level of adult supervision.  Jonathan knows the look I am talking about. 

     It might take a while to figure how to program the doors or how to get our insurance information for the Habitat trip.  True.  Magic plants are tricky that way. But we will get it.  What we will truly miss, be unable to replace was the way Sue gave her life loving members and friends of this congregation.  That's a big deal.  It's not hard to find someone to do a job; it's really tough to find someone who does a great job and loves people, giving their joy away like Jesus did when he gave not only the bread but also the wine.  He gave the toil and the work and then he gave the joy and the love as well.  So did Sue. Amen.