Alone, Together

It's no surprise that the Eucharist is described as the central mystery of the Christian church service.

It didn't used to be something that happened at every service, and some churches still reserve it for special occasions, but in my church, it's something we do together every week.

My sister once told me a story, second or third hand, about a friend who was travelling in some part of the world that was in the opposite hemisphere (Antarcticans often travel to various places in the Pacific that Americans don't usually get to, on their way back home from deploying), and talking, I believe in the local language, to a local person, and they got onto the topic of religion, and the local person said, 'Oh, yes, I've heard of your God.  He has three heads, and you eat him!"

That's the most exotic understanding of the ceremony, and the most mundane also comes from my sister, from a class she was taking while living in DC.  They talked about the history of the Early Church, like, the first few hundred years, when Christians were underground, and small in number, and had to meet very privately in each other's homes.  The structure of the current Liturgy still follows the meetings of those times - first is the teaching section, with readings from the Book, and remarks by the most senior person there, some group singing, some sending of well wishes to those connected to us, then the second part is a dinner party.  The group forms into a body by sharing a meal together.

The whole thing got started at the Last Supper, after all.

So, there's quite a bit you can make of the Eucharist, on the spectrum from spooky to mundane, and in our church it tends to be a somewhat somber, serious, and extremely private thing.  We have all greeted each other earlier in the service, during the Passing of the Peace (which the rector of my Mom's church calls "Recess", with some disdain I think), but after the hymn that takes place during the Offertory (during which time my offering is usually the singing of the hymn itself, since the collection plate doesn't come past up in the choir stalls, and I tend to bundle my giving and do it once annually), suddenly the Priest, the Celebrant, has moved from the lectern that is up at the front of the sanctuary all the way to the back behind the altar, and the acolytes and the Deacon are beside him, hands clasped.  The words are from a different part of the Prayer Book, and more ritualized (echoing more strongly back to the childhoods of the Cradle Episcopalians in the room, not to mention all the former Catholics of which there are many, many), and the gestured also more ritualized and more grand.

If a Priest is there, and not just a Deacon, then the deal is that the host wafers and the wine are turned, right then, transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ (capitalization for effect).  His words and gestured make them into sacred substance.

The congregation then goes up, row by row, and kneels at the altar rail, and accepts the host and wine, and then walks back, and those who know to do it will kneel in prayer, and there's always music because our Organist is always first, closest to the rightmost part of the rail, and often the Choir will do our big bang-up Anthem during this time but he usually waits until everyone is sitting back down again, so there's that time for prayerful contemplation afterward, except when you're in the Choir and then it's a bit more brief because you need to get your music out and look over that one tricky interval just the one last time.  After the Choir sings, the Priest and Deacon and acolytes sometimes have more work to do, cleaning the altar and putting things away, and I believe the Priest drinks the remainder of the consecrated wine, and then there's a prayer of Thanksgiving that we all say together on our knees, I rather love this prayer, because...well, here it is in its entirety:

Eternal God, heavenly Father,
you have graciously accepted us as living members
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ,
and you have fed us with spiritual food 
in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
Send us now into the world in peace,
and grant us strength and courage
to love and serve you
with gladness and singleness of heart;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(from The Online Book of Common Prayer, http://www.bcponline.org/)

Thanks for feeding us, and now send me out with a reminder to be better, and do better.  I love that part of the service.

But back to the Eucharist ritual itself.  If we trace things back to the early church, this is basically a dinner party, right?  We are bonding by eating together.  And in fact, the Body of Christ is a name for the collection of people who make up the whole Christian Church, worldwide.

However, it is also a spooky Holy Mystery, and bread and wine are being turned into human flesh and human blood, of a man who died more than 2000 years ago, yet here he is, right in our presence.  And the first time this happened, it was very very sad, because it was his last dinner with his close and beloved followers, before he died, the next afternoon.

So that probably explains the somberness of the members of my church congretation, as they go up to receive Communion, and even more so as they walk back to their places, where they will kneel and contemplate and pray for a bit.  

I'm so used to catching people's eye and smiling and saying their name in greeting - our church contains quite a few long hallways so this is often how you meet people.  I want to smile and meet their eye, because, I realize, it makes me feel connected, it helps knit us together as an Us, a We.

But no one meets my gaze, when they're walking back from the Eucharistic rail.  They don't flinch, or avert, or frown in chastisement, but they just walk calmly on, with gaze forward and expressions impassive.

It's a dinner party, right? That is the signature thing that binds us all together in this one community, and the man told us to do it for that very reason, too, right?  But in the moment itself, everyone is very solitary, and doesn't connect through regular human mechanisms like smiling and connecting with eyes.

We are Together, but each one of us is also Alone,  We do this Alone thing, Together.