Free Us For Joyful Obedience

Five minutes before I leave, I pull the bread out.  Uh-oh.  This bread maker doesn’t quite work like the one at home – this stuff is darker than dark, and it feels hard as a rock.  Oh, not to worry; it’s probably soft, fluffy and tasty inside.

It is a pretty simple format that I follow at the retirement home – a brief devotional time – which for me usually involves storytelling, and then the ecumenical group shares in the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion.  On this day, I had a special treat for them. 

I brought a new Communion chalice to our little makeshift altar table.  A couple from the church had brought it as a gift to me from their recent trip to the Holy Land.  It was made of olive wood and displayed an intricately carved Last Supper, that rolled all around the cup’s outer surface – just like in the da Vinci picture: everyone lined up on one side, so nobody’s back is in the picture.

After setting out the brown brick that I hoped would actually look like bread on the inside, I decided to draw the focus of their attention away from the brick as I poured the grape juice into the new olive wood piece of art, by telling them the history and love behind the new chalice that I was using for the first time with them.

As I launched into the story I had prepared for the devotion, my eye inadvertently was caught by something strange there on the altar table to my left.  The grape juice (not yet consecrated as the blessed Blood of our Lord) was running down the side of the chalice and onto its base.  I tried to keep going with the prepared story nonchalantly, but could not help myself from the increasingly frequent and decreasingly furtive glances to the chalice.  The little rivulet that seemed to be coming from just below the one apostle’s foot (was that Judas?) and running through the squiggly carvings was now forming a small pool on the altar table.

It’s hard – I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it – to keep telling a story – keeping the inflection rhythm on track (much of the art of good storytelling) – while at the same time, trying to find the dish towel that you had used to wrap up a brown brick and had put somewhere else, and unobtrusively placing it under the chalice to attempt to stem the flow of purple juice from running from its now deep pool on the altar table onto the carpet below.

Finally the story was over.  I didn’t feel like I had quite given it my best effort, and we launched into the liturgy of the blessed sacrament.  I tried to gauge when the dear folks would be looking down at their liturgy handouts for the longest, as my opportunity to quietly locate the grape juice bottle and replenish the cup.  The level was now almost down to the bottom of Judas’ foot – well below the comfort level for bread dipping.  (We used the intinction method.)

Then came the moment of truth – the breaking of the bread.  Did I say “breaking”?  I needed a chisel or, perhaps, I was afraid, a chain saw.  I’d never wrestled with such a “rock” before.  I noticed that some of my beloved seniors were trying to suppress open laughter at my discomfort by this point.  I quickly surmised that some of them had noticed the bleeding chalice, as well.

This day was not going well.  I was not fit to be the Vicar of Christ, in this very moment.  I came just “that close” to allowing negative energy to well up and splash over me like a broken chalice.

And then I suddenly remembered the Donatists....