It's So True. "When two or three are gathered together . . ."

  In the Episcopal Church, the Eucharist, the ceremony of Holy Communion, is serious business. This is the core of our worship. The priest pronounces ritual prayers, revisits the Last Supper and blesses the wine and wafers. The congregation stands and kneels at prescribed moments and then each member progresses toward the altar and kneeling there, receives the sacraments: the “body and blood of Christ” in the form of the wafer and a sip of wine from a communal cup. One can choose to dip the wafer into the cup, thereby bypassing possible germs.

The story goes that Jesus, knowing he was going to die, at his last supper, “broke” the bread and “gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Then he “took the cup of wine” . . . and said, “Drink this, all of you: This is my blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”

The sacrament of the Eucharist is very formal in church. And church is dressy.

But I wonder how formal it actually was at that last supper? Jesus was hanging out with his friends for the last time. He must have been sad and a bit frightened. Surely he hoped that they would remember him and all that he had taught them. And likely, being human, he said something along the lines of whenever you get together I hope you will remember me.

It is difficult for me to imagine that the very formal words I quoted above from the Book of Common Prayer were the ones Jesus used that night among his friends. They had been through so much together: these men, his followers, who were mostly fishermen and very poor: these friends who weren’t yet really sure who this amazing man was and what was going to happen to him.

Why am I going on about this?

Because yesterday, Wednesday, I shared the wafers and the cup of wine with the warm and caring Episcopal priest from Trinity Church, the Rev. Peggy Hodgkins, and two other women at Carrollton Nursing Home. My friend, Helen, wrapped in her bathrobe, was in her wheel chair, her left leg in a blue cast closed with Velcro tabs. My other friend, Alice, wearing trousers and a sweater, was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling, and Peggy and I were seated in small, stiff-backed chairs. Together we formed a sort-of circle.

Peggy had brought her handsome and tidy communion kit and she laid out the sacred elements on the narrow rectangular, book laden table that hovered across Helen’s bed: A small silver plate with the wafers on it and a tiny silver wine cup into which she poured from small glass jug, wine, already blessed.

We bowed our heads in silence. Then Peggy said a few prayers, including prayers for healing for Helen and prayers for the well being of Alice and me. The four of us said the Lord’s Prayer together. Peggy passed the shining plate to each of us, followed by the cup. We dipped our wafers in the wine. We bowed our heads in silence again. Utter simplicity.

Suddenly I felt as if the four of us in that small bedroom were Everybody: Everyone who has ever partaken of this sacrament.   We had eased, I felt, into the God- space of timelessness. 

 For the first time I experienced the power of the Eucharist to bring joy and union, communion, if you will, in a way that I have never felt in church, with all its formality and splendor. When it was complete, the four of us just sat there quietly, beaming at each other. “Wasn’t that nice!” Helen observed, with light in her eyes and a wide smile.

It was. It was.

 I thought about the experience all the way home. That I was so profoundly moved was, I imagined, my Quaker grandmother, who loved simplicity, having her way with me from her grave. I don’t know.

I only know this: That these words from the Bible are true. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt: 18-20) We don’t have to be fancy or formal or robed—bathrobes will do nicely— we don’t have to agree about the religious details, we just have to be there in one spirit for a few dedicated moments of time in order to feel God’s presence.

I knew this, too: that I wanted to risk writing about it.

I pray that I have offended no one.