The first thing I did at HDS on the first day of school was receive the Eucharist. I was fresh-faced and excited, and had barely slept the day before, and woke up the Tuesday after Labor Day ready to go. On campus there’s a chapel that’s a part of the Div School called Divinity Chapel, or Emerson Chapel depending on who you’re talking to: a centuries-old room inscribed with plaques and stained glass. A lot of Harvard is old-money sheen and intellectual artifice and impostor syndrome; but this room is legit. It houses prayers and meditations and contemplation, rituals and tears, remembrances and rejoicing. It is a place where you recognize the river of legacy that you’re stepping into as a Harvard Divinity School student. It vibrates in the wood and the air of this space. The Eucharist was not only a great ritual to practice at the start of my career as a student there, it was an incredibly healing practice. I’d felt so far from being able to take communion. It’s a ritual with a lot of baggage, and it was one I was brought up believing that I wasn’t good enough to engage in: my heart has to be right, I have to be clean, without any outstanding issues or conflict. If my balance sheet isn’t at zero, I’m playing fast and loose with the ritual, some have said to me. On top of which, so few of the churches I’d attended had observed it on a regular, so I felt not only emotionally far from the practice, but also practically far from it. But the gluten-free wafer I dipped into the wine and affirmed put me into my body, a precious space when you consider that school puts us in our heads, so much so that our bodies suffer for it.
A window in Divinity Chapel.
I was grateful to be able to start my studies this way. As a yogi, the body is my way in. Physical practice is the key to spiritual experience and relationship for me. Sure, language is beautiful. I’m a writer, of course I love the poetry of prayer and scripture; but invite me to engage in a practice with my hands and feet, my limbs, my spine, my inhale and exhale, and I’m already halfway to God.
*
I have clear memories of the first church I attended with my parents as a little girl. It was a huge building, you know the way things are really big when you’re six or seven: there was green linoleum on the floor and forest green threadbare velvet lining the pews, and there were these massive organ pipes behind the dais. Above them there was a trompe l’oeil scroll painted high up on the cracked, plaster wall; on it was written in English Gothic letters, FAITH, WITHOUT WORKS, IS DEAD. JAMES 2:26.
Subtle, right? I would learn later about the Protestant connection between service to God and a strong work ethic; but as a girl I remember spending countless hours gazing at that wall and wondering how anybody got that high up to paint it.
So, one Sunday, I could tell something was happening because there was a kind of change in the energy up front. I peeked up and saw that the pastor was no longer behind the pulpit but was in front of the altar facing the congregation. He was standing behind a table tented with a white cloth, covering something, and he was flanked by black ladies in white dresses, tights, cardigans and white shoes: the nurse’s auxiliary, though I didn’t know what they were for, no one in church ever seemed particularly sick.
These women started passing out trays to pews, which would travel down a pew—hand to hand, to hand, and then back to the next pew and hand to hand, to hand. They were the same silver as collection plates, but they weren’t collection plates; they were different. When the plate was in the row in front of us, I peered around a suited arm and looked. Juice! Little cups of juice! Yes! When that plate came down my pew, I was ready, and when my mother took a cup and passed it to my father, I reached for it.
You know how sometimes mothers can gasp in a way that will not only let you know that you are In Trouble, but will also suck all the air out of a room? Anyhow, she made this sound, and it scared me, and I yanked my hand back. She lowered her mouth to my ear and whispered, “No, Jessica, you can’t have any!”
“Why not?” I started to say, but she shushed me, and the plate continued its journey away from us.
Two minutes later, when the plate of broken saltine crackers went by, I knew not to reach.
In the car on the way home, my mother used the word “communion” to describe what had happened during the service, and said that it was for adults only, because children didn’t—and couldn’t—understand what it meant. She didn’t tell me what it meant: she didn’t explain sacrament or worship, the last supper, arrest, or crucifixion, not even in terms that a six-year-old could understand. She only told me that I couldn’t understand its significance, so I couldn’t share.
I can’t take any credit for this. This is almost certainly not gluten free bread. 😉
When we have something special, we treat it as such, right? You don’t rake leaves or shovel snow in your Marc Jacobs or Tom Ford; you don’t lift weights in your fanciest gown or best suit. When a thing is special, we use the kid gloves and the light touch. We limit access to it. Jesus was special, and the people close to him knew it, and all his life, they put up fences around him. They limited access to him. Jesus is Sunday-finest, not suitable for everyday use. Or is He? Is Jesus only suitable for some of us, and only some of the time? Do we do right by Jesus, or by each other, when we don’t share him?
*
When he was 12, and his family went to Jerusalem, Jesus separated from his folks and stayed behind in Jerusalem after his family left the city. After looking for him for three days, they found him in the temple sitting with the teachers, talking, learning, asking and answering questions. Now, I’ve let go of my mother’s hand and wandered off in the grocery store, but to go missing in a different city for three days?
Mary confronted Jesus about this, beside herself with fear and anxiety. And what did Jesus do? He clapped back at her: “Why were you searching for me?”, he said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[1]
I wish I would come at my mother with attitude after going missing for three days.
But Jesus knew what his work was. Not even his mother would keep him from his business, from being with the people.
During his ministry, Jesus’ disciples had a similar attitude with folks who would come to him, for healing, for forgiveness, for wisdom, for connection: the disciples were like his agents. “Yes, we’re all happy Jesus is here today, No, he doesn’t have a lot of time, please have your prayer request ready, 30 seconds only, no exceptions, no touching, no pictures, no eye contact, thank you. Next!”
But what does Jesus say? About healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter: I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel[2]. To his disciples who are holding back children who’ve come for blessing: Let the little children come to me and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of Heaven belongs[3]. To Peter about the “sinful woman” who washed Jesus’ feet and massaged them with oil: You gave me no water, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she has anointed my feet with ointment[4]. Finally, to his students and disciples: whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple[5].
What is the cross that Jesus invites us to take up in pursuit of discipleship? It is an open table: unfettered access to the finest love, acceptance, nourishment, and generosity that is available. Jesus opened his borders. He tore down his fences. He used his body and his presence to give access to his love and nourishment. Through the Eucharist, Jesus bids us come into his presence and to be with his body. How does he do this? He gives us two actions: he breaks bread, he pours wine, he shares them, and says do this and remember me. This sacrament, this ritual, is one side of the blessing Jesus gives his followers before he is crucified. He also gives them a new commandment: love one another, he says, as I have loved you. On that fateful night, it was only a few of Jesus’ followers who were at the table with him. But Jesus knew then the connection between his bread as offering and his body as offering. He knew that to offer his bread and his body was to love his people; and this is what he asks us to do: to tear down the barriers to his table. To make him accessible to all.
Now, when I talk about opening the table, I don’t just mean practically. The table is where the work begins, not where it ends.
You are the open table.
The Eucharist is an embodied ritual: we use our voice to repeat language. We chew the bread; we feel the wine run down our throat. Our bodies get involved, whatever they are: more or less able, more or less aged, more or less free: we use our bodies to engage in a practice of God who came in a body. Some days, in the ritual, we might feel pious, or devoted, but some days we might be bored; we might be tired or distracted, fidgety or over-caffeinated, or angry or hurting. But we show up and we put our body on the line. We put our body in the shape and practice of the sacrament, and we trust the ritual and the touch of God to do their good work and have their way in us. Engaging our body this way, it invites us to pay attention. Jesus says, do this and remember me. Remembering is only the first part of our instruction. The real work in front of us as followers of Christ is to BE CHRIST in our world. We have to put our bodies on the line. Love one another, as I have loved you, Jesus says. We practice Communion not only to remember the sacrifice of Christ, but to be reminded to love as he loved. The power of this sacrament is that it is both a literal, embodied experience of Christ and a call to embody Christ for others. We are to show up, to put ourselves out there, to be the love, the generosity, the restoration and justice, the righteousness and the mercy, that Christ is for all of us.
If you are the open table, if you are the body of Christ to and for our community, are you putting your body on the line? Are you showing up, and I mean, really Showing Up, for those of us, for all of us, who need healing and nourishment from the body of Christ?
We Are the body of Christ. We must Be and Do Christ here, in our world, right now. What does that look like? Maybe we provide lead-free water for every child in every city; maybe we stop deforesting; maybe we deliver graduates from soul-crushing debt; maybe we provide addiction recovery instead of racist, punitive sentencing mandates; maybe we abolish prisons, and maybe we create and protect reproductive justice for all who want it; maybe we stop putting children in cages; maybe we reunite children and parents and we invest in communities.
Whatever it is, we make it. We give and receive the openness and welcoming, we offer and humbly seek from one another, the love and forgiveness that Christ personified so fully in his life and ministry. We take up the cross of presence: we love fully and fiercely. We put our bodies on the line. What obstacles have we created to the love of Christ? In what ways are we avoiding, or disobeying, his command to love one another? Who are we starving instead of feeding? From whom are we hoarding the sustaining love and grace of Christ? For us to be Christ, we must act, we must undo the obstacles of fear, defensiveness, of anxiety and oppression that we erect to being and showing the love and grace that Christ has shown us, and that he calls us to show everyone. Every One. By being Christ to one another, we don’t just create space and access to the sacrament of the Eucharist; we manifest and share the transformative power of the love of Christ. By embodying Christ, we tend to the body of Christ.
[1] Luke 2:49
[2] Matthew 15:24
[3] Matthew 19:14
[4] Luke 7:44-46
[5] Luke 14:27