First Congregational Church
165 Main St, Amherst, MA
John 6:24-25 (from the African American Lectionary)
Excerpt from an apocryphal gospel by Reynolds Price
When I lived in DC, there was one church that never failed to get my attention when I drove by. The building was impressive and imposing, but it wasn’t the architecture that caught my eye. No, the thing that made me do a double take every time I saw it was a sandwich board placed about halfway between the street and the church’s front door.
“‘Come as you are’ service,” it said, “Sunday at 5 p.m.”
“Come as you are.” Every time I saw it, I had to think about it. The sign seemed to imply that if you wanted to go to church as you were, or are, or would be, or whatever, you had to go to a special service.
I tried hard to wrap my mind around this, but I always got stuck. It may have had something to do with trying to imagine Jesus coming upon this sign. I could just see Jesus—carrying a sleeping roll, wearing ratty sandals and smelling like he hadn’t showered in days—standing there scratching his head, checking the bank clock across the street, and wondering what would happen if he came as he was at 10 o’clock on Sunday morning instead of 5 on Sunday afternoon.
What was that, anyway: the quarantine service?
In much the same way, I sometimes try to imagine Jesus walking in on one of our communion services. What would he see? What would he think? How would he feel?
Would Jesus even realize that this ritual had anything to do with him? Would Jesus, a Jew, understand Christianity’s efforts to make some connection between his last Passover Seder and the defining rite of the church? Would he hear the words and see the elements and wonder where the joy was? Would he feel welcome to come to the table?
I don’t know.
I don’t know what Jesus would think about communion, but I have a feeling he wouldn’t think about it for very long. I have a feeling that after walking into our sanctuary or any other church building or hospital room or battlefield where communion was being celebrated, Jesus’ attention would very soon be diverted away from the table and the elements and toward the people in the room.
I think Jesus would notice our tense posture; I think he would look into our tired eyes; I’m guessing he would notice our need for personal space; and I can imagine his heart filling with compassion. But if I keep looking, if I continue to imagine and ask and seek, I also see an expression of sadness begin to come over Jesus’ face.
I see the sadness and I wonder if maybe he’s thinking that not much has changed. I wonder if he’s thinking that we’re not all that different from the 1st-century Palestinians who followed him around in the hopes of getting another free lunch. I see the faraway look in his eyes and I wonder if he’s remembering how he tried to explain to them that what they really needed—and what he could give them—was not simply another meal but the bread of life: reconciliation, wholeness and justice, acceptance, healing and love, meaning, purpose and community, joy, peace and freedom. I wonder if he is remembering telling them that what they really needed was not bread but him.
I continue watching him and I can tell he’s coming back to the present time—to this place, to us, to our communion table. He’s new here, but he seems to see right through us. He seems to realize that sometimes we come to God’s table not so much to find God, not so much to hear what Jesus has to say to us, not primarily to honor and praise the giver of the gifts, but to take from the giver what we need and what we want, to make ourselves feel better.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m pretty sure Jesus wants us to be filled and fulfilled. He lived and died to give us abundant life, after all. But he knows how big the gap is between who he is and what we’ve settled for. He offers healing and freedom, abundance and joy, the bread of life that will fill us so that we never hunger and thirst again. Yet sometimes we approach the table wanting nothing more than warm fuzzies. He offers transformation and newness of life, but sometimes we just want enough spiritual nourishment and divine comfort to get us through the next week of the lives we already have.
The next thing I know Jesus is starting to take off his shirt and I think, “Oh, no. Maybe he should have gone to a “come as you are” service.” But just as I’m about to signal a deacon to quietly—quietly!—usher him out the door, I realize what is happening.
I see Jesus take a water bottle out of his backpack and, after dipping the tail of his shirt inside, he uses the wet shirt to wash the hands of the man sitting next to him. Before the man can protest, he turns to the woman on the other side and gently scrubs her gnarled fingers. He continues on down the pew and then, as a basket of bread is being passed toward him, he moves on to another pew.
Jesus moves through the entire sanctuary this way—washing tiny baby hands and big hands covered with age spots, taking into his hands the fingers of those who have gone years without another’s touch as well as fingers intertwined with someone else’s. He washes black hands and brown hands and trembling hands and strong hands. Some hands he has to pry loose from something before he can wash them, but he doesn’t exclude anyone or give up on anybody. He washes the hands of the greediest Wall Street financier and the most corrupt politician; hands of the intolerant and the doubters. He scrubs the fingers of the self-righteous and the self-haters. Jesus washes manicured hands of surgeons, cramped hands of factory workers, fidgety hands of children, sunburned hands of farm workers, soot-covered hands of miners, steely hands of soldiers, blistered hands of the poor, filthy hands of the homeless, and Kaposi-covered hands of the HIV-positive. Ever so gently, Jesus even washes the hands of those who try to resist him.
By the time Jesus reaches the front of this global sanctuary, both the bread and the cup have been shared and all eyes are on him. Coming to stand behind the altar table, he raises his hands toward heaven and rests his loving eyes on the people in front of him:
“I am the bread of life,” he says, “broken and shared, life for the world. I am the cup of the covenant, love freely poured out for all, that all may be one in God’s Spirit.”
As he lowers his hands, a huge smile begins to light up Jesus’ face. Pushing the table aside and looking around the room, he says, “You got any drums in here? Let’s dance!”