Extreme sacramentalism

The usher sends the little velvet pouch down each wood-grained pew every Sunday and I give my two pence (or whatever it is in today’s dollars) over the heads of the roving bands of children terrorizing the parishioners in the balcony.

Then suddenly – unexpectedly – one Sunday, the usher passes around a tray of microscopically-cubed morsels of bread, which I thought was pretty generous as he had just fleeced me on a real estate deal earlier in the week and, as it turns out, was well known for doing so. (This is not true. Entirely creative license on my part, though inspired by true events, no doubt. This usher is a straw man if ever there was one. But, hay. . . .) He then proceeded to limit me to only one piece. All was right with the world again.

But lo and behold, out he comes once more with a gleaming circular platter tinkling with tiny glasses of grape juice – one each! – and that was surely a nice touch. I didn’t know what to think. What an emotional rollercoaster.

It didn’t hit me until later. This had nothing to do with his public or private generosity. In fact, it had nothing to do with him at all. This was supposed to have been communion. The church was footing the bill (with, of course, the money I had tithed in the preceding few weeks)!

So this was communion! This was communion! I had always thought – naively I suppose (and somewhat disingenuously, I admit) – that communion in the New Testament was more of a shared meal representing a shared life, a sort of alimentary anthropophagism, alive with allusive vitality and communitarian grace. This present-day bread-and-juice crackerfest feels like a paltry add-on or utility-grade substitution for something much more real and powerful. Frankly, it’s not enough. Not even close.

And – I dare say – not even biblical.

The spiritual life is all and everywhere. Therefore, I want my entire life to be sacramental. I want Christ to seep into every crack and fissure of my bifurcated being. I want every possible contingent thing to be sacrament, not just some itty-bitty piece of bread and Welch’s-promoted thimbleful of juice once a month from my best friend, the usher.

I’m starvin’ here! I want meals that are sacramental; love that is sacramental; movie nights that are sacramental; art that is sacramental; driving that is sacramental; working, playing, walking, weeping, laughing – all sacramental. I want even my silverware to be sacramental. I’ve gone sacramental!

And that’s not the only thing. What’s with water baptism anyhow? Oh, this controversial splishy-splash formalism. Sprinkle, dunk, pour? No more! It’s a metaphor! Let’s move beyond these tradition-bound formalisms. Let it go. Let it go. (I’m feeling Quakerish now.)

Really, these sacramental truncations are impossible. Impossible. Every group has their own, and not only their own, but their own meaning of their own. How this promotes unity in the body of Christ, I have no idea.

And yet it’s all so solemn and we’re all so serious about it, like it’s some crucial contemporary version of initiatory tribal scarification. Which, I suppose – speaking as an anthropologist – it is.

But we are not a tribe. We’re members of a spiritual body, citizens of a kingdom not of this world.

Leave the rituals behind. Sacramentalize your life.

Do this. Do this in remembrance of him.

Faithful Skeptic attends a Mennonite Brethren church and enjoys the sacrament of Italian food at least once a week.