“Making ourselves known to each other”

Saturday night, after hearing Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken play through their new EP, Ampersand, in an early concert, as well as a solo set from both of them, I headed over to F. Scott’s for a nightcap to catch what I could of Pat Coil’s set with his band. While savoring a bowl of chocolate espresso pot de crème with a glass of red wine, letting the jazz wash over me, I scribbled down these thoughts:

We are strongest when we admit our need for each other. When we stop trying to pretend we have it all together, when we aren’t afraid to show our loose ends and frayed edges, in that moment we are closest to becoming the person we want to be. We try to protect ourselves by projecting a false image of who we are, fearful that if those around us see us as we really are, they won’t like us and we will end up even lonelier than we are now. Never realizing that by doing so we only ensure that we will remain isolated, alone and unknown, which, if we are honest, is our greatest fear. Only when we decide that it is worth the risk, when we decide to “make ourselves known to each other,” as Wendell Berry writes, will we truly find what we’ve desperately been longing for.

Arriving at church yesterday morning, the first thing I noticed was that the kneelers we use for communion weren’t in place at the front of the building, as they usually are for the first Sunday of each month. Then I noticed there were just two tables, one on each side of the stage, holding the bread and wine. When it came time to take communion, Randy, our pastor, explained the change. Because we are the body of Christ, because we have been redeemed and made new, both individually and corporately, as a way of reminding ourselves of that, we were going to serve communion to each other. Over the forty-five minutes it took, in groups of about twenty or thirty, we gathered around the tables, took the bread and wine, and gave it to our neighbor, reminding each other that “this is the body of Christ, broken for you,” and “this is His blood, shed for you.”

When Randy started telling us about what was going to happen, my first thought was, “I don’t want to do that. It will be awkward!” My second thought was to pause and remember a story Scott Cairns told at the Festival of Faith and Writing, of the Baptist minister who interrupted a conversation between he and Father Iákovos to ask the monk if he “had Jesus Christ as his Personal Savior.” I love Father Iákovos’ reply, “No, I like to share him with others,” because for a moment it takes me out of the me-centered culture I’m immersed in, reminds me that I am a part of something bigger, just one member of the Body of Christ. I remembered Kathleen Norris’ story at the festival about the value of communal prayer, of how “when you can’t say the Lord’s Prayer or pray the Psalms, there are others who can carry you along.” And I was thankful for those standing around me, for the friend on my left and someone I hadn’t met before on my right, all of us reminding each other through our words and our presence that we have a new way, a better way, to live. That we are not alone. That we have the responsibility, the privilege, of being the hands and feet of Christ for those around us, and them for us.