Sunday
October 2
A Communion Meditation for World Communion Sunday
By Marsh Chapel
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Our field work is no substitute for our domestic duties.
Your outside, outdoor application of mind and body, in profession or employment or work, is not a replacement for the hearth, the home, the heart, the power of the dinner table, the beloved, the family—kinder, kuche, kirche, as Luther might have put it.
You cannot claim reference to bank account, degrees and honorifics, achievements and merit badges, when faced with a required response to the dominical claim upon relational duties. It will not help me in the long run when I affirm a full bank account or a long list of peer reviewed articles or a world championship of whatever sort, if they are meant to cover over what matters, counts, lasts and has meaning, if they are meant to avoid grace, care, kindness and…well…love.
My dear one, your field work is no substitute for your domestic duties.
Says our Lord Jesus Christ, both to an ancient struggling church, and to you and me on World Communion Sunday: Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”
The dinner table and all its conversations and claims make no allowance for a borrowing from the day’s own trouble. A prayer is said, the dishes are passed, a conversation—glorious, golden, rhythmic, improvisational, personal, intimate, perilous, demanding, real, and so utterly human—a conversation emerges. Something is said. Something is heard. The table has its own realm and kingdom, its own royalty and citizenry, its own claim and call. Call it the power of the dinner table.
Three years on into the twilight—perhaps—of Covid, we have missed a step or two, lost or forgotten our dinner table habits. We have grown cold to the clink and charm of fork and glass. We have become rusty, out of shape, flabby both in the form of host and of guest—so interesting in older English, the two are almost the same word. We have been rightly busy with our field work, ploughing and shepherding, works and day jobs and zoom screens and all. So, we have not been prepared to…be prepared. To be ready to…prepare supper…put on our apron…serve the service of eating and drinking. After all, we still try to assert, in the teeth of the hurricane gale—an image we have in mind as in prayer we remember those suffering now in Florida– of this deceptively minimal saying of the Lord, that, well, we had a good day at the screen—didn’t we?, on the zoom—didn’t we? by the click click-ometer of the internet—didn’t we?, in our day job—didn’t we? Didn’t we?
Not so fast, Jesus says, not so fast.
Not so fast, says Mr. Wesley, not so fast.
Not so fast, says our own true and hard experience, not so fast.
Not so fast says life, presence, freedom, experience.
Not so fast, says God, not so fast.
Do what is commanded, says Jesus. Conversation is a means of grace, says John Wesley (as real and powerful as sacrament, as prayer, as Scripture, as fasting)—a conveyance of grace. Our late Covid experience is a hunger and thirst for–what satisfies hunger and slakes thirst. The real hunger. One does not live by bread alone, but by every word…
There is an orb of reality, a realm of being, a place unto itself, around the common table, after the day’s own trouble, the power of the table, that will not be supplanted, outsourced, erased, minimized, or disregarded.
And here we are. At table, a table as big as all outdoors, and a table that spans the globe, and a table that serves a World Communion, a world communion. And here we are. Morning has come, the board is spread, thanks be to God who gives us bread, thank God for bread. And the power of the table, the dining table, is just here—conversation–a saving, intervening power, especially for us, we who are coming in from the field work of 3 Covid years, without it. And here we are. Conversation is where imagination and memory dance. Conversation is where one feels and says ‘I love you’. Conversation is where the strict arts of listening are raised from the dead. Conversation on the street, at home, along the park bench, before church, after church, outside church. There is nothing more human, nor more healthy, nor more saving than a good conversation, which by nature begins in the unexpected and ends in the unforeseen and trails along in the mind for days to come.
A conversation starts, somehow. A conversation travels, somewhere. A conversation ends, sometime. After three years of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to quasi-spaces, electronic spaces–to which nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die–we have been returned to the land of conversation. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. There is a robust magic in conversation, whereby John Wesley named conversation a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting.
In conversation, there abides, or lurks, the lasting possibility of heart to heart communication, heart by heart communion. That potential seizes you, not the other way around. You are longways into a talk with an old dear friend, and of a sudden, you realize, you intuit, just how much that friendship means, a friendship planted and grown in conversation. You are gathered before dinner, and the children, coaxed, begin to sing the songs of memory, of history, of Zion, of nation, of upgrowing. The folksongs, the hymns, the partner songs, the spirituals, the camp fire rounds, multiple rounds, give off an invisible glow, a kind of verbal hearth. You sit with two colleagues who are also combatants. There is an opening, and a joust, and of a sudden—unplanned, unexpected, unforeseen—one shatters the other with a truth spoken and heard. The shattering is not in the end a mendable one. Some things, like some malignancies, you can never cure, but you can manage. They are manageable but not curable. They can be managed, managed to ground, even though, unseen, the malignancy remains. In conversation, in the magic of conversation, such hard and dark and difficult truth can surface. Be careful with the shattering, in the moment and in the meantime and in the memory and in the future. You realize afterward, that one loved one, in one seemingly innocuous conversation, was trying to say something, something like, I am worried about this medical procedure, and I think I may, well, I think I may not make it… But the clues and hues and dues and schmooze are too indirect, too subtle, and you miss the marrow and meaning of the talk, only to recall it, only to get it, later, much later, too late. You are in a meeting, and all of sudden the temperature shifts, and sunlight and warmth become cave darks, stalactites and stalagmites. And the conversation flickers, withers, and dies. Something is in there. It would be utterly invisible and inaudible by zoom. But in conversation, in presence, with embodied silence, and incarnate body language, you see and hear: She is really hurting. He is really angry. I am really in over my head. They want something they really can never have.
There is a saving power, a saving grace in conversation. It costs nothing to listen, except time and risk. And it costs nothing to speak, except time and risk. Could you say that in another way? What I hear you to have said is just this. Do you really mean that, or do you mean half or double that? It sounds to me like you are wandering around Robin Hood’s barn, and that makes me wonder why you are wandering like that. When you say that, who do you have in mind? Why do I have the feeling that you have a feeling about this? Let’s talk about this again someday. There is a healing power, a healing grace in conversation. Most people can in time solve their own problems, if they just have someone to talk to about them, who will really listen to them ( said Dr. John Hertel, Cornell University, 1979).
Pastoral ministry, cut to the chase, is the pursuit of an excellent 20-minute sermon a week, a twenty-hour task, alongside 25 genuine conversations a week. The rest, all other ground, is sinking sand. Most current schools of theology have still some faculty left who know pastoral conversation in person. They are not ordained. They have no ministerial experience to speak of. They have not invested the time in listening to become adept at listening because their work and future depend on speaking and writing. (They are largely introverts, usually extreme introverts, for whom human presence and engagement are profoundly enervating and exhausting. Far better the buffers of libraries, books, papers, lectures, classes and grades, than the direct encounter with another heart. I and Thou.) But through it all, they remember the grace of conversation, the saving intervening grace of conversation. Likewise, most denominations and churches have at least some leadership left, a few circles of ministerial wisdom shared in conversation about…conversation. Seward Hiltner, Homer Jerdigan, Henri Nouwen, Ann Belford Ulanov are not with us any longer, and not with us to remind us that the most the important things in ministry are the one on one things (said Bishop Joseph Yeakel, 1982). Pastoral ministry is visiting and preaching. Ministry is preaching. (It’s easy, as a generation ago Mike Royko said of his job to write a weekly newspaper column, ‘it’s easy, just sit down at the typewriter–and slit your wrists’.) Pastoral ministry is conversation. Ministry is conversation. (It’s easy, just sit down and listen until the cows come home.)
The minister, the baptized Christian, for ministry is born in every baptism, and is emphatically not confined to ordination, the minister is part bull fighter, part heavy weight boxer, part private detective, part spy. At stake, for all, is lasting health, personal salvation, individual growth, spiritual integrity, and the chance, the fleeting chance, to experience being alive before we die. The cape ripples and the saber rattles. The prize fighter dodges, weaves, ducks, swings, retreats, advances. The PI looks through the back window, checks the mail in the mail box, notices the water still dripping from the faucet, puts two and two together. The one disguised behind enemy lines smiles, demurs, nods, remembers, and then will try to bring home a truth, the truth in hand, without getting caught. But these arts are practiced, sharpened, conveyed, by one pastor and another…in conversation.
Every hour spent on a machine is an hour spent apart from conversation, and so apart from full real life itself. Your field work is no substitute for your domestic duties. Walk with a friend. Sit for intercessory prayer. Call somebody on the phone. Set a lunch date. Offer a coffee. Receive with happiness the unannounced visitor to your office. Steer the conversation, when you can, away from doing and out onto the broad meadow of being. Keep a journal. Write a sermon. Craft a poem. Design and experiment. Take on some painting, some gardening, some creative craft, a piano lesson, beginning French or Swahili.
My grandmother grew up on a dairy farm near Cooperstown. Some of you have heard me mention her before. She graduated from Smith College in 1914. She taught school and married later in life, raising three daughters. She spent her later life in a modest Syracuse home, surrounded by piles of books, mounds of newspapers, and letters written or to be written and received, often long ago. She and her college roommate wrote each other a letter once a week from graduation until death. She feared no conversation, and celebrated all conversation, no matter how middling or shallow or tiresome. Famously, she was thrilled, overjoyed, to have the Jehovah Witnesses come into her Methodist living room, on their mission. She loved to talk with them about the intricacies of Leviticus. She always wanted them to stay longer than they could stand to stay. They left worn out, bedraggled, dog tired, exhausted, and utterly defeated.
People do not always know what they think and feel until they say it, until they say it to someone they know is listening, someone who really cares. People do not always know what they think and feel until they say it, until they say it to someone they know is listening, someone who really cares. This is not psychiatry, not psychotherapy, not formal counseling, nor any other of the—very wonderful and endlessly helpful and so much needed—forms of care. This is conversation, a means of grace.
A conversation starts, somehow. A conversation travels, somewhere. A conversation ends, sometime. After a year or three of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to spaces, electronic spaces to which much goes to die—nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die–we have been returned to the land of conversation. It is World Communion Sunday! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! There is a robust magic in conversation, a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting.
Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
