Recently I had a long conversation with a friend about the meaning of the word “sacrament” and how this word gets fleshed out in the 21st century. It was a little intimidating to be asked this question, as I am still new to the liturgical church and its’ sacramental emphases and also because my friend is quite educated and philosophically astute! I had to ask myself, “How is it that I experience the sacraments?” I found out that I am not very theological about the subject. I am rather like the kid whose parents take him to OMSI hoping to excite a thirst for all things scientific, but their child would rather sit in the simulated rocket and just push the buttons and dream of space travel! (Yes, my Myers-Briggs is INFP.)
That’s why I like it when Rev. Jennifer conducts the Eucharist at Family Service. The kids are invited right up to the sacred table and taught about family hospitality - they are not bowled over with a sermon on transubstantiation or consubstantiation. To a child what the Host is or if it’s transformed when consumed is just not on their radar. You just eat the bread! And see what happens! Like Psalm 34 exclaims: “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!” It’s natural.
And I guess it is true for me, that the sacraments are best when experienced naturally. It’s a way we learn about God by the “doing of the thing.” It’s caught…. not taught. It captures our imagination. It is mystery and metaphor.
Emily Dickinson had a bit of a falling out with the church, (not God). She felt excluded. Her writing shows how she came closest to experiencing God when she was connected to the natural world. Her experiences of grace were discovered in nature:
Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze --
Permit a child to join.
Thy sacred emblems to partake --
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!
In her little tome, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work," Kathleen Norris finds her sacraments in the mundane: dishes, laundry and ironing. Those daily, mindless and sanctifying repetitions of duty became her rosary beads of beatitude, her bells to mark the hours.
Make no mistake, I find the sacraments serious and holy, not trivial or shallow. But at my spiritual best I am a child. As a parent, I learned that “child’s play” is actually the work of learning. It’s serious business to the child! So too are my attempts to enter this sacramental life. When my loving Father sees my desire to “play house with God’s dishes,” He smiles. Because this is how I learn! It’s the place where our creative imaginations and His mystery come together. One day after baking Eucharist bread, I wrote a nursery rhyme:
Bread for body and blood for wine
are served on little plates of thine.
All partake. All are fed.
All are nourished with wonder bread!
Perhaps it really is that simple. When I read the gospels, The Last Supper is not a complicated scene. It’s a natural place, a dinner table. We are all at that table. In sacramental living, mystery and metaphor get to trump the playground bullies of logic and skepticism. And faith finds her voice and sings from the altar. And sacrament may be, after all, just the adult version of “Godly Play!” It’s great to be His children, His family, circling His table. So when Rev. Jennifer extends the bread to the children and says: “this is Jesus,” - they just eat it and believe! Me too.
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