So today was the day. Five years after beginning my journey toward the priesthood, 16 years after my first visit to an Anglican Church, I found myself in front of an expectant congregation with bread and wine in my hands. I must have seemed a little hesitant, wondering when someone else would come up and take over, when the real priest would step in and do the real part of the consecration. But no one did.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like, as I have, allow me to give you a little snapshot before it becomes normalized like so many other things which were once new and strange. It seemed to me that the miracle of the thing lay in the normalcy of it all. There, in front of me, sat normal wine and crackers, like those I have handled so many times. Behind the altar stood normal, human, me; no better or magical than any of the people I stood to serve. At the front of the church sat a very normal baby in the arms of his mother, just baptised; wandering to my right was a common one-year-old, oblivious to it all.
The mystery of the thing was that in the midst of all that, God showed up. You won’t find here an explanation of how that happened, because I don’t understand how God works anymore than you do.
But what I DO know is that God chooses to show up and meet us using the common stuff of life.
Using the normal lives of you and me. These are the things God has called “good,” and these are the places we find God again and again.
As I stretched my hands over the bread and the wine this morning, there was a keen sense of a gathered community there with me, meeting God. I was not alone, and neither was the congregation alone. Together we were meeting God in that place. The rest of the world, all that we were carrying as we came together that morning, seemed to fade away as we came together to encounter the Holy One in those precious moments together.
In my peripheral vision, I could see the faces of all humanity: there were white and black, Asian, Indigenous, old, young, poor, and rich. All these looked forward expectantly as we called upon the Holy One to meet us in that place. To call creation “good” once again as we gathered together in community modeling the communal nature of our Holy Trinity.
The honour in being chosen and allowed to preside at the Eucharist today was the privilege of retelling the story of our people. For many generations, before we could read or write, our story was told and retold by our ancestors. God’s faithfulness was remembered and retold by grandmothers and grandfathers who invited us, not to simply hear the story, but to become actors in its unfolding drama.
The mystery of the Eucharist is that as we retell the story of old we are swept up into God’s continuing work among us.
And yet, for me the greatest honour was not standing there in front of everyone invoking our God to join us there. My greatest joy came in the form of a tiny child looking up at me as he awaited a blessing. In the face of this child all the mysteries of our faith come together: God’s taking the form of a little child; Jesus’ pronouncement that the weak are strong and the last are first; the radical welcome of the Church which says all are welcome no matter what they have to offer.
In the eyes of a little child I see the joy and hope proclaimed in the Eucharist. I see there the faith that we so often struggle with as adults. And laying my hand on the little boy’s forehead, I glimpsed what God was talking about when God promised never to leave us. No, I cannot explain to you what happened today; but God met us there.
