Vulnerable

I preached this morning. I preached. That just doesn't cover it. It just doesn't express the wonderful things that happened. Like stepping through a curtain and discovering that the world on the other side is entirely different, and yet wholly the same as the one you expected.

I stood in the darkened sanctuary yesterday. I had come to set up the altar for communion. The rain came down gently on the roof, whispering with silence. The light was diffuse and weak. I stood looking out over the empty pews, filled in my memory with faces come and gone. I could hear in my ears the voices of those who had stood in the place before me. And I turned around, looking up the steps to the altar, lit from behind by the spilled light of the sacristy. I stood beneath the altar, letting the rain and memory speak. And finally I prayed.

I robed this morning, laughing with our priest and her husband, shepherding our acolyte, the usual chaos before service. And everything was right. Nerves had dissolved into bubbling excitement. By the time our priest read the gospel a grin had spread across my face that refused to be displaced. She prayed for me, her smile mirroring mine and I turned out to face my family. Not phantoms this time but flesh and blood. I finished with a smile and floated through the rest of the service. This people, this family wrapped me up at the Peace and afterwards in hugs and smiles. Shaking my hand and filling my eyes with their smiles. I am official now. I am on the way and if it was affirmation I needed they gave it to me, washing me with it like yet another baptism.

I have done in the last few months one impossible thing after another. I have made myself vulnerable to fear and failure over and over. And again and again fear has become joy, and failure has yet to rear its head.

After the service a gentlemen I did not recognize came into the nave and sat quietly at the back reading the prayer book. The church was nearly empty, the last few stragglers from the adult education class leaving as I cleaned up the church, clearing the altar. For some reason I came to the altar rail and asked him, "is there anything else we can do for you?" He sat quietly for a moment and then said simply "I missed communion." Remembered hunger washed over me. I asked him to stay. Our priest followed me back to the sanctuary and the three of us gathered around the altar and shared communion, praying and eating together in the quiet church surrounded by the beloved phantoms of the Body of Christ. Amen. Alleluia.