If you've gotten to know me over the past few years, you have surely learned one thing about me: I cry. A lot.
I cry whenever someone dies in an episode of Bones or when a couple breaks up on How I Met Your Mother (even though I know they will be married by the next season). I cry when Madeleine L'Engle describes holding her grandchild. I cry when I watch the news. I even cried when I read this story on bizarre Olympic happenings in Runner's World (Strange But True - Runner's World).
Morale of the story: I am emotional.
Sometimes, my tears seem wasted, as they appear for fictitious events or common moments. There are times when they give away the feelings I wished no one knew I experienced. Yet, sometimes, my tears are rightly placed and give expression to feelings I cannot put into words.
This morning, I served communion at my church. Truth be told, the experience is kind of strange. I always find, that I stumble over the words after my rapid-fire repetition of them. I told someone that the cup was "the body of God broken for you" and worried that I had made some grave theological error and rested in the knowledge that my words do not void the truth behind the elements. I try to make eye contact with each member and tell them the truth of the sacrament, but struggle with the proper expression. Communion is a celebration, so I smile. Yet, communion is the remembrance of the Cross, the cost of sin, and so my eyes give away my internal confusion.
Sometimes, I wonder if anyone else thinks the same things. I struggle with the physicality of communion each time I partake of it. Do I take the cup before or after the words are spoken over it? Do I respond? Should I make eye contact? Do I smile? This is just a short excursion into my over-active mind.
Serving communion this morning, however, was a particularly special opportunity. My church recently taught a communicants class and had three children take membership vows and declare their faith in Christ. As a symbol of their faith, they were invited to join at the table and, for the first time, eat the bread and drink the cup that reminds us of Christ's death until he returns again. I had the honor to watch two of them receive this means of grace.
You see, these young siblings came to the front of the church with their father. After the blessing was said, he gave his children an additional explanation and guided them through receiving the elements. I saw their faces and the mix of emotions it conveyed. I saw the nervousness in the wrinkles at their eyes, their joy by the slight of their lips and the curiosity in the fullness of their eyes. I saw on their face a simpler, purer form of my own mixed feelings.
Watching these children take their first communion reminded me of why communion is such a gift to the church. I saw in them the fullness of its meaning both in its tragedy and its joy and was consumed with emotion. In them lives the same Spirit that dwells within me. Together, we have the same hope for the salvation of ourselves and the world around us. Their faith is congruent to my own and glistens in the innocence of childhood. Watching them take communion reminded me that the flurry of emotions I feel when I eat and drink in remembrance is not misplaced but a realization of the gospel.
So, as they took their cups and headed back to their pew, I stood at the front of the church proclaiming, "The blood of Christ shed for you," to each congregant with tears welling in my eyes and a smile stuck on my lips, realizing that not all my tears are misplaced.
