Culled from Christianity Today
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Source: Fabio Ruggieri / EyeEm / Getty
I’m
a big fan of the Eucharist. So was John Wesley. Though you might not
know it with the relative non-centrality of the sacrament in most
Methodist worship services, the founder of Methodism never went more
than four or five days in his adult life without celebrating the Lord’s
Supper.
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But Wesley never served time in a Pennsylvania prison.
Before I was incarcerated, I left Methodism to join the Lutheran Church,
in large part because of the weekly observation of the Eucharist. The
body and blood of Christ filled me with a powerful, sustaining dose of
grace that I relied on to face many life challenges. Then I arrived at a
county prison four years ago for a crime I maintain I did not commit,
and I lost access to Communion. There was an occasional volunteer-led
Bible study, but there was no worship service. No Eucharist. And I
needed the body and blood of Christ in a way I had never needed it
before.
My Lutheran pastor tried repeatedly to bring Communion
to me but was given the correctional runaround. He ran a gauntlet of
deputy wardens, assistant deputy wardens, and acting administrative
deputy assistant wardens.
He was told he could bring me Communion. Then, after
driving more than an hour to the prison, he arrived and was told he
could not, as our visits could only be conducted with glass between us.
The next time, we got permission to meet together in a room to share
Communion. But again, the elements were not permitted when he arrived.
So without Communion during my months at county, I
joined my Lutheran friends in spirit. While they gathered at the table
on Sunday mornings, I communed with them from a distance. I followed the
liturgy from worship bulletins that my pastor had sent me. And with
“wine” made from water and grape jelly, and a slice of bread from my
meal tray, I joined them in sharing in the body and blood of Christ. It
may seem uncouth or even foolish to join in Communion remotely, like a
child having pretend tea in plastic cups, but these were vital moments
of grace that preserved me in my time of desperate need.
When I moved from county to the state processing
facility, I was able to attend worship, either “Protestant” or
“Catholic.” I started with the Protestant worship services. In order to
accommodate all varieties of Protestantism, the standard weekly worship
service did not include Communion. So I was back to jelly juice and a
saltine cracker (no bread—removing it from the chow hall was strictly
prohibited).
As it happened, I became friends with a Catholic inmate.
I told him about my yearning for Communion, and he told me to sign up
for Mass and come along with him. I asked him about the church rule
banning non-Catholics from the Eucharist. He smiled and put his hand on
my shoulder. “This is prison,” he said. “Do you really think God cares
if you steal some grace?”
Your Father, Who Sees What Is Done in Secret
The next Sunday, I was off to Mass. The liturgy was very
familiar, the missal was easy to follow, and the songs in the back of
the booklet contained Methodist and Lutheran hymns.We progressed through
the Liturgy of the Eucharist, sitting, standing, kneeling, standing,
and kneeling. I love kneeling in worship. It’s different from just
sitting in a pew, like you are at some sort of performance. There’s
something about getting off your butt and humbling yourself before the
Almighty as you feel the discomfort of your body weight pressing down on
your knees. It’s active participation in the liturgy, as you engage
physically in the story of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection.
The priest was an older man, chubby but strong, mostly
bald with his remaining gray hair barely at crewcut length. His face was
a blend of sternness and compassion, heavy on the stern side. I was
sure he had some sort of spiritual superpower to detect impostors among
his flock of the true faith, like the Terminator or Iron Man with a
scanner that labels friend or foe. When he glanced my way, I knew the
warning light was glowing red, tagging me with each strain of my
religious past: Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, with smatterings of
Baptist, Anglican, and Episcopalian.
I mentally ran through worst-case scenarios. If I went
forward to receive Communion, he might throw a question at me from the
catechism or ask me to name the bishop of the diocese. And when I failed
to answer correctly, he would quote the relevant provisions of canon
law and motion for an officer to haul me off to “the bucket,” the
special housing unit where inmates are kept in high-security lockdown,
to perform a 90-day act of contrition.
But then something happened. During the Invitation to
Communion, he proclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes
away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of
the Lamb.” To which we responded, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should
enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be
healed.”
And immediately I recognized this as rooted
in Scripture, from one of Jesus’ teaching miracles in Matthew 8. A Roman
military officer, a centurion, comes to Jesus to ask for healing for
his servant, who is paralyzed and in terrible distress. Jesus, who is a
Jew and a subject of the Roman Empire, offers to come and cure the man.
The centurion replies, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my
roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.”
This Roman could not be more of an outsider to Jesus and
his band of Jewish disciples. And yet he is bold enough to recognize
the power and authority of Jesus and to come before him humbly asking
for grace. And Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone
in Israel with such great faith.” Jesus answers the man’s request and
heals his servant.
When I heard this Scripture incorporated in the
liturgy—“Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but
only say the word and my soul shall be healed”—I realized that while I
might be the outsider, with a combination of boldness and humility I
could step forward and receive this sacramental grace for the healing my
soul needed.
Through Song and Sacrament
Something else that happened was the choir started to
sing while people came to receive the Eucharist. The song might have
been well known among Catholics, but I did not know it. The words
pierced my soul:
I will come to you in the silence, I will lift you from all your fear.You will hear my voice, I claim you as my choice, be still and know I am near.Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by name.Come and follow me, I will bring you home. I love you and you are mine.
The first rows of inmates were filing forward to receive
the wafer, the body of Christ, with an orderliness and beauty sometimes
lacking in Protestant worship, where the irregular frequency of the
sacrament of Communion makes us forget how we are supposed to move from
pew to altar rail and back. The song continued:
I am hope for all who are hopeless, I am eyes for those who long to see.In the shadows of the night, I will be your light, come and rest in me.
This song was amazing! Full of grace and truth. It was
as though God was speaking right to me. “I am the strength for all the
despairing, healing for the ones who dwell in shame.”
And then it was time for my row. Inmates were moving
toward the center aisle. I sat in the pew, trying to summon a go/no-go
decision, as I heard this verse of the song:
I am the Word that leads all to freedom, I am the peace the world cannot give.I will call your name, embracing all your pain. Stand up now, walk, and live!
I looked up toward heaven. There was no doubt. I don’t
know who else was experiencing the power of that song, but I knew that
God had a direct message for me: “Stand up now, walk, and live!” So I
stood up and joined the procession toward the priest.
I held my hands together before me, overlapped and open
to show both emptiness and the expectation of receiving something. I
remembered a professor telling me once that we all come as beggars to
the feast. And I truly felt like a beggar, scrounging for the body of
Christ.
Once in motion, everything passed quickly and
uneventfully. The priest placed the wafer in my open hands. “The body of
Christ,” he said. He watched to see that I placed the wafer in my
mouth. (I learned later that there had actually been incidents of
inmates claiming to be Satanists taking the wafers with them for
desecration.)
Back in the pew and kneeling in prayer, I got the “grace
rush.” Warmth, goosebumps, some light-headedness, along with calmness
and contentment. If you’ve never had a grace rush, I hope someday you
do. It was simultaneously exhilarating and peaceful, the peace the world
cannot give. It was what I had been longing for. It was the real
presence of Jesus himself, reminding me that the words were speaking
right to me:
I am the strength for all the despairing, healing for the ones who dwell in shame.All the blind will see, the lame will all run free, and all will know my name.Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by name.Come and follow me, I will bring you home. I love you and you are mine.
And until God would bring me home, I knew that I was loved, and I was his.
The priest certainly understood that. I met with him
shortly after that first day at Mass, and he granted me special
permission to continue receiving Eucharist.
There are so many interpretations of the sacrament of
Communion. We differ on the spectrum of symbol versus physical reality,
who can receive, the words we use, the types of bread, wine versus
juice, how the elements are served. I don’t recommend disregarding
others’ beliefs on the sacraments. There are, however, three undeniable
things we hold in common. Jesus said to do this. His grace is available
to us in a special way when we do this. And all our human attempts at
describing this holy mystery fall short. We are not worthy. But Christ
still bids us all to come to the table of grace.
Lee A. Moore is a former Protestant minister and an
inmate at Pennslyvania State Correctional Institution in Waynesburg,
Pennslyvania. He blogs at cellvation.wordpress.com.
