Detectives of Divinity

 

On Being a Detective of Divinity

          So, this morning I got a call for someone with an unusual request. “Pastor, I live at the Liberty House, and we have been on lockdown. My brother says I need someone to bring me communion. I really want communion. Will you bring me some?”

          “Sure,” I said, “do you believe in Jesus?”.

“I believe in the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit. And I am a Baptist, because John the Baptist was a Baptist too,” she replied.

“Will 2:30 work?”

“Yes! I will see you at 2:30. Thank you! Thank you! Just come around the back and will meet you there.”

So, like a meth dealer around the corner of a rehab clinic, I smuggled the body and blood of Jesus down the back alley of an assisted living facility on lockdown. “This ought to be interesting,” I thought.

As I approached, I prayed, “Lord, be present in this moment. Let your love and grace present in the sharing of the bread and the cup in such a way that we are all sense your Spirit at work among us. Amen.”

I drove down the alley to what appears to be the main entrance of the facility. I brought with me the elements I had packed. Three pre-packaged and sealed communion servings were loaded into three plastic easter eggs to make the transport of the elements easier and were sitting on the passenger seat of my car. I had no idea why I packed three servings, I just felt led to do so.

I get out. “Are you the one bringing us communion?” my new friend yells out.

“I am. Do your friends want to share with us?”

“Yes, two of my friends heard and want to do communion too.”

So, I get out all three Easter eggs containing the elements of the Lord’s Supper. I read through I Corinthians 11.

“The body of Christ, broken for you,” I proclaim. Then I help each one of them open their wafer off the top of the cup.

“This is the new covenant in my blood,” I say, and help them with the cup.

It was a sacred moment. Three adults, each with challenges that make it hard for them to live independently, stood hungry for the inbreaking of the transcendent God into their lives. Having the body and blood smuggled to them through a back alley delivery, they experienced the love of Christ in the ritual of the Lord’s Supper.  Through presence of the church in delivering and sharing this moment with them, and in their longing for a tactile way to connect with the grace of God, the Spirit of God broke through in a powerful way as four people shared communion in a parking lot on Sixth Street and Willow.

Alan Roxburgh, a prolific Christian author and leader of the missional church movement, says that missional leaders/pastors do their work best when they are detectives of divinity. In other words, as we go out into the world around us, we do our best work when we open our eyes to what the Spirit is doing and join God in it.

I have no idea, in the end, how meaningful that moment was for my new friends. But I know it was meaningful for me. It helped me to remember that God is as work in ways I never expect. And it reminded me that sharing the table, and remembering the sacrifice of Christ, is a powerful way to experience the love of Christ, and to offer solidarity and love to one another. It reminded me, as I enter Holy Week, that I should not take the Lord’s Supper or what happened on Calvary for granted. As a matter of fact, we should all be hungry and thirsty for the presence of God.

I drove out of the parking lot today remembering the Emmaus Walk of those two people with Jesus, who discovered in the breaking of bread that Jesus had been present with them all along. And I mumbled to myself, “Wasn’t my heart burning within me in the breaking of bread?”