Recently, my “church” friends and I were discussing liturgy, especially how we liked to take our Eucharist. Did we like our Eucharist high church--with bells and smells, sacred, mysterious, and untouchable, to illustrate the glorious, inexplicable nature of grace? Did we like our Eucharist low church--accessible and ordinary, to underscore that grace is available to all and that Jesus has no registration process? Suddenly, I realized how much of an Episcopalian I’ve become in the last three years. I think we do our Eucharist just right--accessible and open to all who come, with enough sacred ceremony to make it significant, to set it apart from an everyday occurrence. I find peace and succor in the Eucharist every week, as we take the most mundane bread and wine, the stuff of regular life, and elevate it to a sacrament--the outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. For a moment, we suspend our regular life and touch, taste, and feel the love of God in something quite ordinary.
There is a tension about the Eucharist, should it be regular so we can all access it, or should it be special, so we all revere it? Jesus took ordinary food and created extraordinary vessels for grace, and we recreate that miracle when we celebrate the Eucharist. After centuries of veneration, the bread and wine is truly something special. It reminds me of a sacred item in my life, my big red Dodge pick-up truck. It’s a 1993 Dodge diesel dually pick-up, the kind of old Dodge truck with the square front end. It’s well-worn for its years, missing a tailgate from too many careless accidents, a little scratched and beaten. This truck is made for work; it’s not some fancy-pants vehicle of a surburban housewife. It’s high to climb into and it doesn’t fit in parking spaces; it’s a stick-shift and the clutch is long and hard, the kind that makes your left leg sore if you’ve got to shift often during a drive. It runs like a top and can haul just about anything. It is the last truck my dad ever bought and it was my inheritance when he died. It’s just about the most ordinary, most mundane, regular-guy truck you can find, as ordinary as the bread and the wine that Jesus ate at that last supper, hearty, solid, and full of grimy life.
Just like the unremarkable food that the ordinary disciples ate, my truck started out normal and accessible and easy to understand. My family travelled to many horse shows in that truck, hauled mares to breeding and foals to the vet, drove me to college multiple times, and moved my horse from Ohio to Illinois when I moved away from home. Other than the pride my father took in his rig, there was nothing very special about it. Nothing very special, except that the more we used it, them more sacred it became. The life of my family, the joys, triumphs, sorrows, laughter, and tears filled up that truck over the years. After Dad's death, we couldn't conceive of giving up his truck. So, it became mine, along with the everyday pieces of Dad’s life, so ordinary, but now so sacred. I found his tape of Scottish folk music in the tape deck (yes, my truck is old enough to have a tape deck), the folder of horse registration papers in the glove box, and Dad’s well-worn cowboy hat behind the seat. Those things that never meant much suddenly meant the world to me; there I found his smell, his sound, and his essence. It all was contained in the sacrament of metal and diesel fuel.
Dad comes to me in the truck, as crazy as it may sound. Although he’s been gone almost ten years, it still carries his smell. Once, during a crisis of uncertainty and anxiety, when I didn’t know which way to turn, I dreamt of my dad in the truck. I was driving, hauling our trailer full of horses and he was in the the passenger seat. We were heading into some water and the road was obscured. Afraid, I turned to Dad, “What do I do? I can’t see the way forward.” Dad just smiled and said, “Keep going, squirt. You’ll be fine.” I woke up the next morning, a little quieter, a little more resolved, a little more peaceful. The sacrament of my truck granted me peace.
Other people notice it, too, the ones who pay attention. Last summer, we loaned the truck to our church. The church needed an extra vehicle to pick up donations for our rummage sale. Two trucks meant two crews working at once, less wear and tear on vehicles, and more donations gathered. My friend, Tim, our priest, drove it often, and he seemed to notice the sacredness, too. He would call me while driving down the road, or send photos of the great red hood looking out on the highway. He would ask me, “Don’t you think you’re dad would be happy today? Don’t you think he knows what we’re doing?” Having never met my father, he felt the love of our family contained in the cab of his truck. As ordinary as it was, people treat my truck like it is a little bit special, a little bit more than just steel and rubber, like the way we treat the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. Because of the memories and the love, the trappings of our regular lives are filled with grace.
So, this Holy Week, I long to contemplate the sacred within the ordinary. I long to see the regular, everyday stuff of my life lit up by grace. I long to partake of the sacrament of body and blood, accessible yet inexplicable, simple yet mysterious, and sacred to all.
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