“The LORD will keep
you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;. . .” Psalm 121
My father
was an elder in the church, a watcher, a keeper, although I knew very little
about what happened when he walked off to meetings on Tuesday nights. Most of what went on, I know, he was sworn
not to tell, and some of it—I know this is true—he didn’t tell me because the
knowledge would have hurt me. I was,
after all, a child.
One part
of his job, I remember, was tallying after communion. He had to meet with the other elders after
the Lord’s Supper to tally who was there, who wasn’t, and who was purposefully
not taking the elements, or—even worse, I’m sure—who might have been taking the
body and blood even though they’d been barred. I have no idea what the elders
called that little gum shoe reconnaissance meeting, but I know that they met.
What
those elders were watching for were stories, the people who were coming to the
table with a checkered past—or in process of checkering their presents. When I
became an elder, nobody watched the sacrament that closely. Maybe I remember
what went on back then because I knew that behind the effort lay stories I
would have liked to know, what lies beneath the ceremony. I still do. Whatever
the reason, I remember that he’d come back home late from communion Sunday
worship.
That
post-communion tallying—as well as my father’s own righteousness—may be
responsible for the deeply-rooted sense I have that elders really should be
Godly statesmen, dutiful, virtuous, and devout. And that conviction may be the
reason why, more than any other elderly task, I always loved distributing
elements myself when I was an elder, giving away the body and blood of Jesus
Christ. It’s a big job meant for the kind of person who grows into the office
of elder, having raised good kids and having been the spouse of only one mate,
no messes in the scrapbook. An elder was someone not subject to the sins our mutual
flesh is heir to.
Some
years ago I was served the sacrament by two men who were once thugs, criminals—two
men who, for many years, valued only their own skin. I took the bread and wine
from people who, with impunity, cheated others, stole what they could to line
their pockets, used drugs, and lived promiscuously. At about the time I began
to understand why my father got home late after the Lords Supper, they were
leaving behind a childhood they never had in a Southeast Asian war zone.
I know
them. I’ve walked into their lives, year by year, even written their stories;
and I know that those men—the men carrying the bread and the wine last
night—were once so far gone in treachery that not a soul in the church where we
sat could probably imagine some of the evil they’ve perpetuated. Who’d have ever thought that someday they’d
be doling out the body and blood of Christ?
Amazing.
But the
promise of scripture, and the Word of the Lord, here in Psalm 121 is that “the
LORD will keep you from harm—he will watch over your life.” And all during
those bloody years in war-torn Laos, where those two men grew up, God Almighty,
who loves us, had his eye on them as if they were fletching sparrows, even when
they were lousy thugs, and probably especially then.
He knew
them. He was watching them, keeping them
from harm, when they—and we, all of us—were yet sinners. Those two guys fed me
the body and blood of Jesus.
Amazing
grace. What a celebration. Hallelujah, what a savior.
2 comments:
Not all Calvinists are as mesmerized by multi-culturalism.
Viktor Orbán, called migration “a Trojan horse for terrorism”.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-to-keep-your-country.html
thanks,
Jerry
"having been the spouse of only one mate"... What happened to the "husband of one wife"?
Is this translation from the New Vander Schaapsma Version?
Post a Comment