Wherever you go, there you are. I can’t for the life of me remember who first said that, but I sure know how true it is. Travel outside our normal life situation is a reliable—and sometimes shocking—mirror that makes us aware of ourselves in ways we might not have noticed before. As I’ve reflected on my visit to Ireland, I’ve noticed that my visit to Guatemala ten years ago has come to mind several times, and I’ve puzzled a bit about that, since the two places are so unlike each other. Over these weeks, I’ve realized that both experiences involved seeing my life from the perspective of a different context.
In Guatemala a woman named Victorina befriended several of the women in our group. We went to her house each day. She and her daughter tried to teach us how to weave and to cook Guatemalan style over a wood fire in the lean-to that served as her kitchen. The day before we were going to learn how to cook the small, dense Guatemalan tortillas, she told us to bring masa—ground cornmeal—and wood the next day. Someone asked how much masa we should buy, and she told us to bring one kilo. Then someone else asked how much wood we should buy. The curtain of Victorina’s hospitality slipped just a bit and she could only stare at us for a long moment. She recovered quickly, but it was apparent she couldn’t imagine how women could get to be so old and not know how much wood it would take to make a cooking fire. Looking at my life through Victorina’s eyes gave me a new understanding of how far removed my life is from those of most of the women in this world.
The moment of new awareness during my stay in Ireland occurred in the middle of the Masonic Lodge meeting room in Dublin. My sister’s friend is a Mason, and he wanted to see the lodge, so that was the target for one of our wanderings around the city. We arrived an hour too late for the regularly scheduled tour, but the young man who greeted us seemed delighted to show us around and answer whatever questions we had about the Masons. We were joined by an Irishman who had always been curious about the Masonic Lodge and whose interest had been piqued by a recent television show purporting to tell all about the group. The tour through the beautiful rooms and museum was quite interesting, and hearing about the history of the group was fascinating. The moment that sticks in my memory occurred as our guide was explaining about the spirit of fraternity he experiences in the lodge, saying that all the members are his brothers—no matter what their station in life outside the meeting room. The Irishman appeared to be stunned by this information, and he asked several questions to determine exactly what that meant. Ultimately our guide said that men whose paths would probably never cross outside those doors meet as equals in the lodge. The Irishman could not wrap his mind around that. On the other hand, I was having significant trouble wrapping my American mind around a level of classism that seemed so far away from my own life experience.
In the following days, my mind kept going back to that moment. I kept asking myself if my own life experience really was so far removed from the classism I saw reflected in the Irishman’s reaction. Clearly it is not. It’s simply less visible to me because I’m a white anglo-saxon protestant woman, born in America at a time when education didn’t cost more than I could scrape together, lucky enough to get work that provided for health care insurance, and blessed with extended family members who had the time, interest and energy to support my efforts while I looked for my way in this life. That is not true for everyone in this country. Our history and our present show that we are moving very slowly to a world that reflects the founders’ statement that all men are created equal. I won’t go further down the sexism road than it takes to say, yes, the founders really meant that men are created equal, and more specifically, they meant that the men in their group were equal, not necessarily those men outside their circle.
My experience in Dublin and the questioning that followed came to a new intensity this past week as I prepared for the Wednesday morning Eucharist. As I looked for the readings for the day, I noticed that Thursday was the anniversary of the murder of Jonathan Myrick Daniels in 1965. Jonathan was an Episcopal seminarian who went to Selma, Alabama, to work for civil rights. He was shot and killed by an unemployed highway worker as he moved to protect 16 year old Ruby Sales from the man’s threats. My mind went back to those days—to the racism I grew up with in Texas—to the many ways we have failed to treat each other with dignity and respect—and a word popped into my awareness—a word that’s in today’s gospel and been present in each of our gospels for the last three weeks. That word set me to wondering.
Today’s gospel portion tells us that Jesus’ disciples found his teaching so difficult that many of them left him. The implication seems to be that his commandment to eat his flesh and drink his blood was the difficulty, but I wonder if it was that little word instead. In each of these gospels, Jesus says—Whoever eats my flesh. Whoever. He doesn’t set boundaries on his promise of life. He doesn’t put a fence around it. He doesn’t say this one but not that one. He doesn’t say this group but not that group. He says—Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. He says—Whoever believes will have eternal life; whoever eats of this bread will live forever. He says—Whoever eats me will live because of me.
I think we have trouble noticing that little word—the word that invites each of us and all those outside these doors to come to this table. Since the earliest days of the Church, we have been making rules and setting tasks and making barriers to this meal that joins us in the Body of Christ. In this church and in many like it, we understand that the bread and the cup are not ours to give or to withhold but only to share—to share as it has been shared with us.
I wonder this morning if we can take our welcome to whoever we meet in the other hours of our week. I know that I sometimes have difficulty with that, and I think of those followers who left Jesus because his teaching was more than they could bear.
My prayer this morning is that our sharing of this meal—our sharing of the Body and Blood of Christ, of the bread of life and the cup of salvation—will continue to transform us and the way we look at the world. I pray that our sharing of this meal will keep us mindful of the gift of God’s grace. I pray that our sharing of this meal will remain with us as we go out into the world, that whoever we are, we may know that we are beloved of God. And I pray that our sharing of this meal will make us ready to recognize the face of Christ in whoever we meet along the way.