The Eucharist Has Left the Building: Synaxis In IV Movements

I.

Saturday sees velcro detached from velcro and the paraments changed.

Green. Ordinary time. Easter and Pentecost and Trinity tied up.

Sermon title for the first Sunday of Ordinary:

“Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer.”

 

On the altar, two cardboard walls. Two slits cut with an X-Acto.

At the lectern, an electron beam gun. Extension cord.

At the pulpit, the observer. Projected on screen: Schrödinger’s Equation.

 

The Holy Gospel According to What-We-Know-and-Don’t-Know.

Thanks be to God.

 

“Look closely, and you will see each photon pass through both slits and neither.

Well, actually, this first time don’t look, and it will work that way.

 

Now this second time, watch the photons with me. 

They will pass through one slit only. No interference. 

 

Now don’t watch the beam gun, look on the other side of the cardboard.

Watch our act of conscious observation “create” the history of the photons trajectory.

That’s right. The photons know we are watching them. 

Before we watch them.

 

Now let me tell you a mystery. These photons we entangled with others

Stored in an electron beam gun in New Zealand.

We’ve baked a few of them into the bread

And refracted them through the wine in glass.

 

Somebody, use your cell phone and ask New Zealand,

“Did your photons travel as ours? At the same time?”

 

The answer, slower than the spooky action“Yes!”

 

This is that mystery, more mysterious than the virtual. 

Real spooky (Holy Spirit) action at a distance. Praise be to God!

 

So let me tell you another mystery. 

“in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. 

For the trumpet will sound, and we will be changed, entangled with spooky Jesus.”

 

See that bread. It’s Jesus in a box, neither dead or alive.

Both. But on this side or that side of our observing,

Now known and seen and alive. Now us.

 

You thought it was a miracle to hear and see. 

You loved the community and understood meal as “event.”

I tell you, blessed is the one who is not even present

And still receives. For theirs is spooky action at a distance of God.

II.

 

Jesus wasn’t ordained and didn’t invite everyone.

Okay, maybe he was ordained. But it wasn’t the right kind

Of ordination. No proper succession.

Some woman with an alabaster jar.

Jesus, it was expensive, that ordination.

And the bishops, they did not like it one bit.

No chance to meet secretly and write the rules.

 

So an emergency meal in an upper room. A house.

Just a day before his death, so double urgency,

As they thought it was a meal remembering

Another emergency meal: the Passover.

Quick, up here, in this house. Just us. 

No time to fast. Who cares what the authorities say.

We’re going to need this. Judas in particular.

No Eucharistic prayer. No anamnesis. No epiclesis.

Just: Eat this. Drink this. Body. Blood.

 

Oh, they did sing a hymn. Good thing there was no virus.

 

III. 

 

On the piety of handling the elements 

(crumbs, bacteria, bugs, moustaches, and more)

There was that rural parish in Cosmos, Minnesota,

Near Hector. Take a right at the corner Faith used to be.

They shared a common cup each Sunday

And some had facial hair. Untrimmed moustaches.

 

Not wanting Jesus (or the wine) to go to waste,

They poured it back into the bottle each Sunday.

 

Jesus didn’t seem to mind. 

Perhaps this increased the vintage, the proof.

It certainly made the wine into the body not just of Jesus

But literally the body of all those partaking.

Especially those with flaking lips and moustache.

 

Imagine Ant-man at this meal. Yes, that’s right, Ant-man.

If Hawkeye is from Iowa (and Superman),

Certainly Ant-man can visit rural Minnesota.

He goes tiny, then quantum.

What can he see? 

 

Yeast, certainly, changing the body of Christ.

Yeast in the wine also. 

Even the unleavened advocates will have to admit

There’s yeast in the air.

 

Crumbs on the floor. The mice will like that.

Presumably the woman knew from experience

Both dogs and other other creatures sat below table.

And the disciples, not known for their fastidious

Manners, drip and drop Jesus very body and blood

And so extend the meal to God’s good creation.

 

Even the flies, ears on the front of their thorax,

Hear the Words of Institution.

“So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”

From the lip of the cup of Christ to the proboscis and saliva mix.

Now may the body and blood of the Lord of the Flies, Jesus Christ, strengthen you.

 

IV.

 

God save us from anti-individualism. For it is primarily those solitary authors,

Alone in their closets, who accuse the world of sin.

 

This new technology, these internets, people will use it

To stop going to church. They’re going to bowl online.

 

Slouched close to their laptop, walls of books on all sides,

None are accusing musty old books of individualism.

 

I mean, we’re used to that technology, right? We trust it.

Books would never keep us in our rooms, away from other people.

 

Why walk on our hands when two feet will do.

We have Occam to thank for a return to the peripatetic.

 

The simplest is best. Why multiply without necessity?

Why accuse the world of misdeeds and write hypertropes?

 

And if Jesus, on the night before he died,

Instituted a meal with his friends

 

As his continuing presence in a world fraught with peril

Who are we to say there are more important concerns

 

Social justice. World hunger. Racism. Disaster capitalism.

It is such virtue signaling that struggles to see

 

Jesus, in a meal, in a home, on the night of departure

As crucial preparation when chased by Pharoah.