Coming to the Lord's Table - #15

I recently received a flyer advertising a talk by Witold Rybczynski at the Odyssey Book Shop in South Hadley. I knew I could not attend - just too little time and too far to go. So I was happily surprised to catch his lecture on C-Span. Rybczynski is a Canadian scholar who writes about modern culture. I loved his book on leisure and the weekend (Waiting for the Weekend). His books on architecture and his treatment of the development of the modern home (Home; The History of an Idea) fascinate me. His recent book, One Good Turn, is about practical inventions such as the screwdriver, buttonholes, and other things I take for granted. Rybczynski investigates what makes the modern world tick.

The industrial nations of the world are privileged in our use of sophisticated machinery. City dwellers in Europe and North America profit from sinks, showers, sewers, scented deodorants, garbage disposal, Mr. Clean, scrub-your-bathroom-tile-to-an-immaculate-sheen, and government regulations for milk, meat, and food processing. We live long lives because we are careful about bugs and bacteria, health and hygiene. We have first-hand evidence of the global tragedy of AIDS. We hear stories of dysentery and disease in countries haunted by famine and food that is too scarce and too unprotected. Could it be that people in the U.S. are obsessed with hygiene? Could it be that our germphobia is pandemic?

We bring our sanitary preoccupations into our bathing and birthing, our eating and drinking as a church. Catholic congregations are becoming much too casual in practice! Think about it. We take children into our hands and baptize them in communal water bath. We impose hands in an outlandish gesture of blessing upon the sick and then bishops and priests dip their hands into messy oil and place it on foreheads and on the palms of another's hands. We touch sinners by imposing hands on the gelled head of penitents in the sacrament of reconciliation. We shake hands indiscriminately at the exchange of peace. We even kiss spouses, children, and other friends enthusiastically at weddings. We receive bread baked by anonymous hands and we use hosts handled by all kinds of germ producing sacristans, priests, deacons, and lay ministers. Alas, we are foolish enough to receive the Eucharistic bread from ministers who wear neither elastic gloves nor see-through hand protection. We are even daring enough to drink wine from a common cup. This is serious and risky business.

Caveat! This is way too casual and certainly way too messy even for a church whose spirituality goes back to the Word becoming flesh. We need more protection from incarnation. What are we to do? I think that we should set up sacramental health boards. They could do research into the risks of human exchange. They could make oodles of recommendations for antiseptic baptism and Eucharist. They could issue regulations that would assure us that our sacramental commerce would not imperil our health on a weekly basis. They could discipline clergy and congregations who violate health standards and punish the foolhardy.

In fine, germicide will bring us blessing. Amen! Amen! Let all the people say Amen!