Days to Remember: 5. The Ordinance of Holy Communion - or not.

Anyone who thinks that improvisation is what the keyboard player does between verses/bridges etc. in worship services has never attempted to do a communion service in a Rest Home.  Now we're talking improvisation.  Today I went for a monthly visit to do this locally as I have done for years. 

Problem 1: There was no lift/elevator working so our Communion was limited to those who were resident on the ground floor where the lounge is.  Solution: Sing up.

Problem 2: The carers had been to busy to prepare the Communion.  Solution: DIY

Problem 3:  A man in the lounge is visiting his mother and trying to Skype other family members for her viewing.  Solution;  Providence - the other family members weren't answering so he headed home.

Problem 4: No Ribena blackcurrant juice, the passable substitute for wine.  Solution: use cranberry instead.

Problem 5; Carer discovers there's no cranberry juice either.  Solution: use orange juice instead and be very careful about references to 'this fruit of the vine' etc. in prayers.

That was today.

Conducting Communion at the Rest Home has yielded many Days to Remember, many deeply moving, some side-splittingly funny.  The one I choose to reference here was the latter and can be accounted for in part by the time of the service.  Ostensibly 3:30pm it almost always starts late with assembly and preparation taking a while.  Although it takes but 15 minutes this includes the hour of 4:00pm.

The bread [this is my body, broken for you] had been served.

The wine/ribena [this is by blood shed for you] was about to be beginning to be served.

In comes a carer.  Walks over to (let's call her) Ethel, "FOUR O'CLOCK, ETHEL.  TIME FOR YOUR MEDICINE".  This non-liturgical addendum to the service was confusing on several levels.

Confusing to me and Helen (who helps me by serving [quite brilliantly may I add]) because we didn't see it coming until the announcement was made.  After all we were always doing the Communion at 4:00pm.

Confusing to Ethel because she was about to be served - in an identical plastic container - the symbol of faith.  I doubt that Ethel had much idea where faith ended and medicine began or vice versa.  What the theology of this is I do not venture to know. 

Worse still, Ethel was less than hurried in her medicine-taking.  We stood there in mid-communion and waited while the carer - let's call her the interrupter - while the interrupter completed her timely task over what seemed like several minutes.

Maybe unconsciously I always hurry the transition from bread to wine in church just in case the medicine round begins . . .