Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

  The atmosphere might be celebratory or somber, the room filled with organ music or guitar strums, Gregorian chants or clinking silverware. In more liturgical traditions, the prayers are as familiar as the taste of the bread—“Let us lift up our hearts! We lift them up to the Lord!”—while in a Baptist church or a Bible church, the pastor may simply ask a member of the congregation to say grace.

  The elements and the meal are identified in different ways: the body of Christ, broken; the blood of Christ, shed; the Bread of heaven, the cup of salvation, the mystery of faith, the supper of the Lamb. But in every tradition I know, someone, at some point, says, “Remember.”

  Remember how God became one of us? Remember how God ate with us and drank with us, laughed with us and cried with us? Remember how God suffered for us, and died for us, and gave his life for the life of the world? Remember? Remember?

  “On those days when I have thought of giving up on church entirely,” writes Nora Gallagher, “I have tried to figure out what I would do about Communion.”43

  Indeed it’s easier to remember things together than alone.

  As a child, I regarded communion with trepidation. Though we marked it on the first Sunday of every month, seeing the silver plates stacked on the table at the front of the sanctuary always surprised and unnerved me. Our church had no confirmation process, so the timing of one’s first communion was left to the discretion of one’s parents. I hated having nothing to do while, in the silence following Pastor George’s solemn recitation of Christ’s words from the Last Supper, I could hear everyone in the room chewing, swallowing, and gulping down their oyster crackers and grape juice in one loud cacophony of ingestion. When I finally got the nod from my mother to go ahead and partake, I was so horrified by the sound of my own loud chewing, which rang like a garbage compactor in my ears, that I took to slipping the oyster cracker under my tongue and letting it dissolve through the rest of the service so as not to disturb the entire congregation with my clamorous manducation. To this day I have to remind myself to actually eat the thing.

  It was the Anglican tradition that reconnected me to the beauty of the Eucharist, as it does for so many. I once visited an Episcopal church in Louisville, Kentucky, where the entire sanctuary was built around the table. It sat right in the center of the sunlit room, on a raised, circular chancel, surrounded by pews forming a semicircle on one side, and by the choir, lectern, and pulpit on the other—the perfect visual expression of the eucharistic thrust of Anglican liturgy.

  “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger,” we sang before circling the table together. “And whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

  “The gifts of God for the people of God,” said the priest, as she raised the bread and wine above her pregnant belly. “Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Christ in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

  While our various ceremonial remembrances of the meal may be meaningful in their own right, it’s a shame they aren’t accompanied more often by actual feasts, complete with bread baskets and wine bottles, elbows and spills, cleanup and candlelight, and big fat serving bowls of mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and fresh green beans. For many, such feasts are a staple of their informal church life—those planned or impromptu gatherings around Chinese takeout or a backyard grill when the people of God just hang out together—but the dichotomy between the sacred and the secular is a Western construction, and one I suspect those first disciples of Jesus would find a bit curious given what we know about those first Sunday meals.

  At a church called St. Lydia’s in New York City, pastor Emily Scott is trying to change that. On Sunday and Monday nights, crowds of around thirty gather together in a storefront in Brooklyn to cook and share a meal together. Affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, this “dinner church” brings together ancient Christian practices with modern, urban living.

  The service begins with the lighting of candles and the singing of hymns. Some in the group already know one another; others are strangers, at least at the start. In the kitchen, the main course—often a vegetarian soup or stew—simmers on the stove. After the hymns, a pastor leads the group in a sung eucharistic prayer from the earliest days of the church. Each person stands around the giant table with hands lifted. “As grain was scattered across the hills, then gathered and made one in this bread, so may your church, scattered to the ends of the earth, be gathered and made one in your commonwealth . . .”

  The pastor breaks a hot loaf of bread and sends the two pieces around the table. As the bread is shared around the room, the participants say to one another, “This is my body. Remember.”

  Then the meal is served. Holy food for holy people. The conversation picks up as introductions, stories, jokes, and drinks are shared. Sometimes the discussion flows freely. Other times it is awkward. Always, it is interesting.

  After the meal, a deacon or pastor reads Scripture and preaches a brief sermon, before inviting congregants to share their own stories around the theme. Prayers and petitions are made. And then, at the end of the meal, the group blesses the cup. “Remember, Lord, to deliver your church from all evil and teach it to love you perfectly. You have made it holy; now build it up and gather it from the four winds into the realm you have prepared for it . . .”

  The rest of the evening is filled with washing, rinsing, drying, and storing the dishes as guests work together to clean up. Worship concludes with a hymn, offering, and light dessert. No one leaves a stranger.

  “We do church this way because people are hungry,” Emily explains. “People in New York have hungry bellies that may be filled with home-cooked food. They have hungry souls that may be filled with holy text, holy conversation. And these hungers are sated when we come together and eat.

  “We do church this way,” she says, “because people are looking for Jesus. People are looking for Jesus and thinking that just maybe they see him, but then again maybe not. But when we sit down together and break bread, we glimpse him for a moment in one another’s eyes and say to each other, ‘I see Christ at this table; I see him when we sit down together and eat.’ ”44

  The gospel of Luke recounts a story in which two of Jesus’ disciples encountered a stranger on the seven-mile stretch of road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. When he asked why they appeared so downtrodden and anxious, the disciples told the stranger about the events that had transpired in Jerusalem that week, about how their Teacher had been betrayed, abandoned, crucified, buried, and—according to some dubious rumors purported by the women—brought back to life again. As the stranger walked with them, he explained how these things represented a fulfillment of Scripture. But it was not until they arrived at Emmaus and shared a meal together that the disciples realized the stranger was more than a fellow journeyman or prophet. When he broke the bread and gave thanks, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (Luke 24:31). It was Jesus!

  Something about communion triggers our memory and helps us see things as they really are. Something about communion opens our eyes to Jesus at the table.

  As I was editing this chapter, a beloved aunt died suddenly from a staph infection that spread to her spine without warning. A healthy and active seventy-two-year-old, she had just returned from a Mediterranean cruise with my uncle when what began as backache left her totally paralyzed and on life support within hours. I caught a plane to Iowa to grieve with family and friends, all of us numbed by shock. As we gathered at my aunt and uncle’s home, the doorbell rang every few hours as another member of First Baptist Church showed up with a casserole of cold cuts, fresh fruit and bread, homemade ice cream and pies of every variety—a veritable cavalcade of Iowa home cooking. (In Iowa, by the way, Jell-O is considered a salad.) Over these meals, we found the strength to cry, to share memories, to express our disbelief, and to laugh deeply and loudly as my cousin Michael recounted the time he and his best friend snuck into the church’s bell tower and replaced the tape of recorded chimes with AC/DC’s
“Hell’s Bells.”

  “That’s the lady who served us communion at church this morning,” my dad said, as a woman stood in the doorway, wrapping my uncle in a hug with one arm and balancing a stack of Tupperware in the other.

  “And here she is, serving it again,” I replied.

  Like Gallagher, on the days when I contemplate leaving Christianity, I have wondered what I would do without communion. Certainly nonbelievers can care for one another and make one another food. But it is Christians who recognize this act as sacrament, as holy. It is Christians who believe bread can satisfy not only physical hunger, but spiritual and emotional hunger, too, and whose collective memory brings Jesus back to life in every breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine, in all the tastes, smells, and sounds God himself loves.

  NINETEEN

  Methodist Dance Party

  People who love to eat are always the best people.

  —Julia Child

  I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS HUNGRY.

  In the midst of grappling with the failure of the Mission, I experienced some modest professional success with the publication of my second book, which sent me travelling around the country speaking at colleges, churches, and conferences about the church, Bible, gender equality, and media. This new itinerate lifestyle provided the perfect cover for not looking for a new church—how could we when we weren’t even in town most weekends?—and distracted me from the nagging emptiness that accompanies a dream deferred. It also reintroduced me to the people of the church universal, who, at a time when I felt like a religious orphan, welcomed me, supported me, listened to me, and, of course, fed me.

  The Methodists of Jackson, Tennessee, served barbecue and coleslaw at their women’s retreat. The Baptists of Houston, Texas, brought in food trucks so we could picnic over Tex-Mex on the church lawn. I threw back shots of tequila with a van full of Presbyterian pastors as our taxi sped along the coastline of Cozumel, Mexico. I tried the iced cowboy coffee at Common Grounds in Waco, while a gaggle of Baylor University students waited for the thumbs-up.

  In Grand Rapids, a reader named Caroline handed me a stack of salted dark chocolate chip cookies tied up in a baby-blue bow, which made such an impression I now know the recipe by heart. In Seattle, Pastor Tim and his husband Patrick served up fresh salmon with avocado mango salsa, asparagus, quinoa, and local red wine. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, a guinea pig farmer welcomed our team of World Vision bloggers into her one-room home with meal of boiled potatoes, which we passed around like communion bread. In Holland, Michigan, the Dutch Reformed grilled up hot dogs and hamburgers and sent me home with a pair of wooden shoes.

  I shared homemade bread and jam with the Quakers of Portland, shrimp and grits with the Wesleyan Foundation of Williamsburg, macaroni and cheese with the Mennonites of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and melt-in-your-mouth roasted chicken and mashed potatoes with the Dominican nuns of Siena Heights. The Free Methodists of Greenville, Illinois, introduced me to Adam Brothers homemade chicken noodle soup, for which I still get insatiable cravings whenever I’m sick. The Disciples of Christ took me to my first In-N-Out Burger, where I pretended to have the religious experience they expected. I even ate blueberry pancakes at the White House, where, at the annual Easter Prayer Breakfast, civil rights leader Otis Moss gave the best sermon on resurrection I’ve ever heard in my life. I dined with rocket scientists and musicians, Bible scholars and activists, rabbis and priests, monks and nuns, the homeless and the wealthy, professional chefs and home cooks. I may have gained a few pounds.

  “Food is a language of care,” writes Shauna Niequist, “the thing we do when traditional language fails.”45

  The end of the Mission felt like something of a death, and whether these good people knew it or not, they were caring for me in my grief. In exchange, I delivered some passable sermons and lectures and tried to answer people’s questions during panel discussions and Q&As. Not a single group was rude or inattentive, but sometimes I felt in over my head. Like the time I had to tell a room full of Presbyterian seminarians I did not in fact have an opinion about supersessionism because I had no idea what supersessionism is. (They seemed to find this response acceptable, as Presbyterians generally oppose supersessionism, which I take to mean they’re against Texas leaving the union.) Or the time I realized, a little too late, that Churches of Christ and United Church of Christ are not, in fact, the same denomination . . . not by a long shot.

  But never did my insecurities rage more violently than when I was asked to speak at youth events. Though much has changed since the Chubby Bunny days, youth events remain the pièce de résistance of extrovert culture. There are strobe lights and fog machines, skits and talent contests, rope courses and altar calls and games. Hundreds of teenagers bounce to the throbbing pulse of theologically questionable worship songs while the back-row boys look on. Ankles will be broken. Romances will be kindled. T-shirts will be shot from cannons. At some point, a guy wearing skinny jeans and a dozen rubber wristbands will jump on the stage and tell everyone in the audience to find someone they don’t know and give them a giant Jesus-hug. When I am introduced, he will say, “Rachel Held Evans is here to BLOW YOUR MIND!”

  I will not blow their minds.

  “Honestly, teenagers aren’t my typical audience,” I told the youth pastors who called to invite me to speak.

  “Yes, but you’ve got a very popular blog,” they said.

  “You realize my last post was a three thousand–word discussion on biblical regulations regarding menstruation, right? I don’t have a ton of suitable material for middle school boys.”

  “Well maybe don’t talk about your period.”

  “You sure you want me to do this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can you assure me there will be no fog machines?”

  “I’m afraid we’ve already ordered them.”

  One such conversation led me to Eagle Eyrie, a four hundred–acre wooded camp in Lynchburg, Virginia, where youth from the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church have been holding their annual fall retreat for decades. I was asked to speak at all four of the main sessions, to around five hundred junior high and high school students, around the theme of “Living the Questions.”

  As the first group of students streamed out of their church vans like ants from a disturbed bed, I marveled at their young faces and worried fresh over my severe lack of cool. It occurred to me that the youngest of these students had been toddlers on September 11, 2001. Toddlers! What made me think we were even asking the same questions?

  I spent the week leading up to the conference reworking all my usual material, calling Brian Ward for advice, and scouring the Internet to see what the kids are into these days.

  “Be sure to be funny,” my friends said. “Teenagers like funny.”

  “Work in some pop culture references,” they said. “Talk about music and movies they know.”

  “Don’t even think about using PowerPoint!”

  “It’s best not to stick with a script.”

  “You’ve got exactly fifteen minutes before you lose them. Whatever you do, don’t go over.”

  “Just don’t try too hard,” Brian warned. “They see right through that. They know when you’re faking it.”

  So I just had to be funny, hip, and concise—without really trying. Got it.

  Despite all the preparation, I panicked when I took the stage after the band finished the first night, streams of water vapor still clinging to the set, five hundred young faces looking back at me. Before I approached the microphone, I closed my eyes and prayed: God, just help me do right by these kids, just help me do right by these kids, just help me do right by these kids. After a few seconds of silence, I cleared my throat, chuckled nervously, and confessed I was a little nervous. No faking it, right?

  The first presentation went okay. The students laughed at my jokes and only a few fell asleep. I didn’t talk about my period. And as the weekend went on, I started to get the hang of things. I learne
d the students’ names and listened to their feedback. I developed a friendly banter with some of the older kids, especially the boys who were surprised to get permission from their female chapel speaker to interrupt the next session with an update on the Alabama football game.

  The climax of the weekend happened on Saturday night with a communion service for all the students, volunteers, chaperones, and ministers. A Methodist pastor presided over the table, but asked me and a few of the student leaders to help distribute the bread and wine.

  As I stood at the front of the rustic camp meeting room, holding a loaf of bread in one hand and tearing off a piece at a time with the other, hundreds of people approached, one at a time, with their hands held out, ready to receive.

  “This is Christ’s body, broken for you,” I said.

  I said it over and over again, to each person who came to the table—to the back-row boys who avoided my gaze, to the girls whose mascara rivered down their cheeks, to the kids who giggled in line with their friends, to the ones who came all alone.

  This is Christ’s body, broken for you.

  I said to the ones wearing designer jeans, to ones with beat-up shoes, to the ones I could tell were athletes, to the ones who were clearly the class clowns, to the ones who probably got picked on in school.

  This is Christ’s body, broken for you.

  I said it to the skinny girl who reached for a hug, the youth leader with tired red eyes, the chaperones who mouthed words of thanks.

  This is Christ’s body, broken for you.

  I said it to the boy who approached with his walker, the jock who grinned and whispered “Roll Tide,” the mom who told me she sent a letter of complaint to the UMC when she heard I was going to be the speaker.

  This is Christ’s body, broken for you.

  There were wrinkled hands and pierced noses and flashes of brilliant white teeth against chocolate skin. There were babies on hips, Band-Aids on fingers, hands in pockets, nervous shuffles, and teary eyes.