A few Sundays ago, I walked across the Cross Schools parking lot to join The Chapel service for communion after having completed the necessary tasks to prepare for the nearly 600 congregants and visitors who would join me an hour later in the school gym. This is a sacred time to slip over and remember. Coming to the table to break bread remembering the Body which was broken for you and for me. To give thanks for the cup Jesus took and said, “Whenever you drink, do this in remembrance of Me.” Beautiful. Sacred. Precious.
Returning to the Narthex after receiving the elements the next week I was struck by something else very beautiful, sacred and precious. Three women with tear stained cheeks sitting together on the back row. The sight took my breath away as tears also welled up in my own eyes.
Just last fall that same pew was occupied weekly by one of the women and her husband. One Sunday soon after his passing into Glory, she sat alone with tear stained cheeks. I saw her continuing to attend and sit in the same row as if to feel the presence of her husband at every service next to her. It was a testament of her great love for her spouse, her great love of her Savior and the need to be in community during the storm known as grief.
Three weeks ago following communion, I noticed another woman had joined her and the entire service was filled with these two women sitting with arms around each other and copious amounts of tissues being used from the Kleenex packet provided in their row. I hugged both women this time after communion and learned last rites would be given that day to this woman’s dear companion.
Two weeks later there were three women on the back row. Three women who sat together in grief from the loss of their loved ones. It literally stopped me in my tracks. What started just a few months earlier as the loss of one spouse has now become a ministry on the back row of The Chapel. Beautiful. Sacred. Precious.
God does not waste our pain. Our pain and loss become our greatest ministry within the Body – the Church. What began as one woman grieving has now become the stunning display of serving others in love and practicing the ministry of presence.
The painting by John Singer Sargent entitled “Bedouin Women Carrying Water Jugs” echoes the call to community throughout the ages and the words of our Savior. The three women in the painting, much like the three women at service, all are carrying a heavy load or burden yet they walk and sit together. Being in community does not stop the tears of our painful seasons nor lessen the weight of the loss, but being in community helps us to know we are not walking through the valleys alone.
The call to be in community which you will continuously hear in everything we do at TCOTC is a call to love others and live as disciples who follow the example of Jesus.
Might we all begin to pay closer attention to those around us in the pews and chairs each weekend. Perhaps you, too, are being called to community with those sitting near you. What you might find as you notice the needs of those around you is the beautiful, sacred and precious ministry of presence which brings joy in the midst of pain, peace amongst the chaos, friendship rather than loneliness, and walking together sharing the load by loving one another. Each of us is called to follow Jesus and love one another on every pew and in every seat. Oh may it be so, Lord.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34–35
Rebecca Hamilton, Ministry Multiplier
