The Unlikeliest of Souls

Mike Ramm

Methodists, as I recall from the church services I attended as a teenager fifty years ago, were a reticent group of worshipers.  There weren’t any altar calls during the service.   No Amens or Hallelujahs or Praise the Lords from the congregation.  No spontaneous professions of faith.   I’m generalizing here, but I remember my fellow church members as sincere people who sought to worship earnestly but quietly, keeping their spiritual lives mostly to themselves.  Which explains, I think, why no one said anything, at least not directly, when one Sunday morning during Communion my best friend and I, kneeling at the altar rail, were seized by a power beyond our control.

Aaron and I didn’t join the youth choir out of a sense of service.  We certainly didn’t join the choir because we wanted to sing.  Neither one of us could carry a tune, but that didn’t matter to the choir director, Mrs. Grady, who needed a couple of token guys in what would have otherwise been an all girls choir.   We joined because I had a crush on Kim, and Aaron had a crush on Jenny, both members of the choir.  Not only could we be near Kim and Jenny during practices and church services, we could from our perch in the choir loft discreetly check out the girls sitting in the pews.  Our calling came from hormones.

We were, I confess, sacrilegious in other ways.  Sitting next to each other in the choir loft, we took turns surreptitiously slugging each other’s thigh, inflicting, if successful, just enough pain to elicit a barely audible grunt or moan during the service’s quieter moments.  The robes hung loosely over our arms, so no one could see that we were beating up on each other.

Worse, during the singing of hymns we would mentally tack on the words “beneath the sheets” to the titles.  Oh, with what soulful abandon Aaron and I sang Be Thou My Vision.  How jubilantly we belted out How Great Thou Art.  On one occasion we sang Amazing Grace with so much gusto that Mrs. Grady challenged the rest of the choir to match our enthusiasm.

But mostly our irreverence took the form of people-watching.  The parishioners sitting out there in the congregation amused Aaron.  An old lady nodding off, a kid picking his nose, an impatient father repeatedly checking his wristwatch: they all made Aaron laugh.   It was a covert laugh, of course, a closed-mouthed chuckle that only his sidekick could hear and acknowledge.  

As much as we preoccupied ourselves during a regular church service,  Communion Sundays were the most distracting.  Communion was also what finally got Aaron into trouble.  You see, being a people-watcher, Aaron studied the worshipers as they participated in the sacrament, watching the way they would partake of the bread that represented the body of Christ, and observing their mannerisms as they drank the grape juice from little plastic cups that represented the blood of Christ.  Some worshipers chewed and drank seriously, some sanctimoniously, some nonchalantly, some nervously, and Aaron couldn’t help but notice.  He wasn’t disruptive, just a roll of the eyes or shake of the head or a sly smile or that closed-mouthed chuckle of his, or any combination of the above, all of it unconscious, but every adult in the sanctuary, especially the minister could tell that he was goofing off.  At last Reverend Shaw reprimanded him and gave him an ultimatum.   If Aaron wanted to remain a member of the youth choir, he would have to behave in a manner befitting a place of worship.  He was to be solemn and attentive.  Aaron took the threat seriously.  To lose his place in the choir was to lose his place near Jenny.

Before the next Communion Sunday service began, Aaron spoke a vow, both to himself and to me.  While we were in the choir room donning our robes, he repeated over and over.  “I will not open my eyes during Communion.  I will not open my eyes during Communion.”  To open them, he knew, would be to see something that would tickle his funny bone, and a tickled funny bone, he also knew, would get him booted out of the choir.  As added insurance Aaron then committed himself to keeping his eyes closed, not only during Communion, but during most of the worship service.  Which he did.  On any previous Sunday people would’ve assumed he had dozed off.  But right on cue he opened his eyes to sing out of the hymnal or pray the prayers out of the order of service.  Then he shut them again. By all appearances a very serious worshiper.

The sacrament of Communion in the Methodist Church begins when the pastor consecrates the elements, and then he and the associate pastor administer Communion to each other.  Next, the members of the congregation take their turns approaching and then kneeling at the altar.  Through it all Aaron kept his eyes closed.  How strangely reverent, even prayerful, Aaron must’ve seemed to the adults who surely looked his way now and then to see what he was up to.  Could this eminently likable knucklehead actually be experiencing a spiritual awakening?  It’s entirely possible that there were those in the congregation who thought as much.  There were even those who had probably prayed for something like this.  

The youth choir was the last group to take Communion, and as we shuffled down from the choir loft to the altar rail, Aaron briefly opened his eyes so he could see his way.   After kneeling next to me, our backs to the congregation, he shut his eyes once again.  “Take this bread in token of Christ’s body that was broken for you.”  I pulled a piece from the proffered loaf, but my thoughts were far far away.  I was probably thinking about fishing or the 49er game, both crucially important to me at that time in my life.  I then looked down at the altar rail.  There were crumbs on it.  Mindlessly, I stuck an index finger in my mouth, and like an anteater pressing his tongue along a line of ants, I pressed my finger along a line of crumbs.  Then I licked them off.  

Aaron opened his eyes.  

At the exact moment that I was pressing my finger onto those crumbs then licking them off, he opened his eyes.  When he saw me, when he realized that I was licking consecrated crumbs off my finger, he sputtered out the beginning of a laugh.  He swallowed the laugh before it fully developed, but what Aaron had feared all along had come to pass.  Laughter had been ignited within him. Like combusting rocket fuel there could be no turning it off.  He could only try to hold it in.  I heard him next to me straining and gasping, gasping and straining.  Then I lost it too.  Laughter gushed up, and, just like my friend kneeling by my side, I desperately struggled to tamp it down.

Now, if you were in the congregation what would you think of the scene?   The stained glass windows are filtering the morning sunlight!  The organist is playing a heartfelt and soulful song of praise!  The minister is blessing one and all!  And then there are those two clowns in their choir robes, kneeling side by side at the altar rail, their backs toward you, their shoulders spasmodically rising and falling.  Go in peace! When they stand, briefly facing the congregation, you can see they’ve been crying: their eyes are red and watery, their faces a little blotchy.  Yes, from your point of view, how would you interpret the signs?  

God, as has been said many times, maybe too many times, works in mysterious ways.  It is also said that God reveals himself to the unlikeliest of souls.  Now Aaron and I, unlikely souls though we were, didn’t have a vision of God or Jesus on that Sunday morning as must’ve been rumored.  It wasn’t the religious experience that some may have assumed it to be.  But it was, I believe, a pretty good approximation of one. Something really did come over me! How alive and powerless I felt in its grip!  And how full of joy!