Pre-sealed Communion, Surgical Masks, & Jesus

Fernando Ramirez
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

It’s Sunday morning, the worship team ends their last song as the preacher begins his exhortation. The ushers get in position as they prepare and then distribute the Lord’s Supper row by row. I grab my pre-packaged Eucharist and personally partake in His Holy Sacrament. Still, as I try to imagine myself in the room where this moment originally took place, sorrounded by Jesus’ closest disciples; the cold plastic casing isolates me and leaves me alone with Christ.

Through my work with OneHope I was able to visit different countries in Southeast Asia last week. It was incredible to see how diverse countries like Laos or Vietnam could be, even within the general Asian context. Yet as I walked through the various airports and open spaces, I was reminded of one thing; I despise surgical masks…

Now, of course I understand why people wear them in public places; the fear of that which makes you sick or leaves you vulnerable has kept countless generations at a distance. My problem with them is that they make me personally feel like a “dirty” or “untouchable” being when I see others wearing them around me. Even if I know I’m not sick at the moment, they remind me that just maybe I am carrying some sort of plague. Though I know I can be safely embraced, there might still be something that makes touching me a hazard. I would be lying if I said I’ve never contemplated intentionally sneezing on surgical mask enthusiasts just to see how they would react. I wouldn’t actually do that (I think).

Now, It’s not the actual people wearing these masks that bother me (at all), for they are only doing what they’ve been taught to do. It’s simply the overall concept. I was telling my boss (whom I was traveling with) about it, and he laughed as it seemed like an odd pet peeve. However, this got me thinking; why do these masks really bother me this much? Suddenly, it clicked:

Whatever deems humanity ‘dirty’ tends to get me. For if I look at what Christ did for humanity when He took on a ‘dirty’ body, I will not find a trace of squeamishness. Over and over throughout the gospels Jesus performed countless miracles that were unnecessarily physical. Although He healed the Centurion’s daughter with His words, He chose to touch the dirty eyes of the blind and greasy ears of the deaf in order to heal them. God went to great lengths in order to touch a broken humanity that was in desperate need of physical contact. If this is the God that calls me His, then anything contrary to the example of Christ must bother me at some intrinsic level. For I realize that I t00 was deemed ‘untouchable’ and ‘sick’, yet He embraced me.

So as I basked in the revelation of this moment (proud of my pious realization), I was quickened to recognize the reason for this insight. For when God confers truth, He seeks to have the recipient deal with it him/herself before it is shared. This humbling process is called “there’s a log in your eye.”

In this moment He was asking a cutting question; “what mask(s) are you wearing?” and “Who are you making feel as ‘untouchable’ by wearing it?” and “How are you encasing yourself against my humanity?”

Like a father teaching his child a lesson; in that moment I felt the discipline, as well as the grace of these questions. As odd as it may seem, they reminded me of my feelings on prepackaged communion. How although it is practical and “hygienic”, it has always felt isolating and paints for me a picture of a personal relationship with God, devoid of the community He loves. This is why I love the sacrament of foot washing, for it being the only sacrament that cannot be sanitized, I am forced to embrace my own brokeness by embracing the brokeness of others. There is no escaping the moment.

The ancient fear of becoming unclean by touching that which is deemed unclean is rendered baseless when Christ flips this reality on its axis by proclaiming that once made light, it is darkness that flees. He touches what is broken and makes it whole. He goes into the places where people ‘shouldn’t’ go and His presence in them brings about their redemption.

If this public Christian faith will ever lead to the flourishing of our neighbor, our neighborhoods, and society as a whole, we must embrace the example of Christ in the way we approach this world. We must do away with our personal surgical masks and embrace a broken creation without fear of contamination, and full of hope for its redemption. The moment we forget that we were once outcasts and treat others like such, we blaspheme the One we proclaim.

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