Don't worry; I've been on antibiotics for five days

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of our Savior
Haddonfield, NJ
December 2, 2007

I'm getting lazy about choosing new churches to visit - just picking one close to home is so easy. Luckily, there are so many churches around here that I could do this for months. One thing this project has convinced me of - this country may have too many churches! Or perhaps not - perhaps it's a good thing that there's a different church on almost every corner, with a slightly different outlook and flavor and perspective. But it's hard to believe that they will all survive another thirty years, when you see how many people are sitting in the pews on any random Sunday.

Oh well - I chose a nearby church today not just out of laziness, but also because today is the first day of slightly bad weather since I began this project seven months ago - that is an impressive run of good weather. And this is not really VERY bad weather - just a slight dusting of snow and a hint of iciness on the roads. Still, no sense driving a long distance today unless I really need to.

ELC of our Savior is in a quiet residential neighborhood. There may be a parking lot, but I don't see it, so I park on the street. Inside, I walk up a short flight of stairs, and someone hands me a bulletin when I reach the top of the stairs.

The sanctuary is rectangular, with a large raised altar. The interior is white (or perhaps light grey) with wood accents. There is a white and gold cross on a white background against what looks like a wooden grill covering the organ pipes, and the cross features red alpha and omega symbols. The baptistery is a large copper bowl on a marble pedestal in the center of the entrance to the altar area.

The sanctuary windows are clear glass  - a nice change from stained glass. (Readers may have noticed that I'm not a fan of stained glass in general, although I've certainly been wowed by some exceptional examples during these visits.) This is the first Sunday in Advent, and there are Christmas decorations on the window sills, and an Advent wreath hanging from the ceiling - it looks difficult to light way up there, but they must have some way of doing this.

A man in a robe with a blue stole greets us, urges us to sign the guest book if we are visitors, and makes a few announcements. The church furnace needs a new hot water boiler and repairs to its fire alarm panels.

The service begins with confession and forgiveness, a hymn (or Gathering Song, as they term it in the bulletin), and then the Blessing of the Advent Wreath ("as we light this candle, kindle in us the fire of your justice and righteousness"). Yes, they have a special long-handled lighter for reaching the candles. Looks a little tricky.

I think the sanctuary would seat at least 400 people, but only about 60 are here for this 8:00 service. The number might be a little low because of the weather, and perhaps the early service is the one fewer people attend. (The church was later featured in the "Your House of Worship" section of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and they claimed to have exactly 1, 243 members, so this level of attendance really is low, compared with membership.)

The sermon, by Pastor Wayne Zschech, is twelve minutes long. And - okay, here's where I really fall down on the job. I can't remember what it was about. Something related to Advent, of course. My notes are blank, except for noting the length. I apologize, Pastor Zschech. This omission says more about my attention span than about your preaching.

So what do I notice? The hymnals have very nice colored leather bookmark strips, five per hymnal, for keeping track of all the hymns and readings. However, the part of the service that makes the biggest impression on me is when Pastor Zschech begins Communion by assuring everyone, "Don't worry; I've been on antibiotics for five days." That gets my attention, and not in a good way.

His statement is the opposite of reassuring, even though I know perfectly well that people don't get sick from communion chalices. We germaphobic Americans would know if people were getting sick from taking communion. It just isn't happening.

Nevertheless, even though I know that no evidence exists linking illness to the common communion cup, I have an irrational dislike of them. Neil's first church after seminary, Alexandria Presbyterian, had an intricate tiered wooden communion set with those little glass cups. I thought it was lovely, and was interested to notice one afternoon, while we were washing the cups in the church kitchen, this logo on the underside of the lowest tier: Sanitary Communion Company, 1922.

That date makes sense. Sanitary individual communion sets must have surged in popularity after the terrible influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed more people than World War I. The introduction of individual communion cups began in Protestant churches in the late 1890s, at the urging of health and sanitation reformers. The idea spread rapidly, overturning almost two millennia of tradition about this most central of Christian rituals. And I like it. I even like the introduction of disposable plastic cups, because I worry about improper washing of the glass cups. (Interesting side note: when they were first introduced, some church members objected to the individual cups because they look a lot like little shot glasses.)

In churches where people drink from a common chalice (actually, usually they use several common chalices, in which case the word common has undergone a bit of a modification, if you want to get technical about it; using four or five chalices does not seem to me all that different from using one hundred), the server often holds a napkin with which he or she wipes the rim after each person drinks.

I'm sure this is intended to remove saliva, lipstick, etc. - but it actually emphasizes the ick factor for me. I suspect this might be a reason so few Catholics drink from the chalice; at every Catholic service I've attended fewer than half the members take a complete communion - many skip the cup. (This is okay according to the Church, but a partial, choose-the-part-you-like  communion seems more than a little odd to many other Christians.)

Also, after each service in a Catholic church the priest is required to eat all the remaining communion wafers and drink all the remaining wine; Neil mentioned once that he had assisted at a few big services, and that it sometimes seemed to him that what was left in the bottom was about 50% saliva and 50% wine, which really, really ups the ick factor.

So - not the most spiritually uplifting reflections this morning. Not the fault of the church or the pastor, but I'm not inclined to feel very guilty myself, either. It happens. I'm sorry to spend the first Sunday of Advent thinking about spit and germs, but perhaps that is because I am so very . . . . incarnational.

Nah - I'm just being human. Let's see what the second Sunday of Advent brings.