Download LifeDate Summer 2023
by Rosalind Stanley
“Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent” (Psalm 71:9)
Communion comes once a month at my church, and there is a moment during each of these services that stops my breath. After everyone in the pews has come forward, received the Body and Blood, and sat back down, the pastor makes his way to the very back where Albert sits and patiently waits.
This man, 95 years old and no longer able to get himself to church, to his pew, or even to the bathroom alone, served our church and community with his hands, heart, and mind for seven decades. A German immigrant, he survived the wreckage of WWII, even hiding out in barns near the end to escape notice. He built a life here and is known to my children as the one who used to hand out Twizzlers to them after Sunday school. He has helped care for the property, the building, and the people inside it for more than twice the time that I’ve been alive. Now that he can no longer do those things, what is to be done with him? There are some who would have you believe that his is a useless life now, a burden on himself and on others and that, for the good of everybody, we should release it—or, at least, look the other way as his candle snuffs out.
The Church offers a different take, one that is on display in that moment during every communion service when the pastor heads to the back row. There is no fanfare, no announcement saying, “Now it’s Albert’s turn.” (I’m not even sure it’s appropriate for me to turn my head and look, but I can never help myself.) As the pastor quietly gives, and Albert quietly takes, I’m always struck by the beauty of this simple moment between men who love each other—the one in the prime of his life bestowing the greatest gift in the universe to the one whose only duty now is to receive.
In that moment, when the script is flipped, when the old receives from the young, when the young offers to the old, when the Savior touches down and unites them both, is the Church.