Confessions of a Pharisee Baptist

I was late for chapel at this past Synod Assembly. Not late for a good reason—not because of Richmond traffic or an electrical outage or the dog eating my docket. I simply lollygagged with Tom over breakfast and realized I was running late after the fact.

“I’m gonna be late for chapel,” I rush us out of the booth. “It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, though,” I assure myself (and a speeding Tom) on the drive over. “I’ll just blend in with the other students late for chapel too—right at the first hymn or sneak in if the sermon’s already started.” It wasn’t that long ago that I was in seminary… I know how these things work.

Only, this wasn’t my seminary, so I didn’t know the back route. When I open the door, twenty minutes late, the door I peak into is not at the back—it is the front where all eyes were focused. And not only are there no late seminary students (turns out it is just chapel for the commissioners) but I am not going to be able to “sneak in”—everyone is already lined up for communion by intinction.

No problem. I can’t believe I missed the whole service, but I’ll just zip around to the other door and quietly slide in the back—I’ll at least get the benediction.

Only when I walk in the back door, Elder Fred sees me sneak in. “Go, go,” he says, pushing me toward the front, as if it would be appropriate for me to partake after the line was gone, after the presiding minister had even served the pianist.

Are you kidding me? I can't just run up and quick take communion.

I try to register this on my face when I look at him and bee-line for a back pew.

“Jess, go, quick,” he tugs on my elbow, pointing to the front of the chapel, whispering loudly enough that others have now noticed what’s going on.

But I haven’t done all the stuff. No worship or confession and pardon, no liturgy or prayers—I just jumped out of a rental car three minutes ago!

Fred keeps pointing to the front, so I dropped my computer in the pew in which I longed to quietly sit without being noticed and walk up the center aisle past all those who were properly on time. I wait—in a one-person late-line—for the pianist to finish partaking and for the minister to notice me standing and waiting. He comes back with the bread and the juice but gives no official words—no “This is the body, this is the cup” that might pass for some sort of symbolic summary before I partake. He just stands there waiting for me as I pinch off a piece of bread, dip it into the cup, and eat.

I slide back to my pew.

How could I have done that? I didn’t examine myself. I didn’t reflect on the cross. I didn’t even pray.

And there I sit, thinking about the missed procedure. I think I’m a Calvinist—that God reaches first. But then I want the invocation, prayers of confession, call to worship—my stuff before God. And there I sit, a Pharisee Baptist.

And grace is thrust upon me.