Dear friends in Christ: tonight, I cried at Church. In 26 years as a priest, I’ve cried in front of my flock, oh, maybe six times. The funerals of Sharon Croley soprano par excellence, and Edith Pemberton centenarian and surrogate grandmother, and Dr. Mary Anne Andrews whom I lifted into bath and bed and with whom I struggled and quarreled and cried for six months on a daily basis as cancer whispered her into eternity.

… It’s my calling to do these sad sorrowful things well, to forge ahead in the hope of the Resurrection…

Sure, I’ve cried privately, because for most of my adult life, everyone I named at the altar has been a friend: popular lore to the contrary, I do have a heart. But publicly? Nope. It’s my calling to do these sad sorrowful things well, to forge ahead in the hope of the Resurrection. Hear this now: I preached the sermon of my father and my grandmother’s obsequies, before hundreds of mourners, with dry eye. And they were the lodestars of my existence. So before you get all judgmental, consider this: once a month for 20 years I’ve buried a friend, and done so in a way that people think is commendable and artistic. This means that, for 260+ weeks in a row, I’ve cried alone. This is what I’m saying: I intend to hear no politicized diatribes about what follows, from left or right.

… I should have been preaching to 100, before going out to serve hamburgers off the grill and talk about the future to hopeful young faces and anxious parental visages. Instead, I faced a hardy 9 …

Wednesday night, 6:00 p.m., one week after graduation: I should have been preaching to 100, before going out to serve hamburgers off the grill and talk about the future to hopeful young faces and anxious parental visages. Instead, I faced a hardy 9 –nine– and got in my car and drove home. And yes, I welled up and got positively weepy. Which I’ve done oh, maybe six times, as said before. The day I left Christ Church Alexandria, which I loved beyond reason. The day I resigned (even though they didn’t, thanks-be-to-God, accept) from the pulpit in Carthage (which I’d come to love but hardly yet knew) because my (totally out-of-the-blue) divorce was about to become a public scandal. Those funerals which broke my heart. The day I dunked my daughter in the muddy shallow waters of the Jordan, able to count the eyelashes of Israeli police staring at me through the crosshairs across the border. And then 10 weeks ago tonight, when we shut down the altar for all practical purposes and went to “a tiny handful of people and a camera” because the world came unhinged over a virus. And for tonight, looking at a hardy handful gathered around the altar while the thunder raged around us.

Look, I know the world’s become hard for all of us. And I want to let you know this — I get it. Really, I do. I’ve got a son with an auto-immune condition, a mother locked in a nursing home with whom I can talk only through plate glass or by telephone, a daughter whose life has been put on hold for six months while her professional training gets “slowed down.” I’m a guy whose entire life is built around touch. The holding of hands while someone’s exposing the break down they can’t say in public. The oil on the forehead for the dying as we gasp for breath together, choking out “Our Father.” The gush of water over foreheads in baptism, the hands reaching out to snatch rings from me before sliding them onto the fingers of their new spouses, the whisper of fingers grasping bread and wine at Eucharist. For 26 years, 6 or 8 or 10 or 22 times a week, I’ve drained a chalice of wine graced by the lips of 15, or 50, or 250 lips. Your germs, your infections, friends, are my daily bread. I live in the middle of your most intimate moments. On four continents, in eleven time zones, in eight languages I’ve been there, the first time Anglicans in Ramallah Palestine reoriented their calendar to conform to the Greek Orthodox reckoning for Easter, the day the universe didn’t collapse after Y2K, the return from my honeymoon abroad one month to the day after 9/11 as the security system broke down at Los Angeles — I took bread and wine and broke and shared. That’ my life. I drink after people who have nearly drained the fountain dry. I eat when they’ve picked the platter almost clean. And for me, that is the focus of my life. My marriage, my fatherhood, my identity as a person, they’re all grounded in this notion that I’m part of something huge and grand and ancient, this meal that’s been going on for 2000 years without ceasing, this prayer that started on Good Friday 33 or 29 or whatever AD and hasn’t stopped since.

So, before you go out to Walmart or Lake of the Ozarks or Lowes, take a moment and consider this: I cried tonight in front of my handful of people. Because I can’t share the cup of blessing …

So, before you go out to Walmart or Lake of the Ozarks or Lowes, take a moment and consider this: I cried tonight in front of my handful of people. Because I can’t share the cup of blessing, or hug them in their sorrow, or embrace them in their joy, without first considering whether I might, just perhaps just maybe, harm them. And me? I’m one of the brave, fearless, forward-thinking ones who’s actually thinking “is this the moment to put on your mask and hand them the chalice, virus be hanged,” as opposed to the vast majority sitting silently waiting for someone else to step out first and take the risk and be proven wrong, or right, or insane.

Put on your @#$* mask while you’re walking through the supermarket aisle looking at over the options for cereal, or squeezing the tomatoes. Because honestly, my whole life is oriented to touching people I love…

Put on your @#$* mask while you’re walking through the supermarket aisle looking at over the options for cereal, or squeezing the tomatoes. Because honestly, my whole life is oriented to touching people I love and, in some liturgical moments like baptism, quite literally breathing onto them. And to give that up for months on end is a far sight harder than you slipping on your simple little mask for 12 minutes at the gas station. I’m healthy and unafraid for myself. But dear friends, this is about more than me, about more than you. Your precious right to do what the heck you please when the heck you please is far less significant than the sum total of my life suspended for the good of others. Or, as our Founding Fathers, overwhelmingly Episcopalian, might have said it, “your rights stop at the end of my nose.” (Source unclear, but Abraham Lincoln — supposedly Presbyterian, but I’m claiming him here for the evening — is but the last on a long list of plausible sources).

The Rev. Steve Wilson is the rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Carthage.

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