Church Ladies to Watch Out For!

You probably know some. You might be related to one. You might be one. Good for you. Today I want to talk about one in particular. Because she's hilarious, and nobody even realizes it.

I basically have a head Church Lady at my church. I sometimes call her the Keeper of All Things Proper. She's the one who made clear to me when I first had to do funerals what I should do. She's the one who "suggested" I register at both downtown jewelry stores when I got married because "some folks trade at one and some at the other."

A lot of assumptions are made about this woman. She's a little scary, I'm afraid, to some newcomers, despite the fact that she is sweet as pie to pretty much everyone. It took me about 3 years to figure out that I should just take what she says at face value and stop trying to divine what she was "really" trying to tell me.

I've heard people make comments about her, making clear that they assume she is pretty conservative and straight-laced. And I suppose, in many ways, she is straight-laced. But she's about as far from conservative as she could be, having grown up proper in the Heart of Dixie. (Did I mention she's a life-time member?)

I realized this yesterday in church, as I was observing her recite the Words of Institution. Maybe "recite" is the wrong word. In our tradition, lay elders preside at the communion table. This means different things in different congregations, but in our church currently, it means I do the Invitation to Communion and the Elder says the Words of Institution and prays over the Bread and the Cup.

But when this particular Church Lady Elder says the words of institution, she doesn't say them quite like you might assume, with lots of emphasis on "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood". What is funny is the dissonance between the tone of voice she uses to deliver the Words of Institution and her prayer and what she is actually saying. She is the opposite of a believer in transubstantiation. Maybe I'm giving credit to something that is simply anti-Catholicism, but I don't think so. She is clear that our tradition proclaims a representational presence of Christ. I've actually considered talking to her about it, though I haven't figured out a tactful way to do so, because sometimes she goes as far as to say that Jesus said, "This bread represents my body."

Which is not what Jesus said, if you want to go by the scriptural reference. I have finally recognized that this is a woman who is so not into washed-in-the-blood theology that she can't bring herself to say that Jesus said the bread WAS his body. She wants it to be something different than that, though I'm not sure she could describe what it is she's looking for. This past Sunday the way she got around it was really quite artful. And I was proud of her.

Because it's important, in our tradition, for people to be themselves at the Table. And for people to be honest about what they believe and to be accepting of different interpretations of what is going on at that Table. So I don't think I'll say anything to her.

What's amazing to me is that there is this Church Lady who seems, on first glance, to be someone you would assume would buy into all the usual, saccharine, hard-to-swallow but rarely questioned theology of the mainline but Southern church of the 1950s, but in reality, she is regularly expressing her more nuanced theology at the Table. And in reality, she will openly admit that she doesn't believe Jesus is the only way to heaven. And she loves to study other religions and, of all 12 books our book group has read, has enjoyed the two that touch on Islam the best.

I love it when people defy expectations. Especially Church Ladies!