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The Ironing-Board Communion

REV. ELEANOR MACALISTER

‘Climb every mountain’ was the title of my final address to the congregation of Ellon Parish Church on 29 October 2006. Both worship and Communion were celebrated from an ironing board – and remarkably this ordinary household task took on something of a priestly significance. It is the story of one woman’s journey in ministry. I am fond of cooking – and so, in the manner of a cookery book, it’s essential to gather together your ingredients and follow the instructions. So . . . read on.

READINGS: Ephesians 5:6–10 and Mark 8:31–8

Ingredients

One ironing board, one iron, one extension cable, two linen baskets, one filled with laundry needing ironed. The other holds a Communion cup filled with wine and a Communion plate holding a loaf, both items covered by a white tablecloth. From a distance, this just looks like another basket of laundry.

Method

Have the ironing board, iron and two linen baskets set up centrally on the chancel area prior to worship beginning. Ensure iron is plugged in. The linen baskets should be within easy reach. Conduct worship from the ironing board. When it is time for the address, ‘Climb Every Mountain’, switch on iron, and iron the laundry from time to time as one is talking. Cease ironing each time an extract is read.

‘Climb Every Mountain’

Seeing me standing here ironing this morning is probably causing some of you to say to yourselves: ‘Eleanor has finally cracked!’ But, in fairness to myself, I think that many of you know that it’s been pretty hectic in the manse recently. We’ve been gutting for what seems like months. There’s a pile of stuff in the garage as high as my Mini . . . all of it going to good homes, except my car of course . . . and the ironing has been piling up. So I thought I’d bring it in here this morning, as Gary is running out of shirts.

I love ironing! It’s the one household job I sincerely enjoy. Isn’t it lovely when you iron laundry fresh off the washing-line? What a glorious smell.

It’s therapeutic, ironing, as far as I’m concerned. I can switch off as I watch the creases disappear. I can stand and mull things over in my mind. In fact, I have a notepad at the side of the ironing board because often, in this relaxed state of being, I have ideas for a sermon or an All-Age Worship idea or a prayer coming to mind. That’s when God sees an inroad into my often scrambled mind . . . taps me on the shoulder . . . and has a word with me.

It was when I was ironing one day that I felt God calling me to the ministry. It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you. Not the sort of thing you’d expect while standing at an ironing board. I recall finishing the ironing and putting it away with this amazing feeling in my tummy. It was great! And, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, I got the clothes I’d just ironed, crumpled them up a bit . . . and yes, you’ve guessed it . . . began to iron them again. And the feeling . . . the sense of Call . . . was there . . . as strong as it had been ten minutes before. Ironing took on a different dimension! For many weeks, our children were the smartest-dressed in the school! And I had a very smug look on my face!

Voice 1

Wednesday 14 December 1988.

This week, I had an experience that I have found both exciting and depressing. I have experienced the call to be a minister in the Church of Scotland.

Exciting – because I have finally admitted to myself that this is what I want to do.

Depressing – because I feel there is so much against me being able to fulfil this need.

This call has been niggling and worrying away at me for what seems years. It is something I have fought against time after time, almost to the point of denying Christ.

I put up many barriers, but they came down when I eventually admitted to Gary two weeks ago that this is what I wanted to do. It was through my own admission to him that I finally admitted it to myself and to God.

I feel a great sense of relief and yet a great turmoil. I can’t think straight and have sometimes lost track of the days of the week. How can I be a worthy wife and mother and minister? That is what I find so depressing. I can’t deny my family – but I can’t deny this calling. I have been unable to sleep properly. The symptoms are similar to finding out that one is in love! Perhaps I will look back with cynicism on what I have written here – but I doubt it!

So the process began. Application to the Church of Scotland Board of Ministry. The dreaded Selection School process! The acceptance, second time round, and four wonderful years at Aberdeen University. These were exciting times . . . and I managed to continue to be a mum and a wife and a student and gain a Second Class Honours (Division One). Talk about multi-tasking! And God was there every step of the way.

A high point in this whole initial process was the Licensing Service. This was a special moment, organised by the Church Presbytery. In those days, that was the moment when you became a Rev. and could wear a dog collar!

Voice 2

27 June 1993

Lord, this evening has to be the best! I will treasure every word spoken at my Licensing Service, and I can only say ‘thank you’ for all you have done through so many people. Thanks also for the amount of pleasure this occasion has brought to family and friends.

From responding to the call way back in 1988, there have been many highs and not many lows. In 1997, for example, I achieved something I had always dreamed of ever since I was a wee girl – to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which I led.

Voice 3

Day 2. Wednesday 5 February 1997. (My 45th birthday!)

Early rise – 6:30a.m. Set off for Jerusalem at 8:10a.m.

Netanya to Jerusalem – gave us all a wonderful opportunity to see the countryside.

Jerusalem – our first stop was the Mount of Olives – from the top we viewed the panorama of the Dome of the Rock, the El Acqsa Mosque, the Zion Gate and Golden Gate. We began with a prayer. From the top of the Mount of Olives, you can see the original ‘city’ of Jerusalem – a Jebusite settlement – tiny! Church of St Peter of Gallicantu – the cock crowed three times. Down in the dungeons and at the bottom level of the excavations, read Peter’s denial from the Good News Bible. Very moving. Evening at hotel – very jolly! Phoned home. What a birthday!

The journey – my journey – so far has been quite amazing. I liken it to climbing mountains. I guess, like anyone who is into rock-climbing or even mountain-climbing, the trick is to try to keep looking upwards, looking out for finger-holds, looking downwards and sideways from time to time to ensure that your feet are firmly in the grooves or foot-holds.

Like climbers, there have been times when I have felt my fingers slipping, scrabbling for some firm hold, digging in hard when in danger of falling. At the time of my breast-cancer experience, I felt that I was clinging to a steep cliff by my fingernails. Like climbers, it’s been essential to check the equipment . . . and, like a lot of climbers, I have climbed not on my own, but with those with a similar passion and a deep-seated faith in God.

When I’ve reached the top of a peak, the view has generally been marvellous. Maybe it has been clouded over at times, but there is always an amazing panorama with lots more mountains to climb in the distance! Lots more challenges!

Just last week, when I was talking to a friend about what I was planning to do this morning, something occurred to me – and it’s this. When you stand at the top of a mountain range, you often see the shadows of the clouds scudding across the landscape. This creates varying shades of green below the tree-line. And, where the sun’s rays don’t reach the slopes and valleys at certain times of the day, there are shadows.

How like life.

For sometimes we are steeped in the bright sunshine that is joy . . . and yet . . . sometimes joy is as fickle as wind-driven clouds. Sometimes it seems that we are living in shadows where the sun doesn’t seem to shine.

How like life.

How like the Good Shepherd of whom we sing so often, walking with us in the peaks and troughs of life. And yes, through the valley of the shadow of death.

How like those two old familiar 23rd Psalmers, like old friends and companions who, if we look over our shoulder, we will see walking behind us or climbing alongside us . . . ‘goodness’ and ‘love’ . . . who will be with us all our lives.

For God has promised this.

Shadows.

How like your life, and how like mine.

In my mind’s eye, as I look across to the next mountain, there is an outstanding hill which seems to get in the way. There is a cross on it, throwing its own shadow. That shadow of the cross, for me, is inescapable. That was when, in chatting to my friend, I fully realised that my ministry has been carried out in the shadow of the cross. That makes me glad and brings me a deep sense of comfort. As night turns into day and day turns into night, that shadow was, and still is, there; as I sat at a hospital bed or chatting in a shop; or wiping up the sick of a young lad who’d had too much to drink and was afraid to go home; or alone in my car; or as the life and soul of the party . . . the shadow was always there reminding me of whom I serve . . . unconditionally.

And that call to follow, to serve, is as much for you as it is for me.

It’s a call that takes you to the heights and drops you to the depths.

It’s a call to walk in a path of radical love that challenges, for example, power structures.

It’s a call that can lead to danger because we live out this call in the midst of overwhelming forces that try to remove our focus on what is most important.

In Mark’s Gospel, there is a powerful sense that mountains need to be climbed by Jesus, with the journey leading ever closer to Jerusalem, that hill and that cross. But Mark never suggests that suffering and death are God’s will for Jesus . . . or for his disciples . . . or for you . . . or for me. I do not believe that God brings suffering upon people.

I believe that we need to get our heads round the fact that Jesus did not desire execution. We need only to revisit the words he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Nor did he see sacrifice as a virtue either. What he did do was his Father’s will – and he accepted, apparently with fear and trembling, his death as the inevitable consequence of living an all-encompassing life of love . . . a love that challenged oppressive power structures and all those things that get in the way of the relationship between people and God. I am more and more convinced that suffering is a consequence of discipleship . . . I would push this even further to say that suffering is a consequence of sacrifice. I know, as many others know, that responding to the tap on the shoulder brings its own demands. Equally, though, I am also certain that God never asks us to do anything he believes we cannot do.

During a workshop I was attending a few years ago in St Andrews for the DMin (that, as you know, I didn’t quite complete!), I was suddenly overwhelmed by the immensity of the task into which I was entering. Gary phoned on the first evening to hear his wife stating that she couldn’t do it . . . it was too much . . . she was going to give up there and then. She was coming home. His response? ‘Eleanor. How do you eat an elephant?’ My response? ‘I don’t do elephants! How do you eat an elephant?’ To which he replied: ‘In little chunks!’

So, for all of us here this morning, I ask:

 those who have climbed mountains on your own and with me;

 those who have more to climb;

 those who feel that they’re facing the insurmountable task of eating an elephant:

What are the possible consequences of your call to serve?

What do you most fear?

And, amid all your fears and questions, what I would suggest is this: remember that Mark’s Jesus did not call people to walk the path of discipleship alone, but rather to do so in loving community. One of the greatest joys for me has been to be part of the loving and hospitable community that is Ellon Parish Church, for

 together, we’ve ironed out lots of creases!

 we’ve discovered so many hidden treasures as we’ve raked about in the laundry basket of life!

 we’ve had gutting sessions and made numerous visits to the recycling bins!

 we have a community that strives to live out its calling in the shadow of the cross.

And so it has to be that my prayer for this community that I love dearly is this: build upon all of this with your new minister; work together; climb together; enjoy the views from the top; celebrate; tackle each task a wee bit at a time, and know that to follow Jesus Christ means not only to walk in his path up the mountains and down in the valleys, but also to be in a loving, non-judgemental and intimate relationship with him . . . and with the God who taps people like you and like me on the shoulder in the most interesting and surprising of ways! Live like people who belong to the light, and try to learn what pleases the Lord. For it is to him that we give all glory and praise. AMEN.

By the end of the address, I had completed ironing the laundry in the first basket. After I said ‘Amen, and may God bless to us this preaching of his Holy Word’, I reached into the second basket, took out the white linen cloth which, incidentally, had a hole in it, placed it on the ironing board and began to iron it carefully. It covered the ironing board nicely. I then took out the Communion plate with the bread and placed it carefully on the ironing board. I took out the Communion cup filled with wine and placed it carefully on the ironing board too. All this was done in complete silence.

The table was set.

The Invitation was extended.

The bread and wine were set apart.

An ordinary ironing board was set apart.

We celebrated the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper around an extraordinary ironing board.