The truth needs to be told. It was time for communion and the usual precautions had been taken. Typically, the deacons filled the trays with cups of grape juice and crackers, set everything on the table in front of the pulpit and covered it all with a white sheet. At least that’s how they used to do it until the rumors of dead bodies in the basement got the children too afraid to attend.
It all started when the Masters Brothers’ Funeral Home had a power failure back during the summer and needed a cool place to store a couple of folks over night. Pastor Jerguson suggested they bring them over and put them in the basement, which typically stayed cooler than the rest of the church.
Within a couple of hours the first of the bodies arrived at the church by hearse. Grady, Goober, Pastor Jerguson and a handful of deacons met at the church to get the caskets into the basement. They all grabbed a handle and started down the first section of steps but were stopped at the landing. Seems the stairs never weren’t intended to accommodate a casket.
Goober suggested they stand it on end and scoot it around like you would a tall dresser. Grady agreed but Pastor Jerguson vetoed in fear that the body would crumple down at the bottom and they wouldn’t be able to get him straightened back out.
They turned around and brought the casket back up the steps. “I’ve got a better idea,” Goober said. “Since we need a cool place, why don’t we take them over to the Piggly Wiggly and put it in their freezer. That’ll keep them really cool.”
The men actually agreed and took the two bodies to the meat department. But that didn’t stop the rumors that there were dead bodies being kept in the basement of the church. In fact, when that rumor was evaluated over against the truth, it seemed better for folks to believe in bodies in the basement than find out they had been stored at the Piggly Wiggly.
The solution was for the deacons to quit covering the table with the white sheet so the children would go into the auditorium when the Lord’s Supper was being served. It looked too much like a body covered up with a sheet. And though communion did deal with Jesus’ death, and the elements represented his body and blood, the sheet covering the table made it all too authentic.
But on this day, Goober could bear the lie no more. Just when Pastor Jerguson was repeating “Take this in rememberance…” Goober jumped up and yelled, “It’s all my fault!”
Not knowing what he was behind this confession, the church folks thought he was having a spiritual moment of identity with the death of Christ. The Deacons, Pastor Jerguson and Grady knew better.
Having someone tackled and dragged out of the service after such a proclamation was highly unusual. Grady had one leg and Ralph Pigeon had the other. Pastor Jerguson crammed a hymnal into Goober's mouth. As Goober was sliding across the floor he kept mumbling, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault.”
The Lord’s supper became pretty much routine after that. Try as he might in urging the people to personalize the death of Christ as having been done for them personally, Pastor Jerguson could get no one to express that identity out loud.
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