The Story of Our Altar

A Sacramental Presence

Our dream is for Church of the Incarnation to be a sacramental presence in our city: a community of disciples that embodies Jesus in Memphis so that people have a transformational encounter with him.

Jesus is truly present in the sacraments. In ordinary elements like bread and wine, Jesus meets us in tangible ways. 

So to be a sacramental presence means that Jesus is so present in us that people encounter Jesus in us.  

This is why Holy Communion is central to our worship. In this meal, we're united together to Christ, and we're sent as his Body into our city.

So the altar—the table on which these ordinary elements of bread and wine become for his people the Body and Blood of Jesus—is a significant part of our sacramental life together and our mission to bless our neighborhoods and city with the transforming love of Jesus. 

The Story of Our Altar

When Jeremy Huelin—a Church Plant Launch Team member—came to me (Fr. Drew) interested in designing and building an altar for our church, I was thrilled. As the design came together, I grew even more excited. The intentional design is a beautiful expression of our church plant: our connectedness to the historic Church, our rootedness in Memphis, and our love for one another in Christ. 

Seeing Jeremy along with Josh Weaver use their skills and gifts to build this altar brought me so much joy. Thank you to Camille Weaver for capturing these images of the process!

Artist's Statement

Here's Jeremy's artist's statement detailing his design of the altar:

Altars from the first few hundred years of the church were square, until the ecclesiastical development of "ad orientem" eucharist caused the altar to be moved against the rear wall of the church's apse, with the priest's back to the people. The Reformation reintroduced "versus populum" eucharist, but when the altar left the wall for the priest to face the congregants it retained the shelf-like rectangular form it had assumed over the years. Our altar returns to the archetypal square, assuming an inherent wisdom in the spatial traditions of the early church. I like to believe that the square form physically places both priest and congregation in equal relation to and under the divine presence at the center of our worship.

In this same early church, persecution forced celebration of the eucharist on wooden tables in houses or on the lid of the stone tombs of the martyrs in the catacombs. Our altar adopts the form of a simple wooden table while our church plant awaits its permanent home. Its spindly, weak legs will one day be embedded in a robust stone base, uniting the two precedents given us by the early church.

The bulk of the tabletop is constructed of locally sourced walnut wood. The structure that forms the inlay creates a Jerusalem cross on the altar's surface. An Anglican standard, the insignia's five crosses join a more ancient catholic tradition of engraving an altar's surface with the five wounds of Christ. The weight of the table is carried down to the ground from the five points of this blood-red inlay. The disparate walnut pieces never touch, just as the people of Incarnation Memphis are held together and up by nothing but the blood of Christ's sacrifice.

"Blessing for a Wooden Altar"

by Lucy Jones
(written for Church of the Incarnation)

Think of the lowing
and steaming hides in the barn, sweet
breath of calves melting snowfall
from floorboards, the same
unsanded beams hewn now:
entry hall for angels
to shake snow from boots, step in

Now it’s built and living, listen:
redwood and walnut
like audacious children
cry their demand for communion,
daring invitation
for the Truth that knocks you prone, rends
Time like woven cloth –

Yet He will grant, even elect,
freely to abide in man-made stave –
no more outrageous
than when He moved into the warped
timbers of your splintered heart, made
table there, made bread
of the ringed grain and bevel.

     O Father who lays table, inlay
     your children with prophecies
     truly-promised, truths revealed
     like ancient cedar’s perfumes

     O have us
     for your perfect coursing,
     whose blood sang sonship
     from beams of wood, O Radiance,
     O dwell us in Your Love,
     our sustenance.