Rays and Bridges of Light

In a second reflection to coincide with our summer series, Rob Shearer, ec., reflects on the practice of communion / eucharist at AbbeyChurch and starts to unpack why we do what we do (using far too many Greek words in the process).

Some call it "The Holy Eucharist" - others, "Communion" - and yet others "The Lord's Supper".   

Eucharist.  It literally means thanksgiving (in Koine Greek) - and, depending on which stripe of Christianity one favours, one might lean into viewing it as a memorial, a sacrifice, a mystical feast - or as a table of welcome (among other things).  

For some, it might be mostly about community ritually eating together (communio means 'sharing in common'), while for others the focus is on the crucifixion (and blood!), while for others yet it's a feast of Jesus' resurrection and triumph over death.  For still others it's a foretaste of a banquet when all will be well in the world and all are fed.   

Depending on what you think of the above meanings, you might call the surface it happens on a 'table' (usually protestant) or an 'altar' (Anglican / Catholic).

Sometimes the presider (ie pastor, minister, priest, elder serving at the table) will have varying kinds of fancy clothes - vestments - or not - it could be a suit and tie or t-shirt and shorts - and that's a whole other topic I don't have time to get into here but am certainly happy to chat about.  Usually, those who facilitate the feast have been formed in the ways of their specific tradition - but I always like to emphasize to anyone who is being called to that -  telling them that it's not an elevation - it's really a kind of a demotion to servanthood and downward mobility - and not to internalize some weird ministers/priest are highter-than-laypeople nonsense.  

Whatever the emphasis in communion is for any given person (if you're like me, it might change from week-to-week and year-to-year) in almost every Christian tradition, it's considered a sacrament - sometimes called an ordinance -  that is, a ritual where divine grace is especially revealed through simple, ordinary things.

The United Church of Canada's most recent doctrinal statement,  A Song of Faith (2006) puts it like this: "In these sacraments the ordinary things of life  ... bread, wine — point beyond themselves to God and God’s love, teaching us to be alert to the sacred in the midst of life." 

In this understanding, communion interconnects us to Jesus' life and redemptive work, even as it links us to God's work in all of history, as well as to our forebears or ancestors in faith. 

Powerful when you think of it.

At AbbeyChurch, we place ourselves right into the sacred heart of the sacramental tradition - meaning that we do communion pretty much every week.  Though that might seem, at first, to lean more into the Anglican side of our United-Anglican shared ministry status, especially given that many United Churches practice it monthly or even (gasp) quarterly.  

However, regarding communion, the founders of the precursors to The United Church, John Knox (Presbyterian) and John Wesley (Methodism) certainly advocated it far more regularly, and it was a lively debate leading up to United Church Union in 1925 about whether to do it weekly or less often.  

John Wesley said this:  

I am to show that it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord's Supper as often as [they] can. Let everyone, therefore, who has either any desire to please God, or any love of [their] own soul, obey God, and consult the good of [their] own soul, by communicating every time [they] can...As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection. If, therefore, we have any regard for the plain command of Christ, if we desire the pardon of our sins, if we wish for strength to believe, to love and obey God, then we should neglect no opportunity of receiving the Lord's Supper; then we must never turn our backs on the feast which our Lord has prepared for us.

The Anglican expression favours it weekly, of course, and does so with a lot of 'holy hardware' (burse, pall, corporal, paten, etc, etc) including a common cup for the wine as a powerful symbol of unity.  We at AbbeyChurch tend to use a little less of the holy hardware than many Anglicans. We at AbbeyChurch use the common cup as well as offered the more historically-United Church tiny glass 'thimble cups'; those being filled with grape juice as a way to welcome those who might be less comfortable with wine (or with sharing germs) - also giving a wink and a nod to the UCC's temperance roots.  We inherited the cups from those who have used this building for over a century.

Whatever it's called or however it's served, at its core, Holy Communion recalls the story of Jesus - and especially, of course, his last meal with his followers. 

In terms of it's form, it has a few essential parts to it - including (warning - more Greek words incoming)  anamnesis (or remembering) and epiclesis (invoking the Holy Spirit).   In every AbbeyChurch eucharist you'll hear this so-called anamnesis in what are called the words of institution - which echo Jesus' words at his last feast with his friends.  You'll also hear an epiclesis - something like 'send your Holy Spirit on this bread and wine...'.   You'll also likely hear the sirsum corda, the sanctus and benedictus, and the agnus dei (yep, more Latin or Greek words that we don't really have time to unpack here). 

In my life, I've partaken of the Lord's Supper in radically different ways, and I guess that all I can say is that, in my experience, whether it's done 'rightly' or 'wrongly' (at least to my standards, lol) - whatever the theology - or whoever is invoking the Holy Spirit over it (be they righteous or not, or have anything akin to apostolic succession - another rabbit hole that we won't go down today), I've known it to be a powerful, holy and, yes, sacramental experience of God's grace.  

Sure, there are a lot of feelings out there about lofty concepts about what happens in communion.  Whether it's a memorial or symbol (the usual Protestant and thus dominant UCC view) or transubstantiation (where the elements literally change their substance into the very body and blood of Jesus - the Roman Catholic and high Anglican / Anglo-Catholic view) versus consubstantiation (the elements are spiritually changed - the view of many mainstream Anglicans and more and more protestants and UCC folk that I meet) - we Chrisitans trust that there is something powerful happening in this feast.  

I'd imagine there are folks in all those camps at AbbeyChurch - and I think that's a good thing.

Wars have been fought over less - and these are undoubtedly important debates for someone.  Sure, we can mince words and have strong convictions about just what is happening in this sacred moment and who should do what and how and how often. However, if you ask me (even as one who has a fairly 'high' view of such things) I think that to overly fixate on all  that misses the point of it and actually risks trying to domesticate the mystery and power of what God is doing in and through is in that meal.   

We can also try to police who gets to have it.  Some traditions insist a person must be baptised or even be a member to receive.  Others (like the Orthodox / Eastern Churches) allow baptised children/babies. Some traditions want you to be confrirmed or reach an 'age of understanding'.  Baptism prior to receiving is the official stance of the Anglican Church -  recently reaffirmed by the Anglican Bishops - and at one point, in many United Churches you even needed a 'communicant card' to show at the altar rail in order to receive!  Some churches of late have even politicized it - saying if you have the wrong political views you can't receive.  Gross.

Others have insisted that this is Jesus' table, and He'll welcome anyone (especially the broken), thank you very much - which is the position of many of the more inclusive Anglican parishes - as well as the United Church as a whole.  The UCC says this in  their Song of Faith:

Carrying a vision of creation healed and restored, we welcome all in the name of Christ.  Invited to the table where none shall go hungry, we gather as Christ’s guests and friends.  In holy communion we are commissioned to feed as we have been fed, forgive as we have been forgiven, love as we have been loved.  The open table speaks of the shining promise of barriers broken and creation healed.

At AbbeyChurch, we too have discerned to extend such an open table, meaning that all are welcome - but none compelled - to receive.  At times, there are some among us who have chosen a discipline to wait to receive - or to start to abstain even if they received in the past - especially as they enter formation for Baptism (catechesis - dang, there's more of that Latin-Greek) until they are baptized, which can be a beautiful and optional practice rooted in our Anglican / small-c catholic heritage.  

***

A brief diversion here about confession, here feels necessary. With the quirky exception of Easter Sunday, we at AbbeyChurch do corporate confession, in some form before every communion (note: individual confession is also available with some of our clergy, but again, that's yet another story).  In recent times, some churches have downplayed or even eliminated confession - fearing it wrongly invokes a 'mea culpa' woe-is-me sense of unhealthy guilt.  

Years ago, I was working at an urban United Church, and the minister was challenged in this respect by a congregant.  His response to the congregant was: 'well, you might not need confession, but I sure as hell do - so let me do it and you can just check out for a few minutes and come back when I'm done'.  

Confession is not meant to be a time to linger in guilt. Yes, it is to admit that we, collectively and individually have a capacity for harm and violence, sure (anyone watched the news or looked deeply into your own heart lately?).  But, ultimately, it's a time to open ourselves to God's grace and mercy and have that affirmed through either an absolution (the clergyperson declaring the forgiveness on God's behalf - and please note: there's no magic or special elevated power in that!) or an assurance of grace (a reminder that we're all forgiven) - preparing our hearts and reconciling us to God and each other as we prepare to approach the table. 

***

And back to communion!  I grew up in a tradition (Pentecostalism) which, like a lot of modern protestants, didn't celebrate communion very often.  When I stumbled into the more sacramentally-focused traditions, I felt a deep connection with the meal the Jesus gave us.   I love doing it as often as I can.  

Accordingly, I've received communion as much as I can.  I've worshipped in Latin, Flemish, Dutch and French in monasteries.  Or in the Ewe language in West Africa in powerful worship. I've partaken in small African Methodist or Baptist stops along the underground railroad or in tiny parish churches in small rural villages. 

I recall some particular times which have brought out the meaning of communion in powerful ways - like these:

- Being at the US-Mexico border as people took communion with a fence between them - tossing the elements over the fence.

- Receiving with a group of Maquiladoras (factory workers) in an urban Mexican parish.   

- At Metropolitan Community Church - a historically queer denomination  - in Washington, DC, as folks were taken in weeping as they received a meal that once was denied them (there were even a couple spontaneous baptisms in the middle of it! and a full gospel choir to boot!).  

- Standing with 5000 folk at a huge Jesuit folk mass receiving it at a protest against human rights abuses in Georgia, USA. 

- Being swept away in incense-filled high churches in Europe with soaring choirs and powerful organs and vestments and stained glass and art.

- Receiving with Anabaptists in the plainest of spaces and 4-part old folk hymns filling the air in German and English.  

I've been in fundamentalist-liberal, fundamentalist-conservative and radical activist Christian circles (and most things in-between) as people shared bread and wine and an invoked and remembered that old, old story of Jesus.  

Somehow, in spite of the context, in spite of the goodness or badness of the theology or politics, the presider (that we call the eficacy of the priest), the people, the language - the Holy Spirit always makes an appearance.  

The Irish poet and writer John O'Donohue had been a Roman Catholic priest until an incoming Bishop didn't see eye-to-eye with him and he was run out from the (active) priesthood.  Years after he had left, he said this about the eucharist:

I think that the eucharist is one of the totally underrated places in the world. I really believe it is one of the places where the veil opens completely between the visible and the invisible. It’s actually the presence of heaven here on the altar stone on earth. 

And I think huge journeys happen with the eucharist – that we go into the eternal and the eternal comes into us. It’s an amazing event because it touches everyone in a place where they almost don’t feel that they’re being touched at all. And yet some huge transformation is going on. It’s like a yeast at the beginning of the week on Sunday that’s put into the quickening ground of the soul. And all through the week without you even realizing it - it’s quickening your responses, your healing, your openness, your vulnerability, and your beauty. 

I think if we could visually see what goes on in the eucharist, if we see a church is going on, that we’d see rays and bridges of light coming out and going through all kinds of distances into all kind of areas of desolation bringing huge consolation – and to each individual who’s there as well.

I love those words.  They begin to speak, for me, into the wonder and mystery and power of it all.   

With that, I give thanks for this feast of gratitude that we, the followers of Jesus have been given. I give God thanks for a joyful feast, a sacrament, a sacred moment that transcends time and space and that links us to our ancestors in faith, to worlds beyond our own - and which -re-members them, and remembers the Story of God's liberation and redemption made known in Jesus, friend of sinners, crucified and risen. 

Let us remember.  Let us celebrate this feast of wonder, whether or not we can actually bring ourselves to believe in the rays and bridges of light, or not.  

image: This CartoonChurch.com cartoon by Dave Walker originally appeared in the Church Times.