Rethinking Communion: Mystery, Meaning, and Community

It happens in every Christian church in every country on the planet. Once a month or every Sunday or several times on a Sunday or on several days of the week, someone usually in official robes, usually male, will stand and lift a piece of bread and lift a cup of wine or juice and utter the words, "This is my body. This is my blood." It is the most common act in Christianity. [00:36:16]

Sometimes its commonness is such that it becomes boring and easily overlooked. And the only thing that we can say beyond doubt is none of us have got it right yet. Because think about that simple story you just heard. A man is gathered in a room with friends. He picks up a piece of bread. He prays. He breaks it and he hands it out. [00:36:54]

Robert Capon in his book, Hunting the Divine Fox, has written about communion this way. Human nature being what it is, however, it wasn't long before somebody got the idea that the bread for the sacrament ought to be something special. It wasn't enough apparently that by Jesus' own words, any old bread would be nothing less than his true risen and glorious body really present in a high mystery. [00:38:02]

So you see almost from the very beginning we were taking that simple act of Jesus and we were complicating it. And the next Donny Brookke broke out over who should serve communion because in the earliest days of the church, anybody could. They could be a fisherman from Galilee or an exzelot from Jerusalem, even a female tent maker in Rome. [00:39:25]

But then the idea got around that just plain people wouldn't do for so holy in action. They had to be super people. Now this began to happen when the church moved out of being house churches and became really the established church of the Roman Empire. And from that day to this day this is what has been the standard is that only a few people are allowed to serve communion. [00:39:54]

If some poor soul had just lost a digit in an accident, he was considered unfit to serve the sacrament. And that's the situation we find ourselves in, where I only can say the words of consecration. Break the bread and lift the cup. Now the three churches here in the valley handle that in different ways. In Alamosa and Satchat, you have me come in once a month to preach and do communion. [00:41:07]

But the idea that somehow I and I alone can say these words is a little strange. And it was just a short step from saying who was fit to serve communion to who was fit to receive communion. And that's the mud our Catholic brothers and sisters are mired in every year at election time because every year some Catholic politician is denied communion by some Catholic priest because of some policy that they support. [00:42:13]

Because the idea got around that you shouldn't take communion if you were a sinner. It seems to have escaped the notice of the powers that be that in Christian belief everybody is a sinner. It was really St. Paul who got us going on this because his view was you shouldn't come to the table if you had something on your conscience. Now that's not a bad philosophy, but it should never have become a rule. [00:42:34]

So, if Judas, super sinner of all time, could receive communion from the hands of Christ himself, I don't think any clergy of any stripe, has the right to deny communion to anyone who comes forward because we are all equal in sin at the table. And we're also equal in other ways because the church has tried through history to keep women from serving the sacrament and to keep children from receiving it. [00:44:01]

Now, many churches do not serve communion to children until they are confirmed because they feel children do not understand the sacrament well enough to receive it. And where that argument falls apart is none of us understand the sacrament all that well. And that's why it continues to be a source of argument. Most of us are every bit as confused as your average six-year-old as to what is going on. [00:45:18]

Capon writes, "One of the greatest questions about communion has always been what we mean by saying Jesus becomes present in the bread and the cup. Protestants have said Jesus never becomes present in the elements but only in the people who receive them. And Catholics say he not only becomes present in the elements but also specify the exact time and place. [00:45:56]

Jesus is in the bread and on the altar and in the pews and out in the parking lot 10 minutes before church begins and 10 seconds after the world begins. Jesus Jesus is fully present in all of the baptized. He doesn't show up in a room from which he was absent. He sacramentalizes himself or makes holy a moment in a room in which he is already present. [00:46:59]

You go to do what the church has always been smart enough or lucky enough or guided enough to call it all along. you go to celebrate the holy mystery because there is a mysterious part to this that none of us will ever understand because none of us have ever really understood what those words of Jesus really meant. [00:47:49]

Communion is more than just a specific Christian ritual. It's an act of community in spiritual fellowship that predates all organized religion. Within the Jewish Christian tradition, the seder, the Passover service was observed long before Christian communion. And before the seder, before Jews were Jews, people did something like this for the same reason. [00:48:51]

Every time we hold hands and say blessing before a meal, every time we lift a glass and toast one another and say fine words about one another, every time we eat in peace and grace together, we've celebrated the covenants that bind us together. When Jesus, the Jewish carpenter's son from Nazareth, met for the last time with his friends and followers, they had supper together and they did what Jews have always done, they blessed the meal. [00:49:23]

So if you come forward to receive the elements, you bring your reality with you. If you come forward just out of routine, then the sacrament will be routine. If you come forward out of a sense of your own sin, then the sacrament will be a redemption. If you come forward with a sense of celebration, then the sacrament will be a party. [00:50:47]