Post Edited (TGB) : 11/8/2006 6:33:59 PM (GMT-6)

How to say this…let’s see.

Let me first come down on POW’s side, at least in one important way. Surprise! To do so, I’ll springboard off something Zach said:

Zach: Communion is relationship with Christ. Whenever we eat, we are to remember. Paul and others institutionalized things. That's all fine and good. But we must not forget our roots. Grace can come from all creation. The idea of special conduits of grace should not overshawdow this. (In fact I personally don't see the ultimate value of special conduits, but I digress.) I don't see how pizza and DP is any less fitting than the dirt and spit Jesus used one time.

Tom: Zach comments, “Whenever we eat, we are to remember.” Yes, but we do eat/drink. There is some specific ‘form’ or ‘expression’ passed on. Zach comments, “Paul and others institutionalized things.” And Jesus too, and in ways that make it look like he intended the ‘form’ of celebration to be passed on along with the ‘content’. Grace can come from all creation. But not all things in creation are equally as cohesive a vehicle for corporate unity.

I’ve done pizza and Coke in a Ford Pinto on the beach with just one other friend. I still remember the presence of Christ. So I don't want to come down as judgmental on such things...

...but I’ve spent 30 years since then trying to establish the Church cross-culturally, trying to get not just two friends who are already of one mind to agree that they’re one in Christ and to celebrate it on occasion, but rather a national church. I think Christ honors any two or three who gather in his name and seek his presence. But there’s something more to this that I think we're overlooking.

The Lord’s table was instituted by Christ, the elements taken not only from the table of our sustenance (elements on which our survival depends; ingestion is a MUST!), but they were lifted from an already established religious celebration of God’s deliverance. It’s not JUST ingestion that’s important. It’s history AND continuity. The elements are explicitly representative of historical saving acts of God on peoples’ behalf that are now taken over by the supreme saving act—the incarnate God. The early church took the form seriously and repeated it. Consider too that explicit mention the specific words and actions of Christ on the night he was betrayed appear (in Paul) to have been part of a tradition that was passed on, part of the “story” that’s passed on.

So even if the gospel moves into cultures that have no wheat or vines and couldn’t possibly produce these elements (like Eskimos), we shouldn’t think this license to substitute just any old element. Culturally equivalent elements that serve the same communal function and, if possible, have equally central religious significance, out to be sought out first. This is not a hoedown; it’s a memorial service of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that act of the one on behalf of the whole that created a new whole. And though I wouldn’t freak out and judge those who on some occasion found pizza and Coke meaningful, I would attempt to remind such persons and the whole community of the history and continuity that’s needed to make the event a memorial that links us to the past.

Here’s the thing. Among other things, Communion ought to take us to Christ, yes. But it ought to take us THROUGH or PAST all the preceding generations of believers on our way to Christ. We ought to realize and celebrate the fact that our WHOLE isn’t just our local WHOLE, it’s worldwide AND historical.

Consider whether the following scenario is the sort of communal event that’s got what it takes to express and maintain our unity:

A hundred believers gather for a meal and time of worship. It’s a pot-luck dinner. Tons of food all over the place and lots to drink. Nice time. The pastor says, “Let’s celebrate Communion. Everybody grab something to eat and fill your glasses up!” One person grabs a chick-leg, another a blue-berry muffin, another a slice of pound-cake, another…and so on. One has Coke, another water; one wine, another apple juice; one hot chocolate, another espresso, one…and so on.

Would you have any objections to this? If so, why? My hunch is that in expressing why this ought not to be accepted as sufficiently continuous with and representative of Christ’s death, we’ll discover what realities make Communion what it is and enable it to work the way it does. I think you can guess where my sensibilities lie, BUT don't mistake me. If there is in place a sufficiently representative and continuous form/expression of Commuion for the Body, I don't think an occasional transgression of form is sinful or warrants discipline or judgment. Instruction, yeah. But I don't want to be "religious" about this. I would never agree that it has to happen in a church building or that "clergy" be present. There's no need to think that. But I don't want to see it turned into a pot-luck hoedown either.

Tom

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/9/2006 6:54:22 AM (GMT-6)

Namaste: …the communal synergy that we are talking about is IMPOSSIBLE without individual choice.

Tom: Here here! (Thumps the table.) Yes! I'm feeling ya.

On a different note, being ‘religious’ can kill synergy as quick as anything can. One can err on both sides I suppose. On the one hand we can go out of our way to make a statement by rejecting the traditional elements (traditional 'form') and using pizza just to make a point—"See me! See us! We’re different!" looking at the Table as a way to not conform, a way to demonstrate discontintuity with the past, a way to assert their individuality and independence form the larger whole. This, it seems to me, smacks of an irresponsible sort of disregard for community and the need to connect to the past. To even seek to turn Communion into an opportunity to make such a statement is a violation of community (in my view). On the other hand we can be ‘religious’ and insist on a wooden sort of obedience to ritual that demands uniformity—one kind of place, wine not juice, unleavened and not leavened bread, all the right smells and bells, officiated by an ordained minister, and on and on.

Though the Table was certainly part of a community meal, care was taken to delimit the elements within that context. It was THE cup that was recognized and shared. Not just whatever cup, mug, or glass with whatever you happen to be drinking in it.

So we can fail to integrate the event into our everyday lives (on the one hand, by being 'religious') or we can so assimilate it so much that we destroy its distinctive character.

Tom

Audio Resources

Audio resources provided in mp3 format.

• ="this.style.fontStyle='italic'" style="FONT-STYLE: normal" onmouseout="this.style.fontStyle='normal'">The Lord's Prayer (Our Father) - in Aleut
   by Fr. Michael D. Lestenkof, Sts. Peter & Paul Church, St. Paul Island, Alaska (0.7 MB)

• ="this.style.fontStyle='italic'" style="FONT-STYLE: normal" onmouseout="this.style.fontStyle='normal'">Paschal Troparion (Christ is Risen) - in Yup'ik
   by Spirit of Orthodoxy choir - released 2000 (0.3 MB)

Starkman: I wonder how taking communion, in any part of the world, would be affected if Christ were physically present.

POW: He is.

Tom: I first thought of responding with a comment you made to me a few posts up: “Ha! Good sense of humor.”

This will definitely be a big difference between us. I don’t see Christ physically present in the elements. But if you just mean present wherever two or three are gathered, present in the Church, then yeah, Christ is present. But he’s not physically present. He’s present in our physicality, in us. That’s different.

But…

You also smiled at my question about Eskimos without answering it.

So what DO Eskimos do? And don’t say that modern technology makes it possible to fly bread and wine into Juno, Alaska, bus them up to remote townships, and then transport them out to remote Eskimo villages by dogsled.

Communion was indigenous with indigenous elements. I’m fine with taking the same elements into new cultures where those elements are also indigenous. But where they don’t exist we’ll have to find something equivalent.

Tom

 

But pay good attention to what I've been relaying about dialogical gifts. . .

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 11/10/2006 8:45:50 AM (GMT-6)

HERE'S A GUY WHO NEVER HEARD OF 'TRANSSUBSTANTIATION,' AND WAS PROBABLY TOO PRACTICAL TO ENTERTAIN SUCH FLUFFY NOTIONS: CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310122.htm

Catechetical Lecture 23
LECTURE XXIII.

(ON THE MYSTERIES. V.)

ON THE SACRED LITURGY AND COMMUNION.

3. Then the Deacon cries aloud, "Receive ye one another; and let us kiss one another." Think not that this kiss is of the same character with those given in public by common friends. It is not such: but this kiss blends souls one with another, and courts entire forgiveness for them. The kiss therefore is the sign that our souls are mingled together, and banish all remembrance of wrongs. For this cause Christ said, If thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against time, leave there thy gift upon the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. The kiss therefore is reconciliation, and for this reason holy: as the blessed Paul somewhere cried, saying, Greet ye one another with a holy kiss; and Peter, with a kiss of charity.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310123.htm

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture XXII.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310122.htm

"...ye are become of the same body and blood with Christ."

-----------------------------------

I like the phrasing of his!