The Church is Out to Lunch
November 23, 2008
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Matthew 25:31-46
We start the sacraments with Jesus – Jesus being baptized, Jesus at the Last Supper…and from participating in the sacraments, we go out as the Body of Christ – feeding, taking water, visiting. “As you do it to the least of these, so you do it for me….”
Last week I started a two-week series on the sacraments: baptism and communion. Some of you will remember that in discussing the sacraments, I said that they could be understood as “sacred moments” – where God acts and we act. We act using the water or the bread and cup, God acts in reaching into our lives in love. Thus the sacraments are truly signs and symbols of the mutuality of the life of faith – life lived with God in which we are part of God’s mission, sharing God’s work in the world. What makes sacraments distinctive are two attributes: the first is that Jesus somehow participated in these during his life on earth, and commended them to early believers; the second is that in a sacrament, we believe that God is active – it is not just our actions and our worship, God is involved, too.
For those of us who have grown up in the faith community, we approach communion with assumptions – first of all, we take communion for granted. If we think about what it might be like to newly hear about communion, we can understand why the early church had a peculiar reputation.. Hearing that Christians continue to participate in a symbolic meal in which they eat their dead founder – well, one could understand why people unfamiliar with Christian worship would find this a strange and somewhat appalling ritual. And certainly, to the Jewish community at the time of Jesus, it was shocking– Jewish law forbids any contact with blood; meats are specially prepared, one has to purify oneself after any contact with a wounded person, and women were periodically excluded from ordinary social contact. We come to this sacrament with years of habit, and like some habits, we often do this without thinking much about it. But our church, like most Presbyterian churches, is made up with at least half its members having grown up in other traditions, so we are bringing a variety of assumptions to communion.
With that in mind, it’s probably worth taking at least a little stroll through history.
As I mentioned last week, Presbyterians have two sacraments (baptism and communion) while in the Catholic Church, there are 7 sacraments: baptism, communion, confession, confirmation, marriage, ordination, and last rites. In the early years of the Reformation, there were significant differences among the new Protestants in how they understood Communion. The Catholic understanding is that during the sacrament, the bread and the wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus – this is called transubstantiation. The words “hocus pocus” may come from the Latin Hoc est corpus meaning “This is the body.”
To most Protestants this seems like magical thinking, and some Catholics today do not believe that anymore, although many do. Luther did not believe in transubstantiation, but he did believe that the “Real Presence” of Christ was a part of Communion. Calvin also believed that God was present to us in a special way during the sacraments. And Zwingli believed that Communion was purely symbolic. Most modern Presbyterians probably fall somewhere between Calvin and Zwingli – most of us believe that God is somehow present, but that the elements of Communion are mostly symbolic. We tend to go along with that classic definition “an outward and physical symbol of an inward and spiritual reality”.
And most of us come to communion with many assumptions about how it should be celebrated. Catholics, Episcopalians, and some Lutherans celebrate communion every week. Other Lutherans celebrate every other week. Most Presbyterians celebrate at least every month, and some Presbyterian churches have communion as often as every week. Our constitution, the Book of Order, says that we may celebrate communion as often as every week, and should celebrate it often enough that it is experienced as an integral part of worship. And we must celebrate it at least 4 times a year. Some people feel that Communion is very special and its specialness would be diminished by having it too often. Others feel that it is so special, it should be part of each worship service. If we look at family life, as a parallel, some people feel that Communion is special like a birthday, and others feel that it is special like family dinners. The worship committee has felt that a good middle ground is to offer weekly communion during Advent and Lent, to further mark these as special seasons, and then during the rest of the year to have it about once monthly. There are still people who would like it more often, and less often, and the worship committee will be available after church on December 14 to hear from folks who want to offer feedback.
Likewise, some people prefer Communion distributed in the pews and others prefer it by intinction. Good things can be said about each – in the pews, people all receive it at the same time, and usually one element is saved to be consumed in unison. In our church, the communion set that is used in the pew is quite heavy, and difficult for the frail older or younger to pass. In intinction, there is an active movement to receive communion, and a balance between the community dimension, and the individual moment of receiving. Intinction also takes less time in the service.
A separate issue around Communion is who can receive it – many of us grew up in traditions where children didn’t receive communion until they were confirmed, or in the Catholic church, until they had first communion. That’s how the Presbyterian Church used to be, but during the 1980’s there was a change, to allow all children to receive communion, with their parents’ permission. Some people find this strange, and feel that communion shouldn’t be received until people understand it. Many folks tend to think as I do, that most of us don’t have a complete understanding of communion, and if we really believe that Jesus invited the children to be present with him, we should allow them to participate in his presence at communion. Children do understand being included and excluded, and it is good to have such an important act of our gathered life be one in which all are included. Technically, the Book of Order requires that people be baptized before they receive communion – I have never felt that it was my job to be the communion police, and like many other Presbyterians, I am a little suspicious of any rules we might create that suggest God only works in communion when people have been baptized first. And of course, some denominations only welcome their own members at the table, where the PCUSA believes that it is not our table – it is the table of Christ, and so any who trust in Jesus are welcome at the table.
Communion, like baptism, is not a private action although it has private dimensions. Ministers can’t take communion to someone at home or in the hospital without the assistance of an elder or deacon, to represent the congregation. Our deacons have begun to occasionally take communion to our shut ins at the same time we have communion, so that those who are not present in the sanctuary with us might at least be part of our sacrament at the same time.
Baptism and communion both have an individual, God and me, vertical dimension as well as a collective, the community and me, horizontal dimension. That too is one of the distinctives of a sacrament – in a sacrament, we find the intersection of individual and community, physical and spiritual, God and human, as well as history and eternity, worship and ethics.
In regard to history and eternity, in communion, we remember, and when people remember together, it creates powerful bonds in the present as well. Forty-five years ago yesterday, John F. Kennedy was killed – who remembers when they heard the news? Do you remember when you heard about the Challenger disaster? When you heard about 9/11? Although each of us has an individual memory, there is also a powerful shared bond in all remembering the same events. In that way, history intersects with the present – when we break bread together, we do so remembering what Jesus did so long ago, and what countless others have done in his name through the years, ever since. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, detailing the words of institution, was written about 55 AD, and we still use these same words most of the time.
In one sense, when we remember the words and actions of Jesus, we are re-membering ourselves as a larger communion across space and time – united with our brothers and sisters in the past, present and future, here and everywhere Christians gather – we are united with our sisters and brothers in Urabá, Colombia, in early colonial America, with Christians in Africa and Iraq, in Scotland and Russia, in the church in Corinth who was arguing over how to celebrate Communion, and in the persecuted churches throughout time, where Communion is whispered. We are re-membering ourselves into the Communion of Saints – recongnizing our essential unity with faithful people in all times and places who may have very different experiences and understandings than we do, but who nonetheless find ourselves bound to one another through believing that Jesus Christ revealed God’s love powerfully, and uniquely.
And because of that incarnation, which revealed not only that God was present among us, but that our lives here on earth matter – that how we treat each other makes the kingdom possible and visible among us – and so the physical action of communion reminds us that our physical actions matter, too. It is the intersection of our worship and our ethics – for if we break bread together in his name, we are bound to feed the hungry outside this building as well. If we share the cup in his name, we need to get water to the thirsty throughout the world. If we believe that our gathering together matters, then we must visit the lonely – in hospitals, in homes, in prisons – for we know that being present to one another matters. And because we know that God is present in this ordinary meal that we will share in a few minutes, the least of what a meal can be, just bread and a cup, we know that God is present in the least of people made in the image of God as well, and so we are reminded that we should be present to God, throughout the world. That we, the body of Christ, should be active in ministry to all God’s children, the mighty and the weak, those who know their need, and those who never suspect their needs – we who are nourished by God’s presence in this meal know that we are also sent to strengthen the faint-hearted, comfort the afflicted, and feed the hungry. For God is strengthening us, God is comforting us, God is feeding us, and so our worship becomes our ethics as we are sent out into the world.
And strangely enough, this meal is indeed a celebration, for this communion is also known as Eucharist, which means Thanksgiving – we gather in thanksgiving. And we are called to give as we have received for that is the real mutuality of this meal – as we receive the body of Christ, we are called to be the body of Christ, giving ourselves again as we have received again. Just as indigenous religions throughout the world recognize an ongoing mutuality in the circle of life – we eat, and are thankful for the plants and animals that gave their lives for our lives, and so we go to repay the gift in our living, spending our lives for others until it is time to be done, when our bodies will return to the earth, and become life giving in death as well. When we understand Communion as part of the circle of life in this way, it really makes quite a lot of sense – we receive life from God, and Jesus came to be poured out among us so that we might understand how love lives in the world. And so we, in his name, pour out our lives for others as well. So our communion is a thanksgiving, and our living is a thanksgiving. And what we receive, we receive in thanksgiving for those from whom and with whom we receive it.
Our worship is indeed a symbol, a remembering, and a rehearsal for our lives, our faith becomes our practices, our life, instead of a refuge from life. And just as we don’t believe that the bread and the cup are changed magically – hocus-pocus – into Jesus, so too we understand that we are not changed magically by receiving Communion. After all, God is always present with us, so the power of the sacrament is not simply that God is present – the power of the sacrament is when we are present to God. And the transformative dimension of communion is not in whether the elements are changed, but in whether WE are changed: in a rhythm of receiving from God and giving to others, of practicing our faith in the living of our lives, we are indeed changed, by what we do, by how we live, by our choices, by understanding that we are enriched by what we are able to give. And so, all of life becomes sacramental, charged with the very Spirit of God, and communion is indeed at the center and the pattern of our lives. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Matthew 25:31-46
We start the sacraments with Jesus – Jesus being baptized, Jesus at the Last Supper…and from participating in the sacraments, we go out as the Body of Christ – feeding, taking water, visiting. “As you do it to the least of these, so you do it for me….”
Last week I started a two-week series on the sacraments: baptism and communion. Some of you will remember that in discussing the sacraments, I said that they could be understood as “sacred moments” – where God acts and we act. We act using the water or the bread and cup, God acts in reaching into our lives in love. Thus the sacraments are truly signs and symbols of the mutuality of the life of faith – life lived with God in which we are part of God’s mission, sharing God’s work in the world. What makes sacraments distinctive are two attributes: the first is that Jesus somehow participated in these during his life on earth, and commended them to early believers; the second is that in a sacrament, we believe that God is active – it is not just our actions and our worship, God is involved, too.
For those of us who have grown up in the faith community, we approach communion with assumptions – first of all, we take communion for granted. If we think about what it might be like to newly hear about communion, we can understand why the early church had a peculiar reputation.. Hearing that Christians continue to participate in a symbolic meal in which they eat their dead founder – well, one could understand why people unfamiliar with Christian worship would find this a strange and somewhat appalling ritual. And certainly, to the Jewish community at the time of Jesus, it was shocking– Jewish law forbids any contact with blood; meats are specially prepared, one has to purify oneself after any contact with a wounded person, and women were periodically excluded from ordinary social contact. We come to this sacrament with years of habit, and like some habits, we often do this without thinking much about it. But our church, like most Presbyterian churches, is made up with at least half its members having grown up in other traditions, so we are bringing a variety of assumptions to communion.
With that in mind, it’s probably worth taking at least a little stroll through history.
As I mentioned last week, Presbyterians have two sacraments (baptism and communion) while in the Catholic Church, there are 7 sacraments: baptism, communion, confession, confirmation, marriage, ordination, and last rites. In the early years of the Reformation, there were significant differences among the new Protestants in how they understood Communion. The Catholic understanding is that during the sacrament, the bread and the wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus – this is called transubstantiation. The words “hocus pocus” may come from the Latin Hoc est corpus meaning “This is the body.”
To most Protestants this seems like magical thinking, and some Catholics today do not believe that anymore, although many do. Luther did not believe in transubstantiation, but he did believe that the “Real Presence” of Christ was a part of Communion. Calvin also believed that God was present to us in a special way during the sacraments. And Zwingli believed that Communion was purely symbolic. Most modern Presbyterians probably fall somewhere between Calvin and Zwingli – most of us believe that God is somehow present, but that the elements of Communion are mostly symbolic. We tend to go along with that classic definition “an outward and physical symbol of an inward and spiritual reality”.
And most of us come to communion with many assumptions about how it should be celebrated. Catholics, Episcopalians, and some Lutherans celebrate communion every week. Other Lutherans celebrate every other week. Most Presbyterians celebrate at least every month, and some Presbyterian churches have communion as often as every week. Our constitution, the Book of Order, says that we may celebrate communion as often as every week, and should celebrate it often enough that it is experienced as an integral part of worship. And we must celebrate it at least 4 times a year. Some people feel that Communion is very special and its specialness would be diminished by having it too often. Others feel that it is so special, it should be part of each worship service. If we look at family life, as a parallel, some people feel that Communion is special like a birthday, and others feel that it is special like family dinners. The worship committee has felt that a good middle ground is to offer weekly communion during Advent and Lent, to further mark these as special seasons, and then during the rest of the year to have it about once monthly. There are still people who would like it more often, and less often, and the worship committee will be available after church on December 14 to hear from folks who want to offer feedback.
Likewise, some people prefer Communion distributed in the pews and others prefer it by intinction. Good things can be said about each – in the pews, people all receive it at the same time, and usually one element is saved to be consumed in unison. In our church, the communion set that is used in the pew is quite heavy, and difficult for the frail older or younger to pass. In intinction, there is an active movement to receive communion, and a balance between the community dimension, and the individual moment of receiving. Intinction also takes less time in the service.
A separate issue around Communion is who can receive it – many of us grew up in traditions where children didn’t receive communion until they were confirmed, or in the Catholic church, until they had first communion. That’s how the Presbyterian Church used to be, but during the 1980’s there was a change, to allow all children to receive communion, with their parents’ permission. Some people find this strange, and feel that communion shouldn’t be received until people understand it. Many folks tend to think as I do, that most of us don’t have a complete understanding of communion, and if we really believe that Jesus invited the children to be present with him, we should allow them to participate in his presence at communion. Children do understand being included and excluded, and it is good to have such an important act of our gathered life be one in which all are included. Technically, the Book of Order requires that people be baptized before they receive communion – I have never felt that it was my job to be the communion police, and like many other Presbyterians, I am a little suspicious of any rules we might create that suggest God only works in communion when people have been baptized first. And of course, some denominations only welcome their own members at the table, where the PCUSA believes that it is not our table – it is the table of Christ, and so any who trust in Jesus are welcome at the table.
Communion, like baptism, is not a private action although it has private dimensions. Ministers can’t take communion to someone at home or in the hospital without the assistance of an elder or deacon, to represent the congregation. Our deacons have begun to occasionally take communion to our shut ins at the same time we have communion, so that those who are not present in the sanctuary with us might at least be part of our sacrament at the same time.
Baptism and communion both have an individual, God and me, vertical dimension as well as a collective, the community and me, horizontal dimension. That too is one of the distinctives of a sacrament – in a sacrament, we find the intersection of individual and community, physical and spiritual, God and human, as well as history and eternity, worship and ethics.
In regard to history and eternity, in communion, we remember, and when people remember together, it creates powerful bonds in the present as well. Forty-five years ago yesterday, John F. Kennedy was killed – who remembers when they heard the news? Do you remember when you heard about the Challenger disaster? When you heard about 9/11? Although each of us has an individual memory, there is also a powerful shared bond in all remembering the same events. In that way, history intersects with the present – when we break bread together, we do so remembering what Jesus did so long ago, and what countless others have done in his name through the years, ever since. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, detailing the words of institution, was written about 55 AD, and we still use these same words most of the time.
In one sense, when we remember the words and actions of Jesus, we are re-membering ourselves as a larger communion across space and time – united with our brothers and sisters in the past, present and future, here and everywhere Christians gather – we are united with our sisters and brothers in Urabá, Colombia, in early colonial America, with Christians in Africa and Iraq, in Scotland and Russia, in the church in Corinth who was arguing over how to celebrate Communion, and in the persecuted churches throughout time, where Communion is whispered. We are re-membering ourselves into the Communion of Saints – recongnizing our essential unity with faithful people in all times and places who may have very different experiences and understandings than we do, but who nonetheless find ourselves bound to one another through believing that Jesus Christ revealed God’s love powerfully, and uniquely.
And because of that incarnation, which revealed not only that God was present among us, but that our lives here on earth matter – that how we treat each other makes the kingdom possible and visible among us – and so the physical action of communion reminds us that our physical actions matter, too. It is the intersection of our worship and our ethics – for if we break bread together in his name, we are bound to feed the hungry outside this building as well. If we share the cup in his name, we need to get water to the thirsty throughout the world. If we believe that our gathering together matters, then we must visit the lonely – in hospitals, in homes, in prisons – for we know that being present to one another matters. And because we know that God is present in this ordinary meal that we will share in a few minutes, the least of what a meal can be, just bread and a cup, we know that God is present in the least of people made in the image of God as well, and so we are reminded that we should be present to God, throughout the world. That we, the body of Christ, should be active in ministry to all God’s children, the mighty and the weak, those who know their need, and those who never suspect their needs – we who are nourished by God’s presence in this meal know that we are also sent to strengthen the faint-hearted, comfort the afflicted, and feed the hungry. For God is strengthening us, God is comforting us, God is feeding us, and so our worship becomes our ethics as we are sent out into the world.
And strangely enough, this meal is indeed a celebration, for this communion is also known as Eucharist, which means Thanksgiving – we gather in thanksgiving. And we are called to give as we have received for that is the real mutuality of this meal – as we receive the body of Christ, we are called to be the body of Christ, giving ourselves again as we have received again. Just as indigenous religions throughout the world recognize an ongoing mutuality in the circle of life – we eat, and are thankful for the plants and animals that gave their lives for our lives, and so we go to repay the gift in our living, spending our lives for others until it is time to be done, when our bodies will return to the earth, and become life giving in death as well. When we understand Communion as part of the circle of life in this way, it really makes quite a lot of sense – we receive life from God, and Jesus came to be poured out among us so that we might understand how love lives in the world. And so we, in his name, pour out our lives for others as well. So our communion is a thanksgiving, and our living is a thanksgiving. And what we receive, we receive in thanksgiving for those from whom and with whom we receive it.
Our worship is indeed a symbol, a remembering, and a rehearsal for our lives, our faith becomes our practices, our life, instead of a refuge from life. And just as we don’t believe that the bread and the cup are changed magically – hocus-pocus – into Jesus, so too we understand that we are not changed magically by receiving Communion. After all, God is always present with us, so the power of the sacrament is not simply that God is present – the power of the sacrament is when we are present to God. And the transformative dimension of communion is not in whether the elements are changed, but in whether WE are changed: in a rhythm of receiving from God and giving to others, of practicing our faith in the living of our lives, we are indeed changed, by what we do, by how we live, by our choices, by understanding that we are enriched by what we are able to give. And so, all of life becomes sacramental, charged with the very Spirit of God, and communion is indeed at the center and the pattern of our lives. Amen.