Why would someone like me, drawn so deeply to that great ‘mystical’ sacrament of the church – holy communion or the eucharist – by choice, become a minister in The United Church of Canada?
Regular communion has become a central part of my spiritual sojourn – drawing me toward communities who celebrate it at least weekly. The charismatic evangelicalism of my youth, as well as the mainline liberal Protestantism which I took shelter in as I deconstructed my faith underemphasized communion, in my estimation.
There was and is so much good in those traditions – yet there was a ‘hunger’ in my for the depths of something more.
I found it at Jesus’ table.
Yes, there was something ineffable that I had experienced in holy communion; be that a giant Jesuit mass at a protest, with a group of four-part harmonising anabaptists, at an anglo-Catholic worship with ‘smells and bells’, at a perfectly campy queer church alongside fellow queer or trans siblings, at a beautiful riotous African-American Methodist church – yes even in and evangelical church with a tiny disposable plastic cup with grape juice and a tiny piece of saltine cracker…
Bread. Wine. Grape Juice. Whole loaf or mass produced whitewashed wafer. Gluten-free or glutenous. Intimations of apostolic succession or nothing of the sort.
What is this about?
I found myself on a pilgrimage to find out: first becoming Roman Catholic – drawn by the mystics, the cultural diversity and liberation theologians – and then becoming a deacon and priest in the Anglican Church of Canada for 8 years. No doubt, I might still be part of those churches or communions, had I actually been able to tolerate the abuses and oppressions of their hierarchies.
One friend, who knew I was leaving Anglicanism for the United Church challenged me: “How can you leave – knowing how important this sacramental emphasis is for you?” And he had a point.
For most of its modern history, the United Church – which is a 20th-century union of several diverse traditions including Methodism and Presbyterianism, and who turns 100 this year, has been very sparse in the frequency of and emphasis on communion. Unlike most Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran or Roman Catholic and even Brethren churches, where weekly eucharist is the norm, for many United Church communities of faith, communions happens only monthly. For others, it’s even less: quarterly, with maybe a few ‘high holidays’ thrown in for good measure.
And yet, as I have participated in communion of any stripe, there has most often been a wondrously awe-filled sense – yes, beyond a mere feeling – that something enchanted and holy is happening. This isn’t some happy feel-good thing. It might not even be evident at first. But there really is something beyond mere symbol that is happening.
This is something that I find difficult to put into words.
Then, the other day, I was listening to an interview with John O’Donohue, the former Roman Catholic priest-turned-poet (again, reluctantly at the violence of the hierarchy), who was explaining to the interviewer why he had been drawn to being a priest.
Regarding communion, the late O’Donohue said these powerful words:
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.- John O’Donohue (Tapestry CBC, 2004)
I work in the United Church helping to form newer communities. It’s in these – and especially with younger clergy or clergy-to-be, that I see a hunger similar to my own. Less fettered by modernist and Christendom expectations, there is a draw back to the Table of Jesus. A hunger to engage deeply in the mystery of what happens in that sacrament of holy communion. I sense that many folks are drawn into this mystery; the enchantment and spiritual wonder and vulnerable power that O’Donohue is naming.
In a strange way, that might help to understand why I’m coming ‘home’ to the United Church. When I became disenchanted with the Anglican hierarchy as well as, perhaps ironically, the deadness of so much eucharistic practices (here I echo the critique of ‘rote prayer’ from my evangelical mama), I wondered if it was time to just leave active ministry as a minister (as O’Donohue did).
Then, I spent a summer delving into the sacramental theology of the John Wesley (who died an Anglican priest – albeit on the edges of that tradition) and others in the precedent traditions of the United Church such as John Knox – who was also shaped as an Anglican priest.
I would suggest that this sacramental and mystical connection to Christ – to his life, death and resurrection – as experienced through frequent holy communion are actually a part of who we are in the United Church. This cosmology is deep in our DNA – just waiting to be reawakened as the church goes through its latest renewal and rebirth in the Holy Spirit.
Two of our key United Church founders and forebears – that being John Wesley of the Methodists and John Knox of the Presbyterians encouraged regular communion and, though the language and controversies of their time is different than that of ours and O’Donohue’s – they reflect the same holy hunger and feeding that I have felt.
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; like the first Christians, with whom the Christian sacrifice was a constant part of the Lord’s Day service. And for several centuries they received it almost every day: Four times a week always, and every saint’s day beside. Accordingly, those that joined in the prayers of the faithful never failed to partake of the blessed sacrament… The grace of God given herein confirms to us the pardon of our sins, by enabling us to leave them. 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. – John Wesley (The Duty of Constant Communion)
This sentiment is no surprise – given that the maternal mama of Methodism, John’s mom Susanna Annesley Wesley, a powerful woman whose portrait hangs in the United Church’s Emmanuel College in Toronto, had her own conversion experience at the altar rail:
While my son [in-law Westley] Hall was pronouncing these words in delivering the cup to me, ‘The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee,’ these words struck through my heart, and I knew that God for Christ’s sake had forgiven me all my sins.”
As I’ve said above, John Wesley remained an Anglican priest in exile until he died, and his brother Charles, the great hymn-writer reflected the eucharistic Spirituality of his brother in his many hymns about communion. Indeed, the brothers published an entire hymnal of 166 hymns – Hymns on the Lord’s Supper!
John Knox, a founder of Presbyterianism reflects much of this mystical cosmology:
And yet, notwithstanding the far distance of place, which is betwix his body now glorified in the heaven, and us now mortal in this earth, yet we most assuredly believe, that the bread which we break is the communion of Christ’s body, and the cup which we bless is the communion of his blood… it after bring forth fruit, as lively seed sown in good ground; for the Holy Spirit, which can never be divided from the right institution of the Lord Jesus, will not frustrate the faithful of the fruit of that mystical action. – John Knox (Scots Confession)
Here, it’s probably important to note that both of these reformers, and particularly Wesley, thrust a new emphasis on communion, as a means of God’s grace. In another sermon, Wesley said this:
The chief of these means [of grace] are prayer, whether in secret of with the great congregation; searching the Scriptures…and receiving the Lord’s Supper. … And these we believe to be ordained of God, as the ordinary channels of conveying [God’s] grace to the souls of [humans].
I’d like the make the suggestion that we, in The United Church of Canada might return to the table of Jesus as our central act of worship, as did our Anglican siblings a generation ago in response to the liturgical renewal which followed the Vatican II council.
And with that, I’ll conclude with a reminder that weekly communion, that communion being the pivotal act of Christian worship was widely debated in the early years of The United Church of Canada.
Today, many congregations take it for granted that communion will happen monthly or even (gasp) quarterly.
I’m grateful to William S. Kervin’s book Ordered Liberty: Readings in the History of United Church Worship and particularly chapters 22 and 24 which outline the ritual/anti-ritual arguments and includes the excellent essay by prominent early United Church thinker and liturgist Richard Davidson’s (1876-1944) The Lord’s Supper as The Norm of Common Worship – reminding us that the centrality of regular, even weekly communion was, indeed, a live debate in the early years of The United Church of Canada.
I’ll conclude, then, with Davidson’s opening and closing words:
The Lord’s Supper is the one complete act of Christian Worship. Other acts of common worship are derived from it or auxiliary to it….A complete act of worship has all these elements in in. Once every Lord’s Day people have a right to expect the church to open up the way between God and [humanity], broad enough for [human’s] own should to go out to God and broad enough for God’s grace to come freely to [humanity]. The Lord’s Supper is the norm of Christian worship. The bread and the wine are there… (Davidson, quoted in Kervin 202, 212)