Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor
© 2020, Dr. Tamilio
We, as a congregation, have not celebrated Holy Communion since March 1st. That was four months ago! I think I can speak for the vast majority of us when I say that it feels as if something profound, something vital, something that is a fundamental part of who we are as a congregation has been missing. We have been famished — hungry for the bread and cup we find at the Lord’s table. Thanks to our Worship Team, our Deacons led by Gloria Gilson, we are able to safely share this meal today.
Holy Communion means many things to Christians. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters see it as a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ. Many, within our tradition, see the bread and the cup as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice: elements that help us recall more poignantly what Christ did on our behalf on the cross. And of course, there are many beliefs that fall between these two.
Practically all churches and denominations use the phrase Word and sacrament, because they believe that the two are inextricably bound together. Taken together, they reveal the fullness of the Gospel: one as printed language and the other as a sign that represents that language. The Methodist theologian Lawrence Hull Stookey has explained this quite well. In his book, Eucharist: Christ’s Feast with the Church, Stookey uses the following example:
The relation between words and seal can be set forth in contemporary experience as follows. Suppose you received in the mail and ordinary looking envelope with “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.” typed on its upper left corner. Inside on equally plain, undecorated paper is the message: “The President of The United States invites you to a state dinner at the White House,” followed by date, time, and details. Unless you are hopelessly naïve, you would not appear at the executive mansion at the designated time; while the words are “right,” there is nothing that visibly authenticates them. You realize that the president has not invited you to anything; instead someone has played a practical joke on you.
Suppose, on the other hand, that you received a formal looking envelope, with your name written in calligraphy. Embossed in its corner are the words “The White House” and on its flap is the seal of the president in gold. There is an equally impressive inner envelope; within that is a formal invitation, again bearing the presidential seal. But beyond that the invitation is totally blank, apparently due to a misfeed at the engraver’s. Now, though the invitation seems genuine, you cannot go to the White House because you have no idea to what you are being invited. Any genuine communication of this sort requires both words and authenticating signs.[1]
Stookey suggests that God communicates to us through the written and spoken word, but also through that which we can see, smell, taste, and touch. The sacraments enable all of our senses to be receptors to God. But as much as Holy Communion is a verticle act (meaning a way that we connect with God), it is also a horizontal ethic (meaning a way that we connect with one another). I am not referring to the interpersonal connection that occurs when we share the bread and cup in our sanctuary. I am saying that the Lord’s Supper shows us how we are to treat one another.
Take a look at the passage that Gloria read from 1 Corinthians 11 this morning: one of the most misinterpreted parts of the New Testament.
Many people throughout the history of the Church have foregone receiving Holy Communion (or have prevented others from receiving it), because of this passage. They feel as if they are unworthy of the meal — again based on what Paul wrote. This is a prime example of why Scripture needs to be read in its historical context to get a fuller understanding of whom the writer was addressing and what he was saying.
Paul was addressing an issue of socioeconomic injustice. In the early Church, the Eucharist was part of a full, communal meal. It wasn’t celebrated the way we share the meal today. We sometimes call it a feast. Back then, it literally was. The more affluent members of the Corinthian community would arrive early, because they did not have to work. They dug in, eating and drinking to their hearts’ content. When those who had to work every day arrived, much of the food and wine was already consumed. They got whatever was leftover. Paul saw this as a gross injustice. This is what he is talking about in this passage. How dare some members of the Corinthian church, based on how they helped themselves at the meal, treat other members of the church as being inferior!
Granted, the Eucharist is much different in most churches today. I do not see economic barriers that prevent some people from sharing the meal, although some may disagree with this saying those who have to work three jobs just to feed their families can’t make it to church to receive the sacrament. Fair enough, but I think you get the gist of what I am saying: we do not share a literal feast at which our wealthier members get to partake before the blue collar workers arrive. Life in Canton in 2020 is much different than life in Corinth in the middle of the first century. Theologians such as John Howard Yoder would challenge this in other ways, though.
In short, Yoder argues that Christian practices (be it prayer, Communion, baptism, or anything else) have deeper implications that show the world how it should be. In terms of Communion, he claims that we cannot gather and share this meal behind our church walls while outside of them people literally go hungry. Yoder can get pretty heady, but listen to what he says here:
In celebrating their fellowship around the table, the early Christians testified that the messianic age, often pictured as a banquet, had begun…Bread eaten together is economic sharing. Not merely symbolically, but also in fact, eating together extends to a wider circle the economic solidarity normally obtained in the family…In short, the Eucharist is an economic act. To do rightly in the practice of breaking bread together is a matter of economic ethics…[I]t demands some kind of sharing, advocacy, and partisanship…[2]
In other words, if we come to inside this building and eat to our hearts content while knowing and doing nothing about the hungry outside our doors, then we will be eating in an unworthy manner. It is not so much the individual sins that we bring with us that makes us unworthy. We all sin, and none of us are worthy of the grace we find here — which is why it is called grace! This is about communal, theological ethics.
It has been a long, long time since we received this sacrament, this mystery of the faith. Let us share it with renewed hearts, seeing an indissoluble union between worship and sacrament on the one hand and mission and outreach on the other. May this meal inform all that we do as disciples of our Risen Lord — the One we meet at this table. Amen.
[1] Laurence Hull Stookey, Eucharist: Christ’s Feast with the Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 60.
[2] John Howard Yoder quoted in Jeremy Marshall, “Eucharist and Solidarity: Reading 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 with John Howard Yoder,” taken from Slouching Toward Emmaus (online), October 25, 2013.