“Toward a More Holy Communion (Part One)”
Matthew 9:9-13
Luke 24:13-16, 28-35
Perhaps you know the story of the holiday ham. There are any number of versions, but I think this one will do:
One year a woman was preparing the family Easter feast, and her son was helping. After setting the dining room table with the best china and going over the menu one more time, they collected all the ingredients for the mashed potatoes, home-baked bread, vegetables and salad, and set the oven to pre-heat.
Then the mom took the special-occasion ham out of the refrigerator and began to prep it for the oven. The first thing she did, before setting the ham in the roasting dish, was to cut off both ends.
“Why do you cut off the ends, Mom?” the son asked.
“Because that’s how my mother taught me to do it,” she answered.
Later, as the entire extended family was enjoying the delicious meal, the son asked his grandmother why she cut both ends off the ham before baking it.
“Because that’s how my mother did it,” Grandma replied.
And then Grandma turned to the boy’s great-grandmother, and asked, “Mama, why did you cut off the ends of the ham.”
And you can guess what Great-Grandma told the entire family: “Because I didn’t have a pan big enough for the whole ham!”
I tell this story this morning because as I began thinking about and preparing for World Communion Sunday on October 2, the day when churches all around the world celebrate and give thanks for our shared and common communion, it occurred to me that we rarely talk consider what Communion is, or talk about the elements of our Communion liturgy. Most of us celebrate Communion the way we do because that’s how the people who came before us did it.
And it occurred to me that today and World Communion Sunday might be a good time to actually begin a conversation about Communion.
Before I say another word about that, I want to acknowledge that this might feel a little scary for some of us. Holy Communion is, after all, one of just two sacraments in the United Church of Christ (the other being baptism). A sacrament is, to share one of the more common definitions, a visible sign of God’s invisible grace.
While there is often an element of the mystical in our sacramental rituals, sacraments are not magic. I like to think of them as a doorway to the Holy in which we, those who are participating, are opening the door to God’s healing and transforming grace, a way of saying in actions and intentions, “Do your good work in and through me. Mark me, heal me, change me, empower me, and make me more like you.”
And so it is with Communion—except that, over the centuries and across various Christian traditions, the church has managed to take the ancient Hebrew tradition of God’s gracious provision of manna in the wilderness, food in times of famine, and the bread of angels and turn it into a solemn obligation that sometimes tries our very souls.
Except that, over the centuries and across various traditions, the traditional mainstream church has managed to take a foundational element of Jesus’s life and ministry—engaging in joyful table fellowship with society’s outcasts—and turn it into a guilt-laden, violence-referencing ritual restricted to the acceptable few.
Yes, I realize I’m treading on holy ground here.
I realize that—thanks be to God!—we here at First Church are committed to the open Communion table. But I also know that, as with almost everything, there is among us a range of views about Communion. I am aware that, for whatever reason, some of us choose not to receive Communion. Some of us celebrate Communion despite our misgivings and feelings of discomfort. Some of us approach the Communion table concerned about our worthiness. Some of us worry that our references to Christ’s broken body and shed blood might normalize and even sacralize certain kinds of violence. And still others of us feel that our sharing of Christ’s love feast isn’t true Communion unless certain words are said.
I will confess to you that in my Communion practices with you I have tried to make everyone—if not happy, at least comfortable enough. I regularly say words I’d rather not say—words I’m pretty sure make some of us uncomfortable—in the hopes of saying what others of us need to hear. At the same time, I get the feeling that the extent to which I present Communion as a no-holds-barred celebration of God’s love cheapens the sacrament for some of us.
Before I go any further, I want to be clear about one thing:
As most of you have probably gathered, I love Communion. One of the things that drew me to First Church Amherst was that, unlike almost all UCC congregations, we celebrate Communion every Sunday. As my understanding of Communion has and continues to evolve, my love for it has only deepened. Communion is many things, of course, and different things to different people, but for me it is, at its best, the essence, the concrete and, at its best, joyful and inviting distillation of the Good News of Jesus:
That no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, no matter what had been done to you, no matter what you believe or don’t believe, I (Jesus) am with you always. I am always preparing some kind of feast for you. I am always offering myself to sustain you. My love is forever being poured out for you, freely. Come, taste and see that God is good. Come and be fed, and know that you are beloved.
Communion gets complicated when we suffuse it with centuries of doctrine, tradition, and theology—especially atonement theology. Communion gets grim when we associate it—consciously or subconsciously—with violence and death. Communion can become oppressive when, through it, we normalize and even glorify violence against the human body or, as a way of avoiding that, objectify and distance ourselves from the body.
Communion, like so many religious rituals, can get complicated, confusing, and even burdensome when we forget what and who it is for.
Consider what Jesus said about the Sabbath. Keeping the sabbath was a central tenet of ancient Judaism, so whenever Jesus healed someone, did some other good deed, or let his disciples pick grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry, the religious authorities took him to task, accusing him of violating the Sabbath law.
In at least one instance, according to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus responded by offering the authorities examples of when Jewish leaders had technically violated some aspect of Jewish law for the good of the people.
As for the Sabbath, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”
And so I think it is with Communion.
Communion was made for us—that we might know God’s grace, that we might experience God’s extravagant provision for us, that we might know the power of inclusion and celebration. Communion was made for us—that we might remember that the Risen Christ is with us and among us and that we might be reminded that Jesus came to deliver us from the human idols of sacrifice, violence, and political power. Communion was made for us that we might remember and be transformed by the resurrection truth that nothing is more powerful than Love.
I think what is most holy and important about Communion has less to do with what happened at the Last Supper than with what happened in Emmaus. What makes Communion so holy and life-giving, I think, is not so much the words we say or what we believe about the sacrament, but who we meet at Christ’s table and how, if we let it, that encounter can both sustain and change us.
When the Risen Christ was at table with the two he met on the road to Emmaus, he took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And they were changed. Those who had been wallowing in deep grief were filled with joy in knowing that Jesus was yet alive, and at that very hour they began their return to the beloved community. There they shared the good news that Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
So may it be for us, now and always.
(To be continued next week . . .)
