Different churches I have
been in have had different views on Holy Communion. Communion has been an ‘issue’
for me, or people around me, at various times throughout my life. Here are a
few of them:
(1) Shortly after joining
the army, at the age of 18, everyone in the unit was invited to the church one
evening. About four or five of us went down. Father Someone-or-other was very
pleasant (several months later we were on an exercise which required us to dig
defensive positions throughout the night. He turned up around 2.00am with some ‘Holy
Water’. Being a good Baptist – if there is such a thing – I didn’t partake; but
it must have been well-blessed water because the next service he held in the
field had double the numbers of participants!) That first meeting I thought he
was very pleasant until he offered The Mass only to Catholics. As a young and (self
-) righteous protestant, not experienced in the ways of Catholics, I was
somewhat miffed. In the churches I’d been in it was “anyone who accepts Jesus
as their Lord may partake in the meal.”
(2) About twenty years
later I was teaching at a Catholic school and attending a Catholic cathedral. I
was respecting their ‘policy’ of only having Catholics taking The Mass and was
fine with it.
In fact, I often felt a
feeling of ‘peace’ as one of the elderly priests ‘prayed a blessing over me’ during
the Eucharist at the school mass that I regularly attended. It was interesting,
because I only felt that peace with that one particular priest. It was funny
because he seemed to have little or no enthusiasm as he mumbled away in his
monotone, and yet his blessings ‘did something for me.’
(3) In 1997 I spent three
months in Romania. I stayed with a pastor, Nicu, and his family. There seemed
to be a great deal of antagonism between the protestants, of which Nicu was
one, and the Orthodox church. With him speaking little English and me speaking
less Romanian, I never got to the bottom of the reasons why. Of late I have thought
a good deal about an illustration Desmond Tutu uses:
“They tell
the story of a drunk who crossed the street and accosted a pedestrian, asking
him, "I shay, which ish the other shide of the shtreet?" The
pedestrian, somewhat nonplussed, replied, "That side, of course!" The
drunk said, "Shtrange. When I wash on that shide, they shaid it wash thish
shide."”
But I digress. Shortly into
my time at that Romanian church the communion was to be re-instituted into the
services. I’m not sure why it had been removed, or for how long, but it was a
major event for this particular church. Many were worried because of what it
says in 1 Corinthians 11: 27-29
Whoever,
therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner
will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine
himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who
eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself
[or herself].
The pastor had gone around
to many of the church members in the week or two before this first Communion to
explain that this did not mean you had to be perfect.
The big day finally
arrived. I got to the church early as I was staying with the pastor! They got
out the bread and the wine (I remember as a 16 year old hearing a seminar at my
Baptist church explaining that the when Jesus turned water into wine the true translation should have been turned
water into the fruit of the grape. Even
as a 16 year old, raised in Baptist churches, I didn’t buy that one!) They
prepared enough bread and wine for the entire church, which would have been
fine if they’d all turned up, but on this particular day roughly half of the
church didn’t come because of the issue of Holy Communion. At the end of the
service there was a dilemma – what to do with all the left over bread and wine?
(There was no scriptural precedence as we were never told what happened to the
twelve baskets of bread that were left over after the loaves and the fishes
picnic).
Nicu had taught in the
sermon that the bread was Jesus’ body and the wine his blood. Therefore, they didn’t
believe they could just throw it out. Everyone was invited up at the end to
help Nicu eat it. There were 10 – 15 of them up their eating!
(4) A number of years later I had another
experience involving excess bread and wine – although in this case it was
juice. I had sat through a sermon, and I use the term loosely, on how we should have Communion. This guy had
had some oversight of various missionary organisations in Africa in his earlier
times, and he basically spent most of the talk telling us how he went to various organisations/denominations
where they were doing Communion like this
or that which was clearly wrong because… After telling us how not to do
it he went on to explain that we – his church – was doing it right.
I hate to say it, but he
got my gander up – perhaps I wasn’t fit to have taken Communion that day! At
the end of the service I went up to talk to him – having first gone out to see
what happened to the excess bread and juice from that mornings Communion. I
pointed out that I didn’t think it was helpful to the communion of the saints for him to name various denominations and
their practices and then to slag them off.
I discussed such topics as
the frequency of having Communion – some churches doing it every time they
gather together, others weekly, our particular one was monthly, some quarterly,
and others annually. I asked him about one cup or many? “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (1 Cor 11)
- We used many. About wine - We used juice. For the early church it was a
supper, a meal, for us it was less than a mouthful of each substance. I also asked if he believed
in transubstantiation; that is, the
conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood
of Christ at consecration, only the appearances of bread and wine still
remaining. He did not. He believed the bread and juice were a symbol. I pointed out that in my
Bible it reads that Jesus said, “This is
my body,” not “This represents my
body,” or “This symbolizes my body.”
As
you can see, I was spoiling for a fight with this guy who thought his ways were
right and everyone else was wrong. At the time there were in excess of 30,000
Christian denominations and, percentage-wise, his one was tiny – made smaller
after a number of major splits in the denomination over the last 200 years when
the true-believers split from the once-true-believers-but-now-deceived!
My
parting shot was to point out that the ‘symbol’ of Jesus’ blood had just been
tipped down the sink in the church kitchen and the ‘symbol’ of his body was
being taken home by one of the Communion stewards to feed to his chickens!
(5)
At the Salvation Amy church we don’t have Communion.
(6)
At the Parachute Music Festival, I once went to, Glenn Kaiser, from Resurrection
Band or Rez Band, lead 10,000 or more of us in having Communion with Coke and
Chippies.
(7)
I have recently ended a five year period of dryness. I had not consumed alcohol
for five years…with one exception. After about three and a half years of being on the wagon I went to an Anglican church
in a church I had never been to before. I wouldn’t normally go up for Communion
in an unknown Anglican church so as not to drink the alcoholic wine. However,
on this occasion they announced that there would be a non-alcoholic option at
the front on the right. I went up and received the ‘Body of Christ’ from the
steward and then proceeded past him for the ‘blood of Christ’. As I walked
forward I noticed there were two people holding chalices. I then noted that one
of them was someone I hadn’t seen for almost fifteen years. I went towards him
and said, ‘Hi’ and he returned a knowing smile and presented me with the cup. I
sipped and then nearly spat it over him as it burnt the back of my throat and I
tried to work out whether I had just fallen off the wagon or not. If the wine
was a symbol of Christ’s blood then I
had, but if it had been transubstantiated then I was still on the wagon!
(7)
The thing that got me going on this whole trip down Communion Memory Lane was at church this morning when we had Holy
Communion. As previously documented my ritual with the bread or wafer is to
chew it three times starting on the right molars, then the left, then back to
the right. I had only just bitten down on the first chew of the wafer having
received it from the Rector when the person following the Rector distributing
the wine thrust it in front of my face. This brought to mind the major
difficulty I have with both the Anglican and Catholic churches. Although there
are many issues people have chosen to have difficulties with from these two
groups, mine is…back-wash! Everybody sharing the same cup, it can’t be healthy!
Through attending Baptist and various other churches that have small individualised
containers, going to Catholic churches that I didn’t take the Eucharist at, or
the Salvation Army with no Communion at all, I have spent almost my 30 – 35 years
of taking Communion without the need to share a cup!
This
morning, with the wine and the wafer in my mouth together, I concentrated extra
hard to make sure none of my wafer was allowed to leave my mouth and enter the
chalice – in doing so I nearly choked when I over-enthusiastically sucked the
wine and the wafer down the wrong ‘tube’. I think I managed to adopt an
appropriate look of holiness that left some thinking that the cough and
convulsions may have been a moving of the Spirit!
