SA5: Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.

This is the fifth post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.

1. The precise nature of communion was one of the early debate points in the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, disagreement over communion may have ensured that Protestantism would never be a unified church over and against the Roman Catholic Church. In 1529 at the so called Marburg Colloquy, Martin Luther met with another key "protestant" named Huldrych Zwingli. Although they could agree on most items, they did not agree on communion, and this fact was a deal breaker.

Both disagreed, of course, with the Roman Catholic Church's sense of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine of communion literally become the body and blood of Christ in communion. It is an idea that reached its maturity with Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s.

It is also an idea, it would seem, that is strongly based in Aristotle's view of reality as a matter of form and substance. The form is all that we can see. The underlying substance is not available to our view.

This perspective, while no longer one we share, did allow transubstantiation to survive into the Age of Science. Even when it could be determined that bread and wine do not physically transform into flesh and blood, the Catholic Church could see the transformation on the level of some unseen substance. There is thus no need for the bread and wine of communion to take on the cell structure of skin, hemoglobin, or platelets. These are the form, whereas it is the substance that literally becomes the body and blood of Christ.

While it is hard to come up with an objection to this belief, it is also difficult to come up with any reason to hold it other than tradition. No one today would retain Aristotle's view of reality in any straightforward way. And no biblical text has such a view, not when properly interpreted. [1]

2. Luther's own view was far more suitable for a world after Aristotle. Translating transubstantiation into his own view of the world, Luther believed that the "real presence" of Jesus was there in the elements of communion after they were consecrated. [2] His view is called "consubstantiation."

Again, it is difficult to find any serious objection to this view. Nor can we find any necessity of believing it. It would seem to fall into the category of "disputable issues," and what one believes can be a matter of individual conviction.

3. Zwingli's position is usually associated with a "memorialist" view. [3] In its extreme form, it sees communion merely as a remembering of Jesus' death and his Last Supper. This view thus seems to undersell the power of communion and the way God uses it to renew and spiritually empower those who come to the table in faith.

All traditions view communion as a memorial, but many see it as more than a mere memorial.

4. In Romans, Paul speaks of the spiritual significance of food. "Nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean" (Rom. 14:14). We might say the same of communion. The bread and wine are not intrinsically effective to empower, but to those who are truly and earnestly seeking God's grace, they can facilitate a great moment of spiritual empowerment.

John Calvin suggested that the partaker of communion was taken into the presence of Christ, not that the presence of Christ came to the bread. [4] However, we need not know such particulars. It is clear that many people experience Christ in communion and that they are empowered in the process.

To the one who has faith, to the one who does truly and earnestly repent of his or her sins, communion is a means of grace. It is a divinely appointed meeting place where, in a sacred moment, God's Spirit renews and empowers us to continue to walk in the Spirit. That is all we need to know.

Next Sunday: SA6: The Scriptures are a sacrament of God's transformation.

[1] A statement like, "This is my body," could be either literal or metaphorical. Given that Jesus was speaking of bread, the most natural way to take his words is metaphorical, that the bread in some way was like his body.

[2] The dominant philosophical force in Luther's world was nominalism rather than the metaphysics of Aristotle. In nominalism, things neither have some underlying universal substance (Aristotle) nor are they the material versions of ideas (Plato). Rather, each thing can have its own unique, independent existence and identity unconnected to the existence and identity of other things.

[3] In reality, Zwingli did in the end use some language of a spiritual presence in communion.

[4] In this way he avoided the objection of Zwingli and others that Jesus as truly human could not be present in more than one place at once.

SA4: Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.

This is the fourth post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.

1. Along with baptism, communion is the other practice that many Protestant churches consider to be a sacrament. It is the practice that remembers the Last Supper Jesus ate with his disciples before dying. Bread and wine (or juice) are consumed after the biblical words of that meal are spoken. It is often a time of reflection, even repentance, and the believer is renewed and strengthened to continue to walk with Christ and live a godly life through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The medium of communion is thus bread and wine. [1] The sacramental power of the Spirit is the power of renewal. The partaker is ideally renewed in faith and re-empowered by the Spirit.

2. On the one hand, communion is also a remembrance. The very first meal at the Last Supper of Jesus before his death was around the time of Passover. [2] It remembered the exodus and how God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

For Christians, in this meal we especially "give thanks" for the fact that Jesus died for the sins of the world. Communion is often called the "Eucharist" or the "thanksgiving" for Jesus' death and the power it has made available for the believer. This is a power not only for salvation but also the power to defeat Sin.

Communion thus, in part, looks back. "Do this in remembrance of me," Jesus said on the night he was betrayed (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:24-25; Luke 22:19). In communion we remember Jesus' death on the cross.

The wine was the "new covenant" in Jesus' blood (1 Cor. 11:25; Luke 22:20). It remembers that his blood was "poured out for many" (Mark 14:24) and "for the forgiveness of sins" (Matt. 26:28). So also taking communion can be a time when any sins are forgiven again. It is a sacred moment ripe for any needed repentance and forgiveness.

Communion also looks forward to the "wedding banquet" that we will eat with Jesus when he returns and the kingdom of God fully comes to the earth as it is in heaven. Mark remembers Jesus telling his followers that night, "I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we thus look forward to the day when we will be with Christ in the kingdom of God on earth.

3. Like the Passover meal and the Last Supper meal, communion was probably a meal originally. 1 Corinthians 11 tells us of problems the Corinthian church had when they ate the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20). Enough wine was consumed by some that they became drunk, while others ended up hungry (11:21). This suggests that the meal was a full meal.

Jude 12 similarly mentions an agape or love-feast that was apparently customary for Christians. Likely this is another reference to the Lord's Supper as a meal. However, the solemnity of the event increased quickly, perhaps in part from the circulation of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. By the time of the Didache in the early second century, only those who are baptized are allowed to participate in this meal (9.5). [3] Eventually it would become a smaller ritual embedded within a worship service.

4. The word communion suggests one significance of the event, namely, the unity of the Church. This was the problem at Corinth. The wealthy and those with status in the community were eating their full and getting drunk, while slaves and those with little status presumably were those who went hungry (1 Cor. 11:21). [4] Paul even suggests that some have become sick and died in the community because of such contempt toward others (1 Cor. 11:30).

The unity of the body of Christ is thus a major connotation of "communion." Paul says words that are sometimes spoken during communion: "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). This meaning of communion is sometimes obscured in the American church when individual wafers and cups are used for communion. The older, historic practice is for there to be one cup and one loaf of bread to signify the unity of the body of Christ. So also at the Last Supper, they passed the same cup and loaf around (e.g., Luke 22:19)

5. Paul urged the Corinthian church to examine themselves before they ate the bread and drank the cup of thanksgiving (1 Cor. 11:28). Some have found this admonition terrifying, especially since it is accompanied by a statement that some have died for eating unworthily. In some places, individuals will actually skip a church service if they know that communion will be served.

But Paul is not saying that one must have repented of all sin before taking communion. He was targeting the divisive way in which those at Corinth with high status were scorning those of low status in the communion meal. In truth, the act of communion is itself a highly appropriate moment during which one can repent of any sin and receive forgiveness. It is ripe for this renewal and re-empowerment for service and victory over temptation.

It seems likely that the earliest Christians came together to eat this agape at least once a week. We have good reason to believe that many Christians gathered early on Sunday morning, the "Lord's Day," to celebrate the resurrection. Pliny the Younger in the early second century mentions that Christians in northern Turkey met before dawn on a certain day, presumably Sunday, and then gathered together later to partake of a meal. (Letters 10.97). It thus seems likely that Christians ate the Lord's Supper every Sunday.

6. It is good for believers to eat together. Eating is a common human practice. In the first century, you ate together with those with whom you considered yourself one, whether family or the groups to which you belonged. This is why table fellowship was such a controversial issue. The Pharisees would only eat with those who were pure.

And so in Galatians 2, the dispute over Jewish believers eating with Gentile believers was likely a question of eating the communion meal together (Gal. 2:12). Paul saw the need for unity especially crucial here, for it was a question of being covered by the blood of Christ. Jew and Gentile believer both stood equally before the blood of Christ. Both should eat together.

When we celebrate the Lord's Supper as a church, when we "give thanks" in the Eucharist, we both remember what Christ has done and look forward to what he will do. "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." But the Eucharist is more than a remembrance and an anticipation. It is "strength for today," as well as "bright hope for tomorrow."

Communion is a sacrament of renewal and re-empowerment. It is a wonderful time to repent of any sin and trust in God for the power to face another week in his name.

Next Sunday: SA5: Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.

[1] The use of grape juice instead of wine rose within Methodism in the late 1800s. A Methodist named Thomas Bramwell Welch invented a process of stopping the fermentation of the juice and his son created the business of Welch's Grape Juice. By the mid-1860s, Methodist churches insisted on using unfermented juice in communion, and most low-church denominations followed suit.

[2] The Gospels give differing impressions on whether the Last Supper was the actual Passover meal or not. In the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we get the impression that the Last Supper was indeed a Passover meal. In John, however, we get the impression that Jesus dies on the cross at about the time that the Passover lambs are being slaughtered for supper than night (e.g., John 18:28; 19:14, 31).

[3] At Corinth, it is overwhelmingly likely that children participated in the meal. It is not clear from the Didache whether children participated in the eucharistic meal, but it does seem to be a meal, since it mentions being full (10.1).

[4] We can infer this social status dynamic by what we know about the nature of ancient dining and how even menus were often differentiated on the basis of status at the same meal. See Pliny the Younger, Letters 11.

Wesleyans and Communion (W)

I thought this was posted somewhere here, but I didn't find it in a search or on my sidebar.  This is a piece I wrote once upon a time.  This piece is more about the practice of communion in the Wesleyan Church, extrapolating the theory embodied in the practice rather than any well thought out theology.
_______________
1. For Wesleyans, as for other Christians, communion is, first of all, a remembrance of what Christ did for us in his atoning death. Christians also call it the "Eucharist," a "thanksgiving" for what God has done through Jesus Christ's death in reconciling humanity to himself. This is the predominant lens through which Wesleyans understand communion in practice, even if it is not the only one. Nevertheless, it is an element Wesleyans share with the church universal.

At some point in the communion services of most churches, the minister retells the story of the Last Supper:

“On the night he was betrayed, he took the bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Take, eat. This is my body that is given for you.’

“Likewise after supper he took the cup. And when he had given thanks he gave it to them saying, ‘Drink you all of this, for this is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’”

One Wesleyan once described communion as a kind of “passion play,” where you watch the story playing itself out in the words of the minister.

2. In conjunction with this aspect of communion, we might mention another strong characteristic of communion in the Wesleyan Church. Our tradition used to have regular "altar calls" in which individuals were invited to come forward and pray.  Sometimes Wesleyan churches will still call for a moment of commitment or recommitment to Christ.  But certainly in practice we would strongly associate the time of communion as a time for us to confess our sins and recommit ourselves to Christ. Communion thus serves as a kind of reset button on our relationship with God. Before you go forward, you repent of any un-confessed sin and commit to move forward with God.

3. Thirdly, we would view communion as a sacrament, a divinely appointed moment to meet God and experience his grace, a divinely appointed moment in which God takes ordinary things like bread and juice and catalyzes his presence and power in the believer.  While Wesleyans often do not emphasize this aspect of communion as much as they should, it is part of the language we use to describe communion, and it is of course solidly rooted in John Wesley himself.

To say that communion is a means of grace means that something mysterious goes on in communion, that in some strange way we cannot explain, people meet God when they take communion.  We mean to say that a person seeking God is likely to find him in communion.  We mean that a person who is having trouble experiencing God’s presence or who is in a dark night of the soul is more likely to feel God’s presence if they take communion than if they do not.  Wesley himself thought that since it was ultimately God’s choice as to when he spoke to you but that we should avail ourselves of the means of grace to make ourselves ready.

Does the Wesleyan Church have a view on historical debates  like transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and other issues?  We have never had such debates in our fellowship.  A Wesleyan leader once suggested that by saying “The body of our Lord,” we left it to the partaker to work out exactly what that might mean to them.  In that sense, the Wesleyan allowance for some breadth of belief in relation to the historical debates of the church applies to these issues as well.  John Wesley himself agreed with Calvin on this issue, that Christ was spiritually present in the elements but that they did not literally become the body and blood of Jesus.

Wesleyans generally expect that an ordained minister will "preside" at communion, especially when it comes to the moment when we ask God to make the elements become the body and blood of Christ for us.  However, we do not consider it an absolute.  It enhances the sacredness of the moment for someone set apart by God and recognized as such by the church to call on God to make this moment into a sacramental moment.  But we allow that God can set apart individuals for special moments and times by his own reckoning, outside mortal channels.

4. Communion is about communion with the body of Christ. It is easy to forget that one of the principle functions of communion in the early church was to emphasize the unity of Christians with one another.  1 Corinthians expresses this same point to the Corinthians, who were sorely in need of it: “Though we are many, we are one body, because we all partake of the one bread.”

It is worth reminding ourselves, in the midst of our individual wafers and cups, that Jesus and his disciples shared a common cup and a common loaf.  Wesleyans in North America do not celebrate communion with wine, so hygienic reasons might keep us from drinking from a common cup.  However, many churches practice communion by intinction, where you or the minister breaks off a piece of bread from a common loaf. Then you dip the bread into a common cup.

This way of doing communion preserves the unifying principle much better than individualized plastic cups and wafers.  Also, having people come forward helps with the other two functions we have mentioned: 1) it focalizes partaking to a moment of decision in front of the minister and 2) the imagery of the common bread and juice makes the act look like more than a little snack in the pew (this helps children to see it as a different kind of activity too).

Communion should be open to every Christian or seeker present when it is offered.  If it is part of a wedding, it should ideally be offered to everyone present.  Wesleyan churches are supposed to take communion at least once every three months.  Notice the direction this wording is headed—we are welcome to take it far more often than that.  John Wesley’s conviction was that you should take communion “as often as you can.”  Indeed, he considered it a “sin of infirmity” to miss the opportunity inadvertently when it was available.

The Wesleyan liturgy emphasizes that the person partaking of communion should do so as an act of seeking communion with God.  That means a non-Christian can make communion a time of seeking faith.  Wesleyans do not require baptism for a person to partake of communion. All we require is that the person be seeking God, “you who do earnestly repent of your sin.”

We have never debated the question of children in communion, but we can see how the practice might vary depending on whether a Wesleyan church more practiced infant or believer's baptism.  For churches that practice believer's baptism, there will be a tendency to keep children from communion until they are old enough to make a conscious decision for Christ.  For churches that practice infant baptism--and thus see the children more as "in" until they make a choice otherwise--there will be a tendency to have them participate in the common meal as they would have in the early church.