A Conversation about Holy Communion in the Anglican Tradition

well Jonathan good to see you hc' team in here we are China social distance in lay in the yard the garden the courtyard at ascension and I'm excited to have this conversation with you that's being taped we're just going to talk a little bit about the Eucharist and kind of what it is and and just various questions so we're just gonna shoot the breeze together a little so it seemed to me while the good places to start is to say well what is Eucharist and so I thought it'd be good to take out the prayer book always a good idea and it's interesting even to read the title where it says you know the order for the administration of the Lord's Supper or holy communion commonly called the Holy Eucharist three different titles for the same thing so why did why do some people call it the Lord's Supper yeah well I think maybe if we can even back up a little bit further from that and talk about the nature of a sacrament absolutely yeah yeah so the Eucharist is one of two Dominica li instituted sacraments Dominical being a fancy word for the Lord the Lord that's right so they are two sacraments ordained by the Lord and a sacrament is what Jonathan's a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace that's right so in an inward lis communicated grace by an outward instrument and so the Lord's Supper is one of those two instruments that the Lord uses in order to convey his presence his nourishment his assurance is transformation to us and so when we look at these three different names the reason the three names are there is because there's really three names for what this meal is in Scripture and they come from different parts of scriptures so if you look at the word Lord's Supper what we're saying is when we take this meal together it's a kind of reproduction or reap resin tation of the Last Supper that the Lord had with his with his disciples before he endured his passion right and so so you look you can look at the institution of that and say Luke 22 and so that meal becomes normative for how we understand this and so that meal the way that Jesus practiced it's the context in which it's set is a kind of new Exodus yeah and I love that because the whole idea of the Passover the Passover meal is of course looking back even further to the first Passover when our Lord when God rescued his people out of slavery in Egypt and this was his great rescue plan which of course comes into full fruition in what Jesus did as a rescuer our Savior right that's right now yeah so a greater exodus from from an even greater tyrant right sin death and the devil so so the second kind of name comes from our communion it comes from Paul's letter to the first Corinth our first letter to the Corinthians so first Corinthians chapter 10 he says is the the bread that we break not a Koinonia a participation or a communion in the body of the ascended arisen and ascended Christ and then likewise the cup that we bless is it not a participation acquaintance 'ya a communion in his blood which is that the blood that has efficacious for our sacrifices sacrificed for our sins and so Paul gives us that language of communion and then thirdly Eucharist is the Greek word for what Thanksgiving and Holy Eucharist the great Thanksgiving great Thanksgiving right so again that's even embedded in the liturgy itself the Greece weeks giving but it comes from when when Christ actually takes these elements in Luke 22 and he gives thanks to over them he gives Thanksgiving for them and so then Paul likewise when he Institute's the meal or he gives the language of institution in first Corinthians 11 talks about giving thanks so that Thanksgiving theme is why we call it the Eucharist and that's one of the reasons I love the liturgy because we get to rehearse to retell the great story of the salvation history through literally the words of the Eucharist talk about reason for a Thanksgiving it's wonderful but to go back to for a second just we've got the sacrament being the outward and visible signs of the inward and invisible grace I love to ask people you know we're doing confirmation classes so what are they outward and visible signs and people sometimes scratch their head and I think this is not difficult this is like the bread and the wine that's what you see and taste and and consume and then and then so what's the inward and invisible grace and you know sometimes that's hard to to answer so I thought I'll bring along the Catechism today because it does a really good job of actually answering that question so in the in the answer on 132 what is the outward and visible sign in Holy Communion the visible sign is bread and wine which Christ commands us to receive again referring back to 1 Corinthians 11 what is the inward and spiritual thing signified the inward and spiritual grace the spiritual thing signified is the body and blood of Christ which are truly taken and received in the Lord's Supper by faith and I wonder jarvan in some ways that begs another question which is so what's happening what's going on how is Christ now present in what we're doing yeah it's a great question and I think you know for Anglicans we always look to scripture and then we also look to in the tradition to help us interpret it and to interpret the scripture well and so we're always looking at the same biblical passages that everybody else is looking at right we also have the aid in terms of interpretation of what the whole body of the tradition has given us and so one of the things that we have at our disposal is our own church teaching the Articles of Religion and the Articles of Religion have this beautiful article 25 which talks about what are the sacraments and what do they do and and one of the things that the article says is that they're not mere badges only in other words they are effective instruments and conduits of Christ's grace by which he as sure as Shores us that we are his own by which he builds us up into faithful discipleship and he transforms us right so there is a kind of real presence theology in Anglicanism but we don't like to specify that the nature of that president's you know one of our one of our standard Divine's as Lancelot Andrews and he and he likes to say that Christ said this is my body he did not say this is my body in this way that's right so so although we want to say more than this is a mere memorial or some kind of you know bare mental assent to what Christ did in the past he's really truly present but we don't want to say transubstantiation the nature of the bread and the wine remain bread and wine but they're used efficaciously as christ's instrum yes I love the other the other word we often use which is mystery and you know mystery is not a compound mystery is a very full word that just says we have finite minds and there are things that we honestly can't explain fully with words and the wonderful thing is the way that God accommodates himself to us in all kinds of ways and I think it's such a wonderful gift from the Lord that he gave us this very tangible thing of bread and wine as a way of remembering and receiving so we are remembering the historical death life death resurrection of Jesus and we're also receiving him as we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ in a way that we cannot fully explain but as is very powerful and I think many Christians can testify to coming to Holy Eucharist coming forward for communion receiving the bread and the wine and having a really profound encounter with God as they remember what Jesus has done for them and as they experience him afresh present in their lives by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit Israel yeah yeah and I think this leads us to to talk about some specific aspects of Anglican Eucharistic practice that that we need to understand if we're gonna understand why we've made the decisions we've made during this kovat penance so one of the things that we have accented over and over again is the congregational context of the reception of the Eucharist now I wonder if you might say a word about that absolutely you know we we don't have private Eucharist we always want to do it's a coming together that we remember and participate in this sacrament and obviously the really challenging thing as soon as we realized what was happening in this this pandemic was the we can't come together and so that's why we actually stopped having services of Eucharist and then we moved to the livestream we started with morning prayer you remember and then we added in this prayer for spiritual communion and I have to be honest with you I didn't even know we had a prayer for spiritual community even though it has a long history but the prayer is right there in our prayer book and I looked at this and thought well what is this am i okay with this and actually it's a wonderful this says look we can't have communion together physically with others but we're longing for it we're missing it but we can pray that Jesus would be very present to us spiritually in our hearts and in our minds and we pray that prayer with a sense of longing looking forward to when we can come back together to take communion yeah and I think if you think about the scriptural context from which that prayer emerges in first Corinthians 10 through 11 st. Paul is really unpacking a theology of Holy Communion and Holy Communion is not about the in primarily any way about the individuals private experience or encounter with Christ it's about a corporate encounter with Jesus that is transformative and that is that forms actually a body which is dedicated to him and disciplines in a way in the way in which it expresses its loyalty to him and so when you don't have the context of that corporate gathering for word and sacrament and we can talk about that too I'd love to you to hold forth on that yes we can't do that what we can do is to ask that Jesus would be present to us as if we were gathered together and assembled and receiving him corporately in that way so I did mention just now that that close connection between word and sacraments I wonder if you might speak to that I'll be glad to I mean you you see this it's it's absolutely infused through Anglicanism right from the very beginning from the time of the Reformation when you remember one of the things going on in the Reformation in the 16th century was that the Bible was being translated into the vernacular and through my context into English finally people would read it in their own language it wasn't just in Latin and likewise the words of the liturgy were also being translated into English which is the context for the very first prayer book and so it's so important that we have the word where we expand the the gospel and all that God has done through his South salvific work through Jesus and then that forms the context in which we take the sacrament so we don't separate them out and you know there are other traditions where if you go to some churches the main event is is the Eucharist and maybe there's a short homily but it's all about the Eucharist and you go to other churches where it's about the preaching and in anglicanism we want to say it's about both we value both word and sacrament and actually that's important even now as we start to open things up and we're inviting people to come to the church for a distribution of the bread following everybody participating in Word and sacrament on the livestream so we don't want you just to do a kind of drive-by running get your wafer and run off again the whole point is we want people to have participated in the service a very small number will be present in the building a much larger number will be watching on youtube and then those who are in Pittsburgh and it can be lots of people could be hundreds of people will come to receive the bread although obviously we're doing that gradually and slowly we're not going to have a hundred people all at once but some so I'm I'm so excited that finally we're going to start being able to extend the Eucharist and invite people to go and receive the bread after they participated in Word and the Liturgy of the sacrament that's beautiful and I think you know just to add a little bit more of a layer of scriptural context for the there connection between word and sacraments again when you look at the the way the Eucharist is celebrated in the early church and first Corinthians chapter 11 it's in the context of a banquet an ancient banquet and this is a context that's shared between Greeks and Romans and the Jews right and so the the issue is not the form that the banquet takes the issue is the interpretation of the banquets and Paul makes it really clear actually that there are other kinds of banquets that you could participate in banquets of demons right that would not be the encounter with Jesus that the Eucharist is so what actually is critical is the interpretive matrix within which the banquet is taking place and so that's that that kind of gives us a sense of in the scripture itself why word and sacrament always go together you never have an uninterpreted you right and I love that in the in the Jewish tradition of the Passover there's always that kid who says so what happened on that night and then the father figure or the fact you know the head of the household gets the opportunity to tell the Salvation story and actually when you listen to the words of the Eucharist that's exactly what we're doing we're retelling the salvation story and so that's why I love the words of the Liturgy of the Eucharist so I'm so excited that on someday we're gonna get to again retell the story of salvation amen well here I've got one more question for you so you know one of the questions people might have is you know in a church that has you know 27 community groups why don't we just simply allow community groups to assemble and you know celebrate the Eucharist on their own when we can't gather as a body I've certainly had that question had you know we read acts 2 and it says they had everything in common they shared their possessions they would meet together in their homes they would pray together they would break bread together but I think what that is talking about is how these early Christians these first Christians were doing life together and of course that's what we want our community groups to do to do life together but when you read that passage in acts they were still in those early Jewish Christians were still going to their temple for things that could only take place there while still doing life together in smaller groups in their homes and so for us now in the church we do have there are a number of ways to come up this we do not practice what's sometimes called lay celebration we we have our rich tradition that only ordained priests or bishops can celebrate the Eucharist and it's food it's for good reason and it has got good biblical reasons as well as church polity reasons and so in one sense it goes to the issue of authority and we know in the early church that certain people were set aside to be elders to be overseers and they were entrusted with these things and I think that's an important piece to make and we were talking ellic help me with some of the other things we were just talking about yeah so in terms of the question of authority in the way that scripture lines that out one of the places that we would go to is 1st Corinthians chapter 12 where Paul talks about the image of the church as a body with different organs or different members that are dedicated to different aspects and there is an aspect of the body are there there are officers within the body that are selected and authorized to to articulate the gospel right to sort of preach and to proclaim and to teach in fact if you look at Paul's you know list of qualifications for elders in 1st took 1st Timothy 3 or Titus 1 one of the major features of that is that the person be apt right so that becomes a critical aspect of who is also authorized to celebrate the sacraments so there's a close connection between those already set up and for first Corinthians chapter 12 but then I think there's also this kind of you want to call it a comeback the positive dimension of authority there's also a negative or a more difficult dimension of authority which is that there are occasions within which the table must be barred yes oh yeah and what about that's a very very difficult one because we'd love to welcome everybody our doors are wide open every week but when we can have the church filled we want people to come but we do say every week if you are a baptized Christian if you know and love the Lord Jesus if you were a believer you're welcome to come and when we look in the pages the New Testament there's a serious warning about not to take communion likely and there are a couple of ways that this plays out you know one of them is if you by waving in that analogy Jesus talks about if you are you know if you if you've got some unfinished business with a brother or sister in Christ and you come with your you're offering leave you're offering their first go and be reconciled with whoever it is that you've hurt or they've hurt you there's being a falling out and by the way that's why we do the piece every Sunday the peace is not the seventy seventh inning stretch did I get that right I'm very worried about sporting analogies get the pace bar image okay fabulous it's not just let's have a have a bit of a break in some announcements it the liturgical significance of the piece is extending this sign of peace to one another and you know in the early church that might be a kiss of peace we would shake hands before we couldn't but the point is it's symbolic of the fact that we are at peace with one another and there isn't something barring us as if we as if we come to the Lord's table thinking that the rest of our life is somehow disconnected and doesn't matter it does matter and I want to give you a little illustration which is just something that happened here in the last few years where someone who is not a Christian they would they were not a believer had come they were visiting the church and they they said to the person who brought them so can I go and take the bread and the wine and the person very graciously said no you know just fold your arms and the priest will say a blessing or what if I want to and I said well there was just better well I'm going to anyway what's gonna happen to me and so this person said well you know you could get sick and die and and when I heard this that's been extreme although you read the scriptures there's a warning about not making yourself sick about this by acting in a Cavalier way right there in first Corinthians Jeff it is it's right there in 1 Corinthians and so they so anyway this person did come and take communion that I didn't know who it was but anyway they were meant to be meeting this other person that they come with later in the week and this person got a phone call and the person said oh I can't come to the meeting oh why not well well I I got hit by a car and I'm in the hospital I thought wow now I'm not saying direct calls in effect I'm not saying everybody who who is cavalier about Communion is gonna be run over by a truck I'm not saying that except it was a very sobering sanitary reminder that we are talking about holy mysteries and so we do treat them with special respect and special regard and when Paul articulates this he's not saying that the warning passages he's not saying that every time you do it unfaithfully God will judge you what did he think what he is saying is these things were written for our instruction when the judgments happened so we have to take them very seriously and not be Cavalier let them be warnings to us as they are that's right yeah yeah well Jonathan I think we've covered a lot of ground but I just want to wrap up this conversation by sharing what is one of my favorite prayers from the prayer book and it comes from the Eucharistic liturgy we don't say it every week at ascension we always use it in Lent and an Advent but it's the prayer of humble access so let's just take a moment and and we'll we'll pray this we do not presume to come to this your table o merciful Lord trusting in our own righteousness but in your abundant and great mercies we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy grant us therefore gracious Lord so to eat the flesh of your dear son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood and that we may ever more dwell in him and he in us amen on Sunday I am so looking forward to making the invitation to come to receive the the bread and I will use these words the gifts of God for the people of God take them in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on him in your hearts by faith with Thanksgiving

Channel: Church of the Ascension Pittsburgh

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Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020