Communion Sunday, 2002 (10/6/02)
University Congregational Church
Rev. Gary Cox
Wichita, Kansas
Today is Communion Sunday, the one day of the year when
almost every church in the world celebrates the sacrament of bread and wine
instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper.
It’s been a few years since we took a close look at communion itself,
and I thought this would be a good time to revisit the subject.
Communion intrigues me. In my personal faith journey, I’ve managed
to settle a great number of theological issues in my heart, or at least come to
an understanding that sets my mind at peace.
There are other issues with which I continue to struggle. And communion…communion lies somewhere
between my settled faith issues and my ongoing inner struggles.
Communion is still working on
me. It’s an area where my theology
continues to evolve. Frankly, when I
attended church before I went to seminary, I never cared much for communion. When I arrived at church and realized that
the congregation would be taking communion that morning, my general attitude
was, “Well, that’s okay, but I’d really rather hear a full-length sermon or
perhaps and extra choir number. I know
many of you feel that way, because you’ve expressed that honest sentiment to
me.
For others, communion is something
they wish we would do much more often.
Again, some of you have told me that you find communion very
meaningful—that there is a place deep within you that is spiritually nourished
in a unique way by this ancient sacrament.
In many Christian traditions, such
as Catholic, Episcopal, and Disciples of Christ, communion is the centerpiece
of every worship service. Other
traditions, such as the Quakers, never take communion. Here at University Congregational Church we
have decided to have a communion service four times each year, and I think that
is a good number. It is often enough to
keep communion as an integral part of our faith, but infrequent enough for the
sacrament to remain special.
One of the reasons I am so fond of
Congregationalism is the fact we live together in a covenant, and not through a
set of creeds. Creeds are the way most
denominations define themselves. One
denomination will say that to belong to it you must accept the Nicene Creed and
some 16th Century Protestant confession. Another denomination will say that to belong you must accept the
Apostles’ Creed and some 17th Century catechism.
As Congregationalists, it’s not that
we don’t believe in any of the creeds.
It’s simply that we leave it up to the individual member to determine
what creeds best define the way he or she understands the relationship between
God, Jesus and the world. And that’s
what creeds do. They attempt to explain
the unexplainable. They are like signs
along the highway that point us toward God.
As Congregationalists we don’t insist that one sign is right and another
sign is wrong. You pick your own path,
your own road, and simply live in this faith community by a covenant—an
agreement.
The agreement for this congregation
is pretty simple, and it’s printed on the front of the Sunday bulletin each and
every week. It reads, In the love of
truth, and in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ, we join with one another to
worship and to live that peace, justice and brotherhood may prevail in the
world. Believe me, that’s a lot
simpler than having to memorize the Heidelberg Catechism or the Westminster
Confession; and it causes a lot less arguments.
One of the things I am most
frequently asked by prospective members is to explain our theology behind
communion. For those who have been
raised in more rigid traditions, they sometimes find my answer disconcerting: we
don’t have one. But before they
walk out thinking we must be a bunch of theological lightweights, I explain
that the reason we don’t have one is because we have four. There are, generally speaking, four
theologies in the Christian faith behind the sacrament of communion, and just
like we don’t insist on what particular creed a person who belongs to this
church accepts, neither do we insist which theology of communion they believe.
Because this is one of my favorite
subjects, many of you have heard me explain these four theologies before. However, it’s been two years since we
examined them, and I think this is an important enough subject that it should
come up at least every few years.
The problems arise in interpreting
the words of Jesus. What did Jesus mean
when he took hold of that bread and said, “This is my body.”? The statement about the wine being his blood
holds the same problem. What did he
mean when he said the wine was his blood?
For this discussion, we will use the bread as our primary example,
because with all four Christian theologies of communion, the same principles
can be applied to both the bread and the wine.
For over a thousand years, the
church accepted the literal notion that once the priest said Jesus’ words from
the Last Supper over the bread and wine of communion, those elements-the bread
and wine—actually turned into the very body and blood of Jesus. It was a mystery that could not be
explained, but it was real, in the truest sense of the word.
By the time the 13th
Century rolled around, there were those in the church who wanted an explanation
of how it was that the words of the priest could have this magical effect on
the bread and wine. While the western
world had turned its back on Greek philosophy after the fall of Rome, it had
remained alive in the Muslim world. And
by the 13th Century, with the spread of Islam, Greek thought,
especially logic, began filtering back into western society. Many of the more brilliant scholars of the
church were faced with a dilemma. If
the Bible was true—and the assumed it surely was—then the bread of communion
really did become the Body of Christ.
But what was the logical explanation for such a thing?
Enter what many believe is the
greatest mind in the history of the church: St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was determined to use Greek
philosophy to prove there is a logical truth behind the sacrament of communion,
and he called on the philosophy of Aristotle to do so. The theory he came up with is called
transubstantiation, and it remains the theology of the Roman Catholic Church to
this day.
Transubstantiation is a very
misunderstood idea, because it makes no sense whatsoever unless one understands
Aristotle. What we hear is that the
Catholics believe that after the priest says the words of institution—Jesus’
words from the Last Supper—the bread really becomes the very body of Jesus, and
the wine becomes his actual blood.
That’s not quite right, even though many Catholics will tell you that is
exactly what transubstantiation means.
Be patient, while we dip or toes
into the philosophy of Aristotle for a few moments. Aristotle said the universe is made of two basic things:
substance and accidents. Now forget
everything you’ve ever associated with the words “substance” and “accidents,”
because what they mean in the philosophy of Aristotle has nothing to do with
the way they are used in the world today.
Aristotle said that
everything we see in the world is a series of accidents. Take, for example, a cup. One of the cup’s accidents is its height;
another of the cup’s accidents is its width; another its circular shape;
another the handle on its side; another the fact that is can serve as a
container. We may see cups of various
configurations, but we need to classify things in our minds, and so we
recognize something in each of them that we might call cupness. Cupness is the underlying reality that makes
a cup a cup, regardless of its unique configuration—its accidents—in the
physical world. This underlying
reality—this cupness, or treeness, or wheelness, or what have you—Aristotle
called substance.
Enter the bread of
communion. When the bread is set down
on the communion table, it has all the accidents of bread. It has the height, width, smell, and texture
of bread. And before the priest says
the words of Jesus over the bread, its substance—its underlying reality—is
breadness. And then the priest says the
words of Jesus—this is my body, broken for you—and something
changes. The bread’s accidents remain
the same. It still has the height,
width, smell and texture of bread. But
now, now, the underlying reality is no longer breadness. The underlying reality—the substance—is now
Christness. It is just that the Body of
Christ is reflected in the physical world in the form of bread.
That is the meaning
of transubstantiation. Look at the word
itself. Trans—changed, substantiation—substance. Changed substance. Changed underlying reality. That is the Catholic theology behind
communion, although it is safe to say few in the Catholic Church, outside the
clergy, have an understanding of the philosophy behind it.
About 400 years after
Aquinas applied the philosophy of Aristotle to communion, the Protestant
Reformation came along. Considering
that there seems to be about a million different Protestant denominations in
the world today, it won’t surprise you that right off the bat the Protestants
could not agree on a theology of communion.
In fact, arguments over the true nature and meaning of communion became
one the most bitter and divisive battles in the church, and it is a battle that
still rages today.
However, pretty much
every idea about communion can be traced to either the Catholic view of
transubstantiation, or one of three ideas that came out of the
Reformation. Those three ideas came
from Martin Luther, Huldrich Zwingli, and John Calvin. And they are pretty simple compared to what
we have already examined.
Here is Martin
Luther’s idea. Yes, that bread really
is the Body of Christ. It is the Body
of Christ because the Bible says it is the Body of Christ. But it is a mystery. Any attempt to use the philosophy of
Aristotle to explain God’s mysterious sacrament is misguided.
Zwingli took
exception to that notion. Oh, he agreed
that the Catholics had it all wrong, but he claimed Martin Luther also had it
wrong. Zwingli said that when Jesus
took the bread in his hand and said “this is my body,” he was speaking symbolically. What he was really saying was, “This bread
represents my body—remember me when you eat the bread together.” I should probably mention that the primary
reason he took that position was not because he didn’t take the Bible literally
in most cases, but rather because the Bible specifically says that after the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus, he took his place at the right hand of
God. He asked Luther directly how it
was Jesus could be in that piece of bread and in heaven at the right hand of
God at the same time.
And then comes John
Calvin. He looked at it this way,
trying to find a middle ground between Luther and Zwingli. For the Catholics and for Luther, Christ
really is in the bread. When the bread
is swallowed, you are physically taking Christ into your body. For Zwingli, Christ is not in the
bread. When you swallow the bread, you
are simply remembering Jesus—the work he did on the cross, and everything that
he did and stood for.
Calvin said that when
you swallow the bread you are indeed swallowing bread. But as you physically swallow the bread
something spiritual happens. You do
indeed take in the Body of Christ, not within the bread itself, but within the
spiritual nature of the celebration of the sacrament. The priest or minister acts with the congregation in the material
world, and God acts alongside us in the spiritual world.
Those are the four
theologies of communion: Aquinas—the underlying reality of the bread changes to
the Body of Christ; Luther—the bread becomes the Body of Christ mysteriously;
Zwingli—bread is bread, and we remember Jesus in the sacrament; and Calvin—the
bread remains bread, and God acts on us spiritually.
I guess you know me
well enough to realize I’m not going to tell you how you should think about communion. Like I said, communion is still working on
me. I will say that for many years I
was strictly Zwinglian—bread is bread, and Communion is a time to remember
Jesus. As time has passed I’ve leaned
more and more toward the deep spirituality within the sacrament. I wish Aquinas were alive today to reflect
on the work of modern quantum physicists.
They all seem to be pointing to that mysterious place where the
accidents of time and space dissolve into the idea from which they spring
forth. I think a person with Aquinas’s
mind could have a lot of fun with that.
And Calvin, with whom I most often disagree, seems to me to be dancing
pretty close to the truth when he says that something special, something
spiritual, happens, or at least can happen, when people gather to
celebrate communion.
But enough talk! Communion isn’t about words; it’s about
experience. Somehow, someway, the
experience of communion has touched people in a variety of meaningful ways for
two thousand years. Today, we take our
place among those who went before, and who, like us, opened themselves to that
mysterious place within, where past and present, material and spiritual are
united in the eternal now of God’s love.
As we
begin, I remind you that at University Congregational Church, we celebrate
“Open Communion,” meaning all present are welcome to partake, whether they are
from a Christian faith tradition, or some other faith tradition. Our feeling is that Jesus welcomed everybody
to his table, so we certainly welcome everybody to ours.
{Communion}
Let
us go forth into the world to serve God with gladness; being of good courage;
holding fast to that which is good; rendering to no one evil for evil;
supporting the weak; helping the afflicted; and honoring all people as we love
and serve God, through the spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.