The following is excerpted from our WorshipTraining.com Essentials RED Course ebook, Bearers Of Memory: Essentials In Worship History. We also have a Free Communion Liturgy (for a limited time) for contemporary churches available over in the WorshipTraining Cafe.
Communion And Imagination
Mother Theresa once said, “When you learn to meet God in the bread and the cup, you can learn to see God in the poor.” In other words, she was suggesting that it is our capacity to imagine in worship that can lead to our capacity to imagine in social action. Embodied in her simple life in our generation, Mother Theresa drew the link between the symbolic acts of worship that occur within the Church proper, and the acts of social transformation that stem from their flourishing in the human soul.
The Language Of Eucharist
Celebrating the Eucharist (or communion) is the daily, weekly and seasonal reenacting of the themes of the Passover meal – namely that the God at the center of the universe became flesh and blood, and offered Himself to defeat death, disarm sin, resurrect the lifeless and restore the cosmos to its original purpose.
For the Church worshipping throughout history, it is no overstatement to say that the celebration of the Eucharist has been the primary and central act of Christian worship for almost 2000 years. All other worship actions have pointed to it, and the act of communion has sacramentally welded the Church together throughout intense seasons of forgetfulness of our purpose and mission in the world.
In addition to these ideas, Eucharist is perhaps the most participatory act of worship we see throughout Church history. The engagement of human beings around a table, eating bread, drinking juice, smelling, hearing, touching, tasting and reflecting the Story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection is a powerful theme throughout worship history.
The Christian Language Of Eucharist
We have perhaps some of the most vibrant language related to worship in the New Testament surrounding what we call the Lord’s Supper.
For Christians throughout time, the New Testament themes of the Lord’s Supper still resonate among us. The Eucharist:
Commemorates that God has acted as Savior to penetrate of all of human history, from creation, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, through our present, and to the final consummation (Acts 2:46-47)
Reminds us that we are part of the communion of saints in the family of God (1 Cor. 10:16)
Persuades us that a sacrifice has occurred to right the world (John 1:29)
Speaks of the presence of Christ among us (John 6:51-58)
Welcomes us to experience the work of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13)
Looks forward to the eschaton (1 Cor. 11:26)
Early Church Usage Of The Eucharist
For the Jews, the concept of table fellowship was an important cultural idea. One did not eat with those whose lifestyle one did not endorse. One did not sit to eat with enemies, nor with those who had disgraced one’s family name. Jesus, however, literally turned the table on table fellowship. Eating and drinking with tax collectors, prostitutes, drunkards and run-of-the-mill sinners was a theological statement embodied in his physical actions.
“The God who eats with these people is the God who embraces all of humanity in its beauty and brokenness,” his meal time habits would say; “He recognizes that all have sinned, and He draws near to bring new humanity to those who seem to be the worst off in society.”
This new paradigm of table fellowship led to some of the early Church’s most powerful statements of community. Now, not only had a former prostitute been baptized by a wealthy woman of tremendously differing social strata, but now they were declaring their essential “family” relationship by eating and drinking together at meals! What had brought them to this table of thanksgiving, this table of reconciliation and shared hope?
Jesus had brought them together, and their meal was a declaration that, just as God had caused the angel of death to pass over His people Israel in Egypt, so too death would now pass them by destroyed by the power of His resurrection life at work within.
Early Christians would share meals together, enlisting singing, the sharing of the apostles’ letters, prayer and mutual support as essentials at their table of worship. The Eucharist was originally known as the “agape feast,” or a meal that signified unconditional love between God and humankind, and humankind and one another. This meal was a central, defining act of worship for the earliest Christians, a commemoration of the Passover meal that Jesus shared with his disciples before stepping toward his final hours this side of the tomb.
This commemoration looked deep into the past of the Jews, remembering that God would provide the sacrificial Lamb that would “take away the sins of the world.” For the earliest believers, every gathering around this table was a celebration of resurrection life – that the true light had come into the world, and darkness had not overcome it. The agape feast looked toward the age to come, where no more tears would be shed as they were in this dark world, and all would enjoy unblemished fellowship with God and with one another.
In other words, for the early Church, the Eucharist was built around a celebration of resurrection, not primarily a revisiting of the death of Jesus. This is a later development in the approach to communion. Early believers reclaimed, every first day of the week, the Easter story – and the meal together, remembering Jesus’ words, was their primary act of resurrection remembrance.
The word “eucharist” is simply from a Greek word meaning “thanksgiving.” For the early Christians, they were thanking God for, and commemorating, Jesus’ life, teaching, death and resurrection in the eucharist, reminding themselves of God’s mighty acts through human history, being persuaded that a final sacrifice had been made for the world, speaking of the presence of Christ as they ate, welcoming the Holy Spirit in their midst and looking forward to the Kingdom coming in all of its fullness on earth.
The Eucharist In Worship Throughout Church History
Given communion’s centrality to the worship of the church across the ages, one can only imagine the myriad permutations that the actual symbolic act has taken as the Church has kept the breaking of bread and the taking of the cup a central expression of its worship life.
From the early Church meals, the Eucharist took on more symbolic (and possibly smaller and shorter) forms in the centuries of the persecuted Church. Then, with Constantinian Christianity, the Eucharist gained massive buildings and public displays to accent its mystery and beauty. This brought with it, throughout the medieval era, an errant magical significance being placed on the elements by clergy. The wine could not be spilled as it had actually become (in essence) the blood of Jesus, and the crumbs from the bread could not fall to the ground as it had literally become the flesh of Christ through the priest’s blessing.
The Reformation challenged many of these extremes with its emphasis on the priesthood of the believer, the centrality of scripture, and justification by faith – and not by doing all the right religious worship gymnastics.
When the Reformation came to fruition, there remained deep disagreement between many of the Reformers as to the exact nature of what happens in the Eucharist (a disagreement that pitted Luther and Zwingli against one another). For Luther, the elements were invested with the spiritual substance of the body and blood of Christ; i.e. the body and blood of Christ were in, through and under the substance of the elements though not changing them physically (consubstantiation).
For Zwingli, that was a silly idea. The term “transubstantiation” – the view that the elements actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, was the Roman Catholic view, and was established as a sacramental idea in the 12th century. From here, various reformers rejected transubstantiation, embraced consubstantion, or, like the Quakers, rejected all symbolic action altogether.
By the time of Luther, Christians had been used to centuries of the Eucharist primarily resting in the domain of the clergy’s altar, and therefore the common person would only take communion a few times per year (maybe four, at the major festivals). While Zwingli kept this the pattern, Luther pushed for a weekly communion given his sense of its vital importance to worship. Under Luther, some Eucharist services could last up to three or four hours.[1]
Following from the Reformation, the Church has taken the last 500 years to further process what actually happens during communion, with what frequency it should be taken, and what types of elements are acceptable. In many contemporary Christian worshipping communities in the West, communion is often largely forgotten as a central language of worship for the Church. In Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and other more liturgical traditions, it retains its historical centrality as the primary act of corporate worship.
Eucharist Throughout Church History
It is not uncommon for humans, let alone Christians, to overstate the importance of something in order to keep its’ meaning alive. One might suggest that some of the more “magical” language surrounding what happens in the Eucharist throughout Church history was intended to retain the mystery of our intimacy with Christ that can occur when one participates with a heart to encounter God in the elements.
Sometimes symbols, given their rightful meaning, can indeed welcome us into a sense of beauty and mystery in a way that words cannot. On the other hand, some have suggested that the taking of the Eucharist literally delivers salvation to the individual. Christians have taken many sides on this idea historically, but suffice it to say that the memory of what occurred in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus has usually remained of infinitely higher importance to the Church than the form the Eucharist takes.[2]
Eucharist: What We Can Glean Today
On some levels, the multi-sensory and participatory nature of the symbolic form of taking the Eucharist may be among the most important themes we can draw on for today, in addition to the content it adds to our worship life. In an age that elevates personal experience above any form of objective truth, the Eucharist is an inherently visceral and physical action that may provide the most holistic worship bridge to the postmodern sensibility.
Given that the Eucharist originated in a meal together, we can reach into our past to revisit how we do communion in light of its origins. Larger meals may be a fresh approach to the Eucharist in contemporary churches, in church buildings or in homes. Additionally, the emphasis on the Eucharist being primarily a celebration of resurrection life, light and hope entering the world is another vital reclaiming that can and should occur in the contemporary Church.
If we can find our way through our church backgrounds to see communion in a fresh light, we may find one of the most powerful worship tools of the two millennial old Church in our hands once again – this time inviting the world to a feasting encounter at the Table of the Resurrected Lord.
[1] Ibid., 122.
[2] It is important to note here the difference between magic and true worship. Magic, one might say, is the quest to manipulate divine forces in order to accomplish one’s own will. Whether by symbolic action, incantation or mantra, symbolic actions can take on the spirit of magic moreso than the spirit of worship. True worship, on the other hand, might be stated as being a yielding to the divine will, in order to see Another’s will accomplished. In the first case, magic is defined by the will of the person doing the spiritual action. In the second, worship is defined by the will of the One worshipped – in this case, the Lord Jesus.
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As a Catholic, the term “errant magical significance” disturbs me. The implication (and, in the case of this post, direct statement) is that the beliefs of Catholics are merely manipulations by Church officials to maintain power.
I assure you that, for Catholics at least, Communion is more than just a commemoration of Christ’s last supper; it is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. Your opening quote is a good one, but it takes on way more significance when you consider that Mother Teresa was Catholic, and so she too believed that the Eucharist is the Living God, not just a neat symbol. When she said that “When you learn to meet God in the bread and the cup, you can learn to see God in the poor”, she was speaking literally. God is truly present. When we receive God’s presence weekly, it makes us more like Him, giving us the grace to love all of His people. There’s no “capacity for imagination”, but rather, a capacity of faith.
I recognize that my beliefs are not your beliefs, but you should similarly recognize that, for some Christians, communion is not a mere symbol. It is also not an historical, ancient belief that is no longer shared. For Catholics, the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, and it is incredibly disrespectful for you to speak of the “Roman Catholic view” as a “was”, rather than an “is”.
Ben,
Thank you for this addressing of the perspectives I offered here on the Eucharist, and I appreciate your diplomacy and grace in responding. I also appreciate your thoughtfulness here; clearly you are a studied worshiper, and careful about the ideas you bring to the Table of Worship.
First of all, you should know that I have an incredibly high regard for you, and for my Catholic brothers and sisters. I both embrace and incorporate many elements of Roman Catholic tradition into my own devotional and worship patterns.
My background is liturgical, but in the Protestant traditions. For me, liturgy is a protagonist in my worship story, unlike many of my contemporary “free church” colleagues.
I do recognize that, for many, Communion is not a mere symbol. For me, my view of what occurs in the Eucharist meal, lies somewhere in between the views of transubstantiation and consubstantiation – leaning toward consubstantiation.
As this piece was not written to Roman Catholics, but rather to my contemporaries who begin with a negative view of liturgy, I understand how you would be offended by my approach. However, if you read through their lens, you may have a more benevolent reading of what I scribed. On the other hand, some of the ideas spoken above would not change, and to those I turn.
My undergraduate degree is in Religion and Philosophy (I say that informatively, not as though it gives me any particular credibility to speak into our topic), with a particular emphasis on world religions. I have always been fascinated by the ways that human beings interact with the divine, and the meaning they attach to ordinary human activities in their quest to commune with the Holy. This is the primary reason I am a contemporary “worship leader.” As an artist, musician and poet, I believe I am called to aid the worshiper in engaging with the God who loves us.
My studies in world religions, and the suffusion of inanimate objects with animate life is a typical pattern in non-Christian faiths and worship traditions. I.e. The same language you use above is not unfamiliar to myriad pagan, animistic, polytheistic and monotheistic faiths.
By the blessing, you are suggesting, the bread and cup are coming “to life” – Christ’s life. Would this be a correct use of language for what you are suggesting is happening in the Eucharist prayer by the priest?
The traditional view of transubstantiation in the communion elements is too close to hundreds of other “transformations” that world religions all claim to have occur upon their “blessing” of their own inanimate symbols.
While I have a high regard for sacred imagination, as well as for the invisible world’s influence on the visible (even to the point of believing that words can alter physical realities), I have come to believe that the strong language of bread and cup taking on this physical change is something some may “need” to believe rather than what we “should believe.”
I give a fuller argument for this in the book, Perspectives On Worship: Five Views with Dan Kimball, Ligon Duncan, Timothy Quill, and Lawrence/Devier. In my response to Timothy Quill, I had many questions – all arising from my deep love of the liturgical tradition.
With love, and honest query, I asked Dr. Quill this question – “Why does the bread and the cup not then taste like skin and blood” upon its transformation? Why can only the priest perform the sacred ritual that enables this to occur? I thought Christ dwelled in us, not in bread, wine – water, rocks, trees or supernovas. We are approaching elements in pantheism and panentheism when we push our language toward these ideas for the sake of a “richer worship imagination.”
Sacred imagination (I use this word with utter respect; imagination is as important as physical action in my view) is utterly vital to me – I live (in my faith world) with the constant challenge of helping Christians exert sacred imagination without crossing the line into self-deception (needing to believe something so strongly we make ourselves believe it.)
I embrace the power and themes of the ideas you are espousing above, and I am grateful for the tension in perspectives it creates.
I cannot embrace, however, the final conclusion that the Eucharist has now physically become Christ’s body and blood – nor can I elevate inanimate elements to the place reserved for the Spirit’s indwelling work in the temple of the average Christian.
I cannot personally attribute to the Mass the power that you are willing to invest it with. If I am completely honest, I am not happy with the roots of such emphasis after the book of Acts. The word “remembrance” is an anamnesis unto life – the passage where Jesus is telling them to “remember” is not telling them anything more than this.
I can, however, embrace the Eucharist as the most important historic act of worship of the last two millenia.
In my view, this elevation of the Eucharist elements is a fundamental cause, historically, of the disconnection between the professional clergy (“authorized to handle the elements”) and the non-professional follower of Christ (needing a mediator for their worship other than Christ, by His indwelling Spirit).
The average Christian, by this pure view of transubstantiation, is distanced from living a Pentecost spirituality empowered by a personal relationship with the Spirit of God – not mediated by bread and cup and priest, but rather by the Spirit guiding a humble heart to live a life of passionate worship, committed fellowship, and empowered mission.
Note: By “was” in the context you suggested I was offensive, I meant “during the time of Zwingli.” That was a misread of what I wrote, possibly through the lens of your frustration for what seemed to be my diminishing of the true nature of the Eucharist. My apologies for not making that clearer.
Peace, and friendship, in Christ,
Dan
The blog post is, as one might expect, most Protestant, and, in a sense, very much free church within the Protestant domain. First, one notices the reference to juice. Not only did I never experience anything other than wine during my Plymouth Brethren upbringing, but now I continue to experience wine in the Anglican Communion, and only find juice in various free churches. So the perspective gets telegraphed in a single word.
Historically, of course, I would argue that the Eucharist started out as a shared meal in the house church, in continuity with the one main worship offering in the Hebrew Scriptures, the peace or fellowship offering, which the worshipping group (often an extended family) ate in the presence of the deity. But by 250 we see the rise of purpose built churches with the sense of holy space and the concomitant centralization of the celebration. But many other things that we take for granted also developed over history, so primitive may mean just that. For instance, there is no reference to the use of musical instruments in the first centuries. I might add, that someone like Ralph P. Martin argues that the Agape was a meal separate from the Eucharist, a communal meal after the celebration, while others, like me, argue that it was part of the celebration itself and not separate, so there one has a historical difference.
Theologically, I noted that there is an absence of references to 1 Cor 10:16 “sharing in the blood of Christ:” and “sharing in the body of Christ” applied to the “cup of blessing” and the “bread that we break” respectively. I do not see that reflected in the discussion above about the meaning of the Eucharist, nor do I see the “eat my flesh” and “drink my blood” of John 6 reflected. The latter passage may be debated as to its Eucharistic meaning (I personally have been convinced by Raymond Brown), but 1 Cor 10 is clearly Eucharistic. Something real is going on, so real that Paul threatens the Corinthians in 1 Cor 10:22 and in 1 Cor 11 will say that some through improper actions have died.
How this is eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ is expressed varies. Many free church Protestants more or less ignore it and speaking only of memory and, perhaps, eschatological anticipation, and, more recently, communal unity. That is what I see in the blog post. Roman Catholics have used Aristotelean categories and viewed it as something real that happens in the elements. That is, one could analyze the bread and show that it was still bread, but that is only the outward form, not the inward substance, which has changed. Because most Protestants do not even know about Aristotle, they do often turn this mystery into magic in their eyes. And I am sure that in parts of the populace it did become magic (hence the origin of hocus pocus from the Latin hoc es corpus meum, “this is my body”), just as healing in some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches becomes magic (and occasionally charlatanry). But for those who understand this as an Aristotelean (as Thomas Aquinas was) attempt to explain the mystery of 1 Cor 10:16, it is most meaningful. I am moved when I read in Carlos Carretto’s Letters from the Desert of him kneeling before the consecrated elements in the North African desert and becoming lost in contemplation. This is the stuff of the great spiritual tradition. It does take an authorized representative of Jesus the Anointed One, authorized through his church, but then the actions are those of the church.
Yes, it is true that this meant that the consecrated bread and wine should not be defiled. But in the Hebrew Scriptures was it not true that those parts of the animal that were not consumed or burned on the altar were burned rather than just tossed out? Even if I viewed them as just bread and wine, the fact that they have been used in holy actions, that I have met God in them, means that I should treat them with some reverence.
There is, of course, Luther’s attempt to separate from the Aristotelean approach with his consubstantiation. But both he and Calvin agreed that the sacrament should be celebrated weekly. Calvin’s city fathers would not allow that to happen, for reasons not dissimilar to the reasons why many pre (and post) Reformation Catholics did not partake more than a few times per year – they were not holy enough to meet God versus getting holy enough through various means (and there is some sense in this, for Paul did say that some died through unworthy participation in the sacrament, a fact that many churches forget). The Anglicans have traditionally had a weekly celebration of the Eucharist, but they do not express this mystery as either Luther or Catholic theology has, but rather as a spiritual feeding that takes place in one’s heart as one eats the outward substance (“feed on him by faith in thy heart”). But the mystery is still there. There is a participation in Jesus. That is why Anglican healing services are often in the context of the Eucharist – in fact, even without formal healing prayer I hope and expect that as people kneel and share in the body and blood of Jesus (as Paul said) those types of things will happen which are associated with the presence of Jesus.
So I say, yes, to what is posted on the blog, but also, yes, but there is more. The mystery of real participation is not there, only remembrance, but not necessarily anamnessis; there is eschatological anticipation, but not real presence; there is communal reality, but is Jesus part of the community that is there?
And we can leave out the magic part. All traditions have their abuses, whether they be Pentecostal, Baptist, Brethren, Lutheran, Anglican, or Roman Catholic. Some congregants view the Eucharist as magic, I am sure, and some view it as nothing more than remembering someone who has died. Neither group has grasped their own tradition. It is wisest to focus on the best of a tradition and then to discuss how this best could be more widely shared within the tradition than to stand outside and critique.
Those are my thoughts,
Peter+
Peter, thank you so much for contributing at my request. Blog friends, Peter Davids, Ph.D. is a great friend, colleague and New Testament scholar. He is also an Anglican priest, and one of my favorite communicators on all things worship.
I asked Peter to poke holes in my brief post on the wide topic of the Eucharist, and then to reflect on Ben’s post above. I will read through this, then add in an additional response.
Again, thanks to Peter for joining us. Peter teaches at St. Stephen’s University, where I serve in an adjunct role. He also teaches in our Masters In Worship Studies Program.
When reading this, I can’t help but to reflect on my Lutheran upbringing. I’d have to agree with Ben that I find the idea of viewing the elements of the Eucharist as mere symbols as lacking. I believe it robs the Eucharist of it’s mystery and power.
In the same breath, I also would not agree with an idea like transubstantiation. I believe that the physical elements themselves are not the point – much like Jesus’ words in John 6 were not about a literal cannibalism.
If I (and those I read) understand the scriptures correctly, the life that we appropriate from the Eucharist is done so by faith. The Eucharist elements are a medium (for lack of a better term) through which our faith can operate. How baptism by the ‘element’ of water becomes our participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus (Rom 6) is similarly a matter of faith. The medium / element has power because faith is present.
I think that if we’re focusing on the elements themselves we’re looking at the wrong thing and hence missing the point.
I can understand the idea of ’sacred imagination.’ However, I find that term/idea doesn’t do full justice to how faith works. Faith is more than imagination, but rather a substance through which God acts both now and will act at the consummation of His Kingdom. F.F. Bruce, commenting on John 6, reflects how the eternal life that we have by faith is had both now and in the age to come (reflecting our wonderful eschatological tension)[1]. When we participate in the Eucharist by faith, God is present and lavishes upon us in the here and now the eternal life Jesus promised[2].
All that is an attempt at saying I believe there’s more going on than remembrance, anticipation and scared imagination. Rather, in the mystery of it all, it appears to me that through faith God is present in the act.
Peace -
Nathan
[1] F.F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 142-168
[2] Here I recognize again that the term ‘eternal life’ is loaded with eschatological tension. Similar to what Dallas Willard pointed out in his book, The Divine Conspiracy, in this age while we won’t experience the immortality of the age to come, but we can experience the ‘eternal kind of life’ that is found in Jesus who established a new humanity empowered by the Spirit walking in line with the Kingdom.
My understanding of Eucharist is still very much in formation. I have recently been reading Alexander Schmemann on the subject of “Sacrament and Symbol” (For the Life of the World, 2nd Appendix). He was an Orthodox who perceived, of course, that the Western arguments, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, are moot. He says that when a certain heresy arose in the 11th or 12th century, which denied the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, Rome’s response was an over-correction, not only affirming the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, but adding Christ’s real “physical” presence to the accidents, perhaps because the Western mind was already becoming restless with mysticism. I don’t know.
Then today I came across this quote while reading Schmemann:
“The Eucharist is a passage, a procession leading the Church into ‘heaven,’ into her fulfillment as the Kingdom of God. And it is precisely the reality of this passage into the Eschaton that conditions the transformation of our offering — bread and wine — into the new food of the new creation, of our meal into the Messianic Banquet and the Koinonia of the Holy Spirit. Thus, for example, the coming together of Christians on the Lord’s Day, their visible unity ’sealed’ by the priest (‘ecclesia in episcopo and episcopus in ecclesia’) is indeed the beginning of the sacrament, the ‘gathering into the Church.’ And the entrance is not a symbolical representation of Christ going to preach but the real entrance — the beginning of the Church’s ascension to the Throne of God, made possible, inaugurated by the ascension of Christ’s Humanity. The offertory — the solemn transfer of bread and wine to the altar is again not the symbol of Christ’s burial (or of His entrance into Jerusalem) but a real sacrifice — the transfer of our lives and bodies and of the whole ‘matter’ of the whole creation into heaven, their integration in the unique and all-embracing sacrifice of all sacrifices, that of Christ. The prosphora (offering) makes possible the anaphora — the lifting up of the Church, her eschatological fulfillment by the Eucharist. For Eucharist — ‘thanksgiving’ — is indeed the very content of the redeemed life, the very reality of the Kingdom as ‘joy and peace in the Holy Spirit,’ the end and the fulfillment of our ascension into heaven. Therefore, the Eucharist is consecration and the Fathers called both the prayer of consecration and the consecrated gifts ‘Eucharist.’ The insistence by the Orthodox on the epiclesis is nothing else, in its ultimate meaning, but the affirmation that the consecration, i.e., the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, takes place in the ‘new eon’ of the Holy Spirit. Our earthly food becomes the Body and Blood of Christ because it has been assumed, accepted, lifted up into the ‘age to come,’ where Christ is indeed the very life, the very food of all life and the Church is His Body, ‘the fullness of Him that filleth all in all’ (Eph. 1:23). It is there, finally, that we partake of the food of immortality, are made participants of the Messianic Banquet, of the New Pascha, it is from there, ‘having seen the true light, having received the heavenly Spirit,’ that we return into ‘this world’ (‘let us depart in peace’) as witnesses of the Kingdom which is ‘to come.’ Such is the sacrament of the Church, the ‘leitourgia’ which eternally transforms the Church into what she is, makes her the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.”
I recommend reading this full article: http://www.schmemann.org/byhim/theologyandeucharist.html
Awesome!
Thank you, Dan, for seeing my post as reasonable and measured, as I’d worried I’d gotten a bit too hot. But I love discussion, and when we’re talking about mystery, it’s hard to say one person is right or wrong, but rather, sometimes we have to say “this is what I believe” and leave it at that.
One thing that did strike me as a bit odd, that Peter kind of touched on, is Zwingli’s explanation of Transubstantiation. As difficult of a topic as it is to believe upon first hearing it, and as a foundation of my faith, it’s been explained in a lot of different ways, but no priest I’ve ever talked to has said that Transubstantiation effects a physical change of the bread and wine; rather, there is a change (trans) of substance. It is a very Aristotelian idea that things are made of both their physical properties, and their substance.
One particularly memorable explanation went like this: a large priest who played guitar was giving a homily about Transubstantiation. He had with him and old acoustic guitar. He talked about what made the guitar a guitar: wood, strings, frets, but also about it’s “guitar-ness”, that is, it having the both the characteristics and the substance of a guitar, if that makes sense. Then, he did a Pete Townshend and smashed it on the ground. The guitar still had wood, strings, and frets, but it had undergone a substantive change. It was no longer a “guitar” because, well, it’s “guitar-ness” was gone, perhaps replaced by “broken guitar-ness”, but physically, atomically, it was still the same. The Eucharist is like that; physically, atomically, the same, but the substance changes on the altar. The bread and wine lose “bread-ness” and “wine-ness” and take on “God-ness” through the power of the Holy Spirit.
That’s not so far from your description of Consubstantiation, something which I confess I haven’t done much study in, though I have known it to be the view of many non-Catholic Christians. I’m also a worship leader, like you, but without a lot of theological background, aside from Catholic grade-school and Jesuit high-school, personal study and questing. I do appreciate your openness on this topic which I am passionate about, as to me, it is so incredible and reality-altering as to completely change the game. The incredible mystery that Jesus Christ, God of the universe, would come to us in the humble form of bread and wine and allow us to partake in Him with our imperfect bodies. That we have an incredible form of worship that flows from the idea of the Eucharist being Christ called “Adoration”, where we can sit and physically be with Jesus, truly present in a consecrated host in a way that’s unlike what any other religions have, and worship Him. To be able to look and see my God on the altar and fall prostrate before Him. Just incredible.
I am a non-religious individual, sometimes confused, seeking an unbiased way to study the Christianity and the Bible, if one can be objective on the matter of deciphering the facts and truths.
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