So what really happens in the Eucharist?

The short answer is ... we don't know.

However, I understand that there was a lot of discussion following Carrie Euler's presentation on Eucharistic controversies during the Reformation. People want to know... well, what do we think now?

It would be easy to take the dodge offered by (or attributed to) Elizabeth I:

Christ was the Word that spake it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what that Word doth make it,
That I believe, and take it.

But we ought to be able to do some theological exploration around this. What do we think is happening in the Eucharist?

For now, I offer you this short essay I wrote some years ago on the matter. Later, we can talk more.


Peace,

Kit


I believe that Christ is the Word of God, and that as that Word, Christ is made manifest throughout the entire Eucharistic action. Humans use words and gestures to communicate with each other; if God wants to communicate with humans, as we believe God does, what better way than to use the means of human communication, words and gestures, speech and symbols? And what better way to enter into full communication with humanity than in the Incarnation, by becoming an embodied human being, able to understand us by living as one of us, able to communicate with us by being one of us, using the media of our world – words and gestures, speech and symbols, to speak with us?

As God revealed God’s self to the Israelites, they began to set that revelation into words that described the history of their encounters with God. First the Law, the sacred covenant that outlined the nature of their relationship with the Creator. Then the Prophets, who interpreted Israel’s life with God against the backdrop of the Law and called Israel to true relationship with God. Then the Writings, the prayers and songs and wisdom and stories that described the everyday nature of life with the One God. These writings grew out of Israel’s liturgies of worship, and once written down, were used in Israel’s liturgies of worship in a mutually interpreting feedback loop of revelation and praise.

But to communicate effectively with humanity and to enter fully into human life and to redeem it, that Word became enfleshed, we believe, in the man Jesus of Nazareth. In his life on earth, Jesus used the media of human communication – words and actions – to combat evil in all its forms. In his death on the cross, Jesus used the entire medium of human life to conquer evil once and for all. Following his resurrection, his ongoing Body in the world, the Church, also used words and actions to retell this story of redemption, to recreate it for themselves in liturgical gestures and words that would make the truth of our redemption in Christ present to the community and to the world.

That is the story of our redemption that we re-tell and re-enact in every Eucharistic celebration – the story that is encoded in the Biblical narrative, the story that is re-told, re-taught, and offered in prayer during the entire Eucharistic liturgy. And I think that this is no mere memorial or remembrance of what Christ did. It is a liturgy that prays for God’s grace to enter into the gathered community so that it may become the Body of Christ in the world by feeding on the real Body of Christ we experience in the Word and in the Bread and Wine.

God is seeking us, God is reaching out to have a relationship with us, and we respond to God in faith when we hear that call. We first we hear that longing for relationship in the Word read in Scripture and unfolded for us in the Sermon. We hear the Biblical narrative, we hear the Word of God. When a word is spoken, it expresses a self-disclosure on the part of the speaker. When that word is the word of Scripture spoken in the Eucharistic liturgy, it is a self-disclosure on the part of God. It is God’s testimony to the truth that God loves us, God desires our relationship, God acts to redeem us so that we can share that relationship with God. We are confronted with God’s missionary Word, calling us into relationship. We respond in faith and prayer, opening our hearts so that we can encounter God in this Word. The Word calls us; the Word also stands over and against us, becoming the basis for our relationship with God, the ground for God’s judgment of our lives and behavior.

As we encounter this Word, as we respond in faith to the truth of God’s Testimony in that Word, we long for a deeper communion with God, a fuller encounter. God has already been made manifest to us in the proclamation of the saving Word and in our response to the truth of the Word’s testimony in prayer. Christ has already become present to us. But as with any loving relationship, the words also call for gestures, for touch, for embodiment, and so we move into the actions of the Eucharist seeking a deeper Encounter with God.

Macquarrie points out that in the Eucharistic liturgy, the presence of Christ is a personal one – in which communication takes place between two persons. But it is also a multiple one. Christ is present in the word which speaks his truth, in the priest who presides, since Christ is the presider at every Eucharist, in the gathered community, which is one body with him, and in the bread and wine which focus his presence for us (pp. 126, 127). We are embodied beings, and so we seek to touch God, to encounter an embodied God, and Christ bespoke Bread and Wine as the means by which God could be embodied after the physical form of Jesus was no longer present with us.

Bread and Wine are symbols of the sustenance we need to survive. When they become symbols of Christ present to us and with us, the elements’ function as purely physical sustenance become functional as spiritual sustenance as well. Christ could have chosen any physical element to embody himself for us. He chose Bread and Wine to speak his presence to us because they already speak to us. His choosing of Bread and Wine amplifies their symbolism of life-sustaining reality into a symbolism of the life-sustaining reality that is Christ himself.

With the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Christ became present to everyone who believes in him. But the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist focuses Christ’s uncontainable presence in these elements. As embodied beings, we need to touch the Body of Christ, just as the disciples touched their risen Lord on Easter night (Luke 24:36 ff.). Focused in the elements of bread and wine, we touch Christ there, we feed on him in our hearts by faith, with thanksgiving, and we do it in profound unity and communion with Christ’s gathered Body, present there at the altar rail with us, present in the communion of saints with us, present in the final eschatological banquet with us. Time collapses in the Eucharist, all time is as one, and the icon that gives us the glimpse of that eternal banquet is the entire Eucharistic liturgy, building to the climactic communal moment in which we are united with each other and with the Holy Trinity by means of the sacramental eating and drinking.

So are the bread and wine changed into flesh and blood? I think God is bigger than that. It can’t be reduced to that. It also denies the reality of the Incarnation, when God became human, but did not change that human form. If we believe in the Incarnation, then we must believe that God uses the sacraments in the same way, entering, but not changing, some created stuff so that it can speak the Word to us, bear Testimony to us, create Encounter for us, so that we can be drawn in to the deep, self-giving communion of God’s love within God’s self, a love which cannot be contained, but which spills out to draw all of us into that deep, self-giving love.

Hope for Overwhelmed Moms

I am excited about the new MOPS group that will provide support and fellowship for mothers of children up through 6th grade. This group is open to the entire community, not only All Saints folks, and the first meeting is featuring a wonderful speaker.

Karen Hossink, an Okemos author, has written a book about her struggles with parenting and her growing awareness that the challenge of child-rearing is making her the woman God believes her to be. The book is called "Confessions of an Irritable Mother: Hope for Overwhelmed Moms."

As one who has walked the long path (and continues to walk it ... they're never really done, are they?) of parenting, I appreciate her honesty about the challenges and her graceful ability to see God's hand in even the more unattractive moments of motherhood.

I hope you will invite your mothering friends and neighbors to join us this Friday evening. Potluck at 6 p.m. and Karen Hossink will speak at 6:30 p.m. Pass the word along!

+ Kit

A Meditation on Stillness

This video, by Eric Law, an Episcopal priest who has written extensively on inclusion and acceptance, reminds us ... on the brink of a busy academic year ... to be ...

still ...

Who Are We When our Walls Fall Down?

That is the poignant question asked by an Episcopal priest, Tom Ehrich, in an essay in the Indianapolis Star. In this essay, he defends the moves the Episcopal Church has made to broaden its inclusion, but he critiques our beloved church as an institution that has "rewarded institutional tinkering and stopped dreaming. We depend on style and not substance. We worry about inherited property and not about the world outside our doors. We fuss about who is ordained when we should be nurturing healthy congregations."

I hope you'll read what he has to say. I wonder what your response might be ...

+ Kit

Tweet!

OK, against my better judgment, I am going to start posting Twitter updates. If you are a Twitter person, and want to receive updates, there is a button on the blog you can click to "follow" me. Mostly I will be posting tweets related to upcoming events or news about All Saints, and not (as on Facebook) whether I went to Crunchy's or Harrison Roadhouse for a burger.

So if you want Twitter updates about All Saints, click the magic button, or follow me at RevKit (or email ... pastorkitcarlson@gmail.com).

I'll be working on my hip social networking skills now ...


+ Kit

A Hopeful, and Quintessentially Anglican, Approach

Resolution D025, as passed at General Convention yesterday, offers the Episcopal Church an astonishing way forward in the great messiness that has marked the debate about full inclusion of GLBT people.

Quite simply, it tells the truth. It tells the truth about who we are as the American branch of the Anglican Communion. We are a church that has listened to the lives and stories of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters; we have observed them exercising holy and life-giving ministries in every corner of the church. We are a church that understands them to be baptized people, the same as anyone else, and we are a church with laws (called canons) that particularly forbid non-discrimination in the ordination process. We are a church that is not of one mind on how to move forward on the question of ordinations of GLBT people, and is not of one mind on blessing of same-sex unions, or marriage -- in states where that is legal -- between two people of the same gender. We are a church where some dioceses will ordain gay and lesbian people, and some dioceses will not.

We are a wonderful collection of faithful people on a journey to deeper understanding and love of one another, led by the prompting of the Holy Spirit. But it is a journey, and it is not over yet, and so this resolution offers a wonderful declaration of where we are right now, vis a vis the Anglican Communion, the question of gay ordinations, and our ongoing differences of theology and interpretation.

This resolution does four very important things:

1) It affirms our intention and commitment to remain in the Anglican Communion, continuing to do ministry and mission in developing countries, and continuing our financial support of $661K of a $1.8 billion budget -- a significant contribution from any one member church -- for Anglican Communion programs and ministries. It says that we intend to stay at the table and play.

2) It recognizes that we have participated fully in a "listening process" requested by the Lambeth Conferences of 1978, 1988 and 1998, to listen to the experiences of our GLBT brothers and sisters. And what we have discovered is ... wow! They are people. And Christians! And they do wonderful ministries at every level of the church! And generally function like every other baptized person.

3) It reminds everyone that our church has laws (canons) and some of those laws relate to ordination, and that those laws have non-discrimination policies attached to them, and that there is no LEGAL impediment in our church to QUALIFIED, DISCERNED, GLBT folks to being ordained, provided they go through discernment processes like everyone else and are selected for the ordination track.

and finally, and most important, and most ANGLICAN of all it says,

4) We understand that good and faithful people are not of one mind about this stuff and we are on a journey together and we are not going to agree on all of this right away.

So, does this mean that gays are allowed to be ordained? In dioceses where they are currently being ordained, that will probably continue. Sometime soon, some diocese will probably elect another gay bishop (note ... we've always had gay bishops. Bp. Otis of Utah came out after he retired.). Other dioceses won't be ready yet. No diocese will be forced to ordain GLBT people.

Will we get kicked out of the Anglican Communion? That's still a future possibility. However, we are not alone. Other provinces of the communion are also moving forward with rituals for blessings of same-sex unions, and are ordaining qualified and called gay and lesbian persons. Our mission and development work in the Global South continues to express our love for all our brothers and sisters, and our willingness to work together on areas where we do agree, to end poverty, to increase health, to create fulfilling lives for all God's children. The Archbishop of Canterbury said as much to General Convention ... that if the Anglican Communion didn't find the Episcopal presence so necessary, this would not be so difficult.

However, the "restraint" exercised by the Episcopal Church for the last three years, (a resolution passed in the waning hours of the last General Convention called for restraint in the elections and consecration to the order of bishop of people whose "manner of life" posed a difficulty to the wider communion) did not stop bishops from crossing provincial and diocesan boundaries. It did not stop other bishops, parishes, even entire dioceses from trying to leave the Episcopal Church. It may have gotten our bishops to the Lambeth Conference, but the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a canonically elected, approved and consecrated bishop, was still "uninvited." Other bishops from the global South still stayed away from Lambeth, unwilling to share fellowship and communion with "heretical" bishops.

So perhaps it is just time to tell the truth. We do want to remain in the Anglican Communion. We do understand that GLBT people have gifts to offer our church and our world. We intend to follow our canons. We know that people are not of one mind about this, and we intend to go forward together anyway, messy, confused, but together.

And hopeful.

+ Kit

How to Start Your Monday

1) Sit still in a place that you like. It should not be a place where you see any work or tasks that you need to accomplish.


2) Sit there for five minutes. Be aware of your surroundings, the temperature, the sounds you hear, the things you see. Be completely present to the moment and to the place. If your mind starts running ahead to what you need to do today, just set that aside and return to quietly observing your surroundings and being present.


3) Say "Thank you." Take three deep breaths. Stand up slowly.



Now go about your week.


Peace,

+ Kit