In the church that the Reformers
inherited, the service of the Mass was central and ubiquitous. As we have seen,
the assertion of a new theology of justification also meant a revision of the
place and meaning of the Lord’s Supper in the life of the Christian. Grace was
not, somehow a property or a thing that could be conveyed in the elements of
bread and wine themselves. Divine grace is an attitude of God – the attitude he
demonstrates in the redemption of sinners on the cross of Jesus Christ. Grace,
the Reformers argued, meant that God was now disposed to forgive sinners and
show them mercy. The sacraments, and especially the Lord’s Supper, were
By translating the services of Holy
Communion into English, Cranmer made a decisive statement about the nature of
Christian faith. The meaning of the Eucharist was not hidden or mysterious, or
magical. It was to be declared and remembered. It was to be species of the Word
– an intelligible sign of the gospel. Those who attended the Lord’s Supper
needed to know what it was that they were eating.
The Lord’s Supper was classified
along with Baptism as a practice commanded by Jesus himself and so held a
privileged place as one of the two sacraments on the reduced list of Reformation
Anglicanism. The words that Jesus used at his Last Supper ‘do this, as often as
you drink it, in remembrance of me’ indicate that he envisaged the disciples
continuing to celebrate and remember his life-giving death. Paul’s first letter
to the Corinthians contains the lengthiest discussion of the practices of
Christians as they gathered and in particular of ‘the Lord’s Supper’. The
difficulty of course is that, as with almost everything else in the epistle,
the discussion of the Lord’s Supper takes place in response to abuses of the
practice. We have no template or manual for its performance.
The particular context into which
Paul speaks is the question about sharing in the pagan temple feasts. Can a
Christian eat meat offered to idols?
14
Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak to sensible people;
judge for yourselves what I say. 16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we
give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that
we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one loaf,
we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.
18
Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate
in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or
that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to
demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have
a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.
As usual, Paul deploys a complex
layering of symbol and metaphor. The ‘one loaf’ in which Christians share is
Christ’s body – a spiritual body, but one represented by the literal
participation of Christians in eating the bread (and drinking the cup) that
symbolizes that body. And that body is not only the broken body of Jesus of
Nazareth, but it is also the ‘body’ of believers.
The problem he then addresses in
the next chapter shows that the symbolism of the meal is deeply compromised by
the way in which it is done. The inequality and selfishness of the participants
is unedifying. It destroys the very meaning of eating together in Christ, since
they do not eat together at all. Instead, says, Paul, they should eat at home
if they are hungry. The meal of the Lord is not for the indulgence of the
physical appetites, but for spiritual nourishment. The consequences are
terrible – for eating and drinking in an unworthy manner is tantamount to a sin
against the body and blood of the Lord himself (1 Cor 11:27). The practice in
the Christian church of having a purely token meal – a sip of wine and a small
piece of bread, served in careful order - stems from taking good heed of the
warnings here in 1 Cor 10-11.
Cranmer clearly made a careful
study of these passages as he put the service of Holy Communion together. As he
wrote:
Christ
ordained the sacrament to move and stir all men to friendship, love, and
concord, and to put away all hatred, variance and discord, and to testify a
brotherly and unfeigned love between all them that be the members of Christ.[1]
The rite of Holy Communion is a
sign of the unity of the church in Christ – a sharing by all in the fellowship,
the koinonia, that comes with being
bound into Christ. The oneness of the believers with each other is not achieved
simply by dint of eating together, but it is both an expression of that
spiritual unity and a means by which is in fact encouraged. The moment of the
taking of the sacrament involves a reflection on the fellowship of Christ’s
body – it takes a ‘discernment of the body’, as Paul puts it, such that those
who eat and drink are not to do so as mere individuals. The Lord’s Supper
should not be thought to substitute for fellowship, or to establish it on its
own: to take the signs of the Communion and then not actually engage in the
community of God’s people perverts the very nature of the rite – just as a
wedding after which the couple refused to speak to one another would be marriage
in name only.
Paul warned the Corinthians very
sternly about their abuse of the Lord’s Supper:
27
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy
manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28
Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink
from the cup. 29 For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of
Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.
In the 1549 service, Cranmer had
ensured that no potential communicant was in any doubt as to the seriousness of
the rite, and the spiritual consequences of partaking illegitimately. But this
had the unfortunate consequence of turning people away from the service. It had
been intended for weekly use, but, as MacCulloch speculates, “conscientious or
shy potential communicants may have felt that they were not worthy to receive”.[2]
This led to the new emphasis on the services of Morning and Evening Prayer as
the staple of the Church of England liturgy, with Holy Communion as a more occasional
alternative. Only in the twentieth century was the Communion service returned
to more frequent celebration – and, it is worth noting, contemporary revisions
of the liturgy do not emphasize the Pauline warnings in the way that Cranmer
did in 1549.
On the basis of this theological
understanding of the rite of Communion, then, it is indeed possible to partake
of the elements and yet not validly receive the Sacrament. Cranmer spoke of
three ways in which the Supper may be eaten: “one spiritual only, another
spiritual and sacramental both together, and the third sacramental only”.[3]
As with baptism, it is important to grasp that Sacrament points to a spiritual
reality. This means that it is perfectly possible to have the spiritual reality
without partaking of the thing that points to it. One can easily ‘feed on
Christ’ without eating the Lord’s Supper. It is also perfectly possible to
consume the bread and the wine and for that eating to be not accompanied by a
spiritual eating at all, or worse. The unrepentant evil-doer may come to the
Lord’s Table and eat; but it will not be effective for them, except as a
judgment on them.
The form of eating, in which the
spiritual and the sacramental coincide, is described by Cranmer thus: “…there
is a another eating both spiritual and sacramental, when the visible sacrament
is eaten with the mouth and Christ Himself is eaten with a true faith”.[4]
The sacrament of the Supper enacts a spiritual eating, which is the true form
of faith. But by being itself a declaration of the gospel, it will also enable
that spiritual eating of the faithful. It becomes in itself the instrument of
God’s blessing of his people in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. In
this way, the sacrament can be understood as ‘effective’.
[1]
Cranmer Works, Vol 1, p. 30
[2] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer
: A Life (New Haven, CT. ; London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 510.
[3] Cranmer
works, Vol 1, pp. 205. He went on: “I
teach that no man can eat Christ’s flesh and drink His blood but spiritually,
which forasmuch as evil men do not, although they eat the sacramental bread
until their bellies be full and drink the wine until they be drunken, yet they
eat neither Christ’s flesh nor drink His blood, neither in the sacrament nor
without the sacrament, because they cannot be eaten and drunken but by spirit
and faith, whereof ungodly men be destitute, being nothing but world and
flesh...”
[4] Cranmer
Works Vol 1, pp. 205
1 comment:
Something of the sacramental character of eating together is reflected in a practice in American prisons that I read about yesterday. Here is a quote
Under the strict rules that govern interracial relations, different races are allowed to play on the same sports teams but not play individual games (e.g., chess) together; they may be in each others' cubicles together if the situation warrants but not sit on each others' beds or watch each others' televisions. They may go to the same church services but not pray together. But if you accidentally break one of these rules, the consequences are usually pretty mild: you might get a talking to by one of the heads (who, of course, claims exemption from this rule himself), or at worst, a "chin check."
Eating with another race, however, is a different story. It is an inviolate rule that different races may not break bread together under any circumstances. Violating this rule leads to harsh consequences. If you eat at the same table as another race, you'll get beaten down.
The article is located at http://www.businessinsider.com/david-arenberg-and-surviving-prison-2013-4
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