A Communion Primer

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church  of Alton, Illinois, March 22, 2009

 

Ritual is something we all engage in, whether we recognize it as such or not.  If you said hello to anyone on your way here this morning, if you groomed yourself the same way you always do before leaving your house, if you came in the same door of the church you always come in – all of those things we do in repetition for some reason, consciously or not, might be called ritual. 

I saw a film not long ago of baboons in the wild and they were going through grooming rituals, feeding rituals, mating rituals, all kinds of behaviors that are done with more or less consciousness but that on the whole keep the society going and provide for the care and growth of the individual baboons involved, too. 

One scene in particular has stayed with me.  Two mother baboons sat side by side, and each one had a baby they were watching over.  As the babies climbed on their moms’ laps and played back and forth with each other, one mother baboon kept looking toward the other mother while making a repetitive series of grunting noises.  The other mother generally looked off into the distance and everywhere but at the mom who was talking to her.  Every now and again, though, the aloof mom would glance at the grunting mom and raise her head just a little and let out a barely audible ‘huh’ that seemed to serve to keep the ‘conversation’ going.  I’ve done that in my own life plenty of times – both grunt a lot and say ‘huh’ when someone’s talking to me (especially, she might tell you, my wife Linda).

So if ritual, conscious or not, is so much a part of our lives that we can see it operating in species that are other than human, it’s always fascinating to me when people come to church and tell me they’re not gonna do any more rituals – they had enough bad ritual experiences in that other church they came from down the road and they’re not interested in doing any more ritual here.

Well, here you are, involved in a ritual yet again, where you sit in a pew and more or less consciously listen to a ritual presentation on the topic of ritual.  Irony abounds.

 

As we approach the time on the calendar known to Christians as Holy Week, I thought I might acquiesce to the recommendations of a few of you and talk about the ritual of Communion, one of those rituals many of you left your former churches vowing never to take part in again.  I put out for display today the silver service set given to this church in 1855 by “the Ladies of the New South Church of Boston” – that’s what is engraved right on the tureen.  The giving of silver by one group of church ladies to another group of church ladies must have been a sort of a ritual, as was the engraving of the facts of the gift right on the side for all posterity to witness.  At any rate, we started using this silver to offer Communion in this sanctuary a couple of years ago.  I’ve been told that the silver had never ever been used for that purpose before – that the ‘liberal’ ladies of this church were not going to be coerced into doing Communion by a few ‘conservative’ ladies from Boston.  Whether the silver has ever been used for Communion before (or what the proper definitions of liberal and conservative are) is immaterial to this sermon.  Rather than debating the relative merits of communing or not, I want to jump right into the practice of Communion among us today and maybe even get to a few of the possible meanings you might find in it for yourself should you be so bold as to attempt it.

 

Both Unitarians and Universalists come out of a deep Judeo-Christian background so there can be no denying that U’s and U’s and UU’s all have some right to the rite, some connection to the ritual.  I assure you that it does not have to be through a fundamentalist Christian lens that we view Communion.  Plenty of our own direct liberally religious forebears engaged in the practice and got plenty out of it, so maybe we can, too.

 

You may remember that the story is told in the biblical text of Jesus’ last night with his disciples when they went into an ‘upper room’ to have what is now known as the Last Supper.  Even if you haven’t read about it in the Bible, I know you’ve seen the images – Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of thirteen guys sitting around a table eating (or, if you believe Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, twelve guys and Mary Magdalene). 

Anyway, food figures prominently in Jesus’s life and ministry, as it does in all our lives and ministries.  Food has all kinds of rituals attached to it – how clean it has to be, where it can come from, how it’s cooked and who does the cooking, where people stand or sit or lie during a meal, the manners people use while eating the food.  This is not only true in our time and at our own tables, it was true in Jesus’ time as well.  The stories say that Jesus subverted the rituals and manners around food and overturned the ritual hierarchies of mealtimes to show the people he ate with what the world could look like if they’d only open themselves to it.

The Christian overlay to the stories of the Last Supper say that Jesus likened a loaf of bread on the table to his own body that was about to be broken and the wine they were about to drink to his own blood that was about to be spilled.  Whether historically accurate or not, this is a powerful metaphor for our willingness to be with and for each other through both good and bad times.  Eating together, sharing the bountiful sustenance provided by the earth – breaking bread, if you will – ritualizes how we will treat each other in times of plenty, sure, but also how we will treat each other when food is no longer the focus, or when joy and laughter are just beyond reach, or when the shadows deepen and overtake us.

A little history is in order:  the Christian communities that sprang up after Jesus’ death began to practice food rituals of all sorts – not just formal Communion in several guises, but the sharing of food as well (a potluck, we call it today).  When Constantine mixed church and state in the fourth century CE, he standardized Christian practice, centralizing the decisions about what would be considered orthodox and what would be considered heterodox or heretical - Communion and all the other rites of the church were to be done one way or not at all.  Of course the rules changed over the years – sometimes celebrants received botht bread and wine, sometimes only bread, sometimes only wine.  In the 16^th century, when the traditions of the Roman Church began to be critiqued by the Protestant and Radical Reformers, the understandings of Communion began to change in some quarters.  Some rejected the idea that the bread and wine magically became Jesus’s body and blood (in the process known as transubstantiation), and they began to talk about Communion as simply a memorial to Jesus’s life and sacrifice, more an expression of the community.

That is not to say that the ritual of Communion was no longer seen as transformational.  It is that the transformation came not from Jesus himself acting as a part of the Godhead, but from the activity of the community that provides the cauldron for such transformations to take place.  Communion is communal.  When we share food, when we break bread together, when we partake of the elements, we are acting in an intentional present as if we are open to each other, open to becoming a community, open to a new vision of the future.

The meaning of Communion can be profoundly multi-layered.  What we’re doing, of course, is really simple.  We say some words, we move through space, we share a taste of bread and a little wine – no big wup.  But what does it all mean?  It might mean we’re remembering Jesus.  It might mean we’re remembering gathered communities across time and the sacrifices they have made so that we could be here together today.  It might mean we’re enacting and embodying our own communal impulses to share what we’ve received and to welcome others into community with us.

The last couple of years, a few people of this church have gathered on Thursday of Holy Week for a Tenebrae service where we pronounce out loud the names of those who’ve recently died, we do a Communion ceremony, we read portions of Jesus’ Passion stories, and we end up sitting in the dark for awhile afterwards.  I asked a few people earlier this year what they had made of their participation in Communion during our Tenebrae service here.

One person said, “I think that the ritual of communion represents our coming together as a community to share the substance of life - bread and wine…”  During the quiet and contemplative time, the ritual “allowed me to be quiet, to let myself be led, and to let go of daily concerns as I sat in the darkness.”  Another said, “I sensed a feeling of community and an appreciation for that which is larger than ourselves.  I saw tears in several eyes…  Our practice of communion is an opportunity to ritualize our connections with one another and with the universe, (and I think it) helps our congregation move toward a deeper level of spiritual connection.”

This person continued:  “My participation in the service gave me an opportunity to reflect on the people who have touched my life, both living and dead.  I have yet to attend a Tenebrae service without crying, and communion is a big part of that.  It is very moving for me, a rare chance to really look at the love found in the eyes of others.  I leave remembering that my pain is shared by others;  my love is shared by others;  my joy is shared by others.  I remember that I am not alone.”

A third person admitted that the historical aspect of where the rite comes from in the past is easily lost in the depth of emotion in the present.  She said, as far as communal meaning goes, “(The ritual should probably be) a chance to reconnect with not just the immediate community but with our larger church community and our historical heritage of celebrating communion… (it can be) a reminder of the ways that we are connected with those who have gone before and that we are still sheltered by their care and should still honor their memories...”

And she continued:  “The breaking of bread together always seems to me a way of remembering that life goes on…  For some people,” she says,” it may be a welcome return to a familiar ritual from a previous church life and may help give a sense of continuity to their own spiritual practices.”  I would add, to those of you for whom participating would not be a welcome return but more of a direct challenge, that this might be the safe place you need to offer yourself such a challenge.

One of our children who participated had thoughts about her experience.  She said she thinks the official meaning is to gather together and to share.  It is, she said, a sharing of love.

Since this young lady has attended Mass frequently through the years, she was able to compare our way of doing Communion to what she had seen and experienced in Catholic Communion.  She said she “found the experience of receiving Communion, and the whole process, much more spiritual in our context…  She never feels much of a connection in those other places… But (in our church), there is a sharing of a ‘profound moment of silence’ between the church… and her...”

This is not to say that all the emotions that come up are easy ones.  One respondent said, “I personally find Communion terrifying.  What if something happens?  What if it doesn’t?”  And she continued,  “(I)t feels extraordinarily intimate to me…  (U)ltimately, I experience Communion as a totally isolating event, not in a bad way but in a way that takes me inside myself:  it’s as if I’m swallowing the pain… and following that pain back inside to where it originates - digesting the pain in a way.”

 

In the face of these sorts of experiences, why concern ourselves with mere official meaning?  After all, we are a religion of deeds, not creeds.  The creedal constructs may never approach the depth to which participants can go as they walk quietly through the motions of sharing a ritual meal together.

Or not.  For some, participating in Communion may be a ho-hum experience:  nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing much happens.  For others, though, something powerful may take place, some meanings may emerge that you never would have expected.

If you try it, will it just mean that you’re coming together with a few other people to share the substance of life?  Will it just give you a chance to be quiet and contemplative for a few moments?  Will it give you a sense of community and an appreciation for that which is larger than yourself, maybe even help you to move toward a deeper level of spiritual connection?

Or will it be more?

Will it be that rare chance to see that your pain is shared by others, that your joy is shared by others, that your love is shared by others?  Will it be that rare chance to see that you are not alone?

The bad news is that you, like me, may have been blocked from participating in these sorts of things – blocked consciously or unconsciously - by hurt or anger or ambivalence carried over from previous experiences or by being told you don’t belong.  I want never to minimize the difficulties of facing such things, but neither do I want to let the bad news keep us from delivering the good news.  And here it is:

The good news is that you do not have to be controlled by the past or by your negative reactions to it.  You can live in the present in such a way that a new future becomes possible.  Communing with each other, taking the time to be quiet and to let go of daily concerns, contemplating your connections to the past and expressing gratitude for the gifts you’ve received in the present, stepping across the boundaries that keep us locked in the apartheid of our cultural and social hierarchies, enacting real community where all are welcome to partake of the gifts of the universe…  Communion may offer those things to you, or it may not.  But you won’t know until you’ve tried.  Thursday night, April 9^th, 7:30, here in a darkened sanctuary with your fellow church members.  All are welcome.

 

So may it be.