Insights from Behind the Iron Curtain

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 4 December 2014 5 Comments
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Question

I read your essays and have read some of your books and have enjoyed both. You certainly give us a lot to think about and a new way of viewing our faith, which I appreciate so much. However, I was wondering, given your analysis of our current liturgy, what would be your ideal look like for an Episcopal Eucharist? Would you start over and rewrite it completely or just replace some of the verbiage in some of the prayers/creeds?

 

Answer

Dear Laura,

If you study the history of the Eucharist, you will see that it has gone through many transformations. It began as a fellowship meal in which the followers of Jesus could reenact liturgically the moment of the birth of their faith story. At that time, it was patterned after the Passover, which reenacted liturgically the birth of the Jewish nation and filled the Jewish people with a sense of their national purpose and their national destiny. Today the Eucharist has developed other elements designed to celebrate the identity of the worshippers as a community banded together in a common cause. It also catches up the human reality that sharing a meal with others builds relationships, enhances trust and creates interdependence. No relationship ever grows until food is shared and in that process the food becomes sacramental. The word “companion” means literally “one with whom bread is shared.”

Onto these primary meanings, lots of other things have been layered to the Eucharist time after time in Christian history. The Eucharist has come to be thought of as a meeting place with the Christian Lord, an experience that was later transformed into all sorts of magical claims like transubstantiation, consubstantiation and the doctrine of “The Real Presence.” It was later used as the bedrock of clerical power, when only the ordained priest could do the magic and so the people became dependent on priestly power for their salvation.

Today across the spectrum of Christian traditions one can see many of these themes sometimes intermingling. The Eucharist of the future needs to have at the least these features:

1. It is a fellowship meal where followers of Jesus can gather round a common table.

2. It must serve to identify and to perpetuate the meaning the community was created to fulfill.

3. It must define who we Christians are and why.

4. It must reflect the values of the moment. That is, it must not be used as a means to exclude anyone from the table of fellowship. I have always loved a sign I first saw in Redeemer Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey, that announced boldly “the only pre-requisite for receiving Communion in this church is that you be hungry.”

The Eucharist will always mean different things to different people, but in my opinion, these things are essential.

John Shelby Spong

 

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