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    Ministry TeamsWorship and Spirituality Ministry TeamWeekly Holy Communion: A Series
The Rev. Charles Grube, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Dallas, Pa., wrote a series of newsletter articles for his congregation on the significance of weekly communion. Below is that series. Congregations are encouraged and free to use these articles in any way that is helpful. The postings include the following:
IntroductionDear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
On the first Sunday of those readings, I encouraged and challenged us to listen carefully to, pray about, and together reflect on these texts, especially as they speak to our congregation's practice of Holy Communion. Some of us received our first communion at our confirmation and others of us may have communed since a very early age. Some of us remember communion at special services four times a year and others have been a part of congregations that commune weekly. Our reflections on these matters will be the beginning of a conversation about our congregation's practice of Holy Communion. I encourage your questions, joys, and concerns and will try to address them in public ways so that we may all benefit from them. Many of them, I suspect, will be responded to in a series of articles to appear in this newsletter over the next months. This Supper of our Lord has received much attention over the life of the church in writings, preaching, catechesis, and practice because it is so fundamental to our life of faith and our worship. Surely it deserves our attention, too. I look forward to our conversation. In the Bread of Life, Was Ever a Command So Obeyed?When we Lutherans of North America think and talk about celebrating Holy Communion in our worship weekly, we tend to wonder why we need to do that as if it's something we are adding that is unnecessary. This is very much a Protestant, North American perspective. In fact, Word and Meal serve as the two pillars of Christian worship, and have from the beginning (see the end of the story of Pentecost, Acts 2:42). So, in most of the world and virtually all of the non-Protestant church, celebrating Holy Communion is as fundamental a component of weekly worship as preaching and the Word.
He continues, "For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it,... Men [sic] have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia;... tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of St. Joan of Arc... And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei - the holy common people of God" (The Shape of the Liturgy, p. 744). Given and Shed for YouAsk our First Communion children what the most important words are in Holy Communion and they will tell you, "given for you,... shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." And if you ask them who is worthy or ready to receive the meal, they will say, "whoever believes these words, "given for you,... shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." They didn't make up these answers; Martin Luther did. They are from his Small Catechism. And he chose them because they say volumes.
Holy Communion is something we do not celebrate lightly. But neither should we refuse it, deny it, or undermine it. Why would we not want to be given Jesus' gift of himself, forgiveness and the salvation and eternal life that comes with it? Why would we not want Jesus to be a part of us, to guide and strengthen us for daily living in the faith? God's Gift to UsGift-giving has become synonymous with Christmas. Even non-Christians who celebrate Christmas give gifts.
We have once again filled the local malls and stores to capacity seeking the right gifts for the special people in our lives.
Giving gifts makes us feel good, and knowing they are received with appreciation makes us feel even better. God stands ready each time we gather as his church to give us the gift of his son in his own real body and blood. It is a precious gift given abundantly. It is the right gift for us, for by it God gives us exactly what we need—unity, faith and forgiveness—nurturing us for the week before us. And, it's a personal gift, for it is "for you." Yet, as ready as God stands to give his precious gift, we often gather to him in worship but don't receive it. It's like a Christmas dinner visit to Grandma's house. She has cooked a fine dinner for the family and the tree is surrounded by gifts. But the family comes into the house, sits and talks for a while, then leaves. You see the parallel to our Sunday worship without the meal. There is nothing wrong with sitting and talking together; too many families should do that more. But we've left out much of the celebration and purpose for our gathering. Holy Communion fills our senses with the unity of our family, the gratitude and good will, and the peace and the reconciliation we know from having gathered and talked as a family. Why not eat together at all of our regular family gatherings each Sunday and receive the gift God offers? The Word Made FleshHoly Communion is the perfect way to celebrate Christmas. Why? As I said in my late Christmas Eve sermon, Christmas means that the Messiah is among us. God comes to us in the human flesh of a baby born just like us to live among us. The gospel writer John says it in a different way: "The Word became flesh and lived among us full of grace and truth." Christmas, beyond the sheep and shepherds, star and magi, angels and songs, trees and gifts, is about God taking on the stuff of life we identify with to become one of us so that we can take on God's divinity and eternal life and become like God. That is Holy Communion. In Holy Communion, God in Christ comes to us in bread and wine which is now also his body and blood - the flesh he was born with and the flesh the Word of God became. God in Christ takes on the stuff of our life so that by eating and drinking, we can take into our own flesh and blood the divinity of God, being nurtured and fed by God's Spirit and flesh to live in communion with God and with one another. Holy Communion is, in essence, the Christmas event all over again. The difference is that we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord annually, but we gather to receive him and his life for us each week. If you ever wished that the spirit of Christmas would last throughout the year, Holy Communion is your wish come true. It is God's Christmas gift to us throughout the year, not just occasionally or annually, but each time we gather as his body, the church. Why limit God's Spirit, Word, grace, truth and flesh for our life to once a month? Time and RubricsFor most of us, the pages of the order for Holy Communion we use each week in the green Lutheran Book of Worship are very familiar. But did you ever notice the small red print—the "rubrics"—that provides instruction for how to say and do our worship texts? These rubrics fall into two categories: some that say, "Do this...," and others that say, "You may do this..." The commands indicate the fundamental elements of our worship, while the suggestions, or "may” rubrics, are elements that help to make worship festive or have particular uses. Notice that almost all of what we sing or say before the scripture readings is may rubrics. The Apostolic Greeting and the Prayer of the Day are the only elements necessary for our gathering. The other elements of the entrance or gathering, like the Kyrie ("In peace let us pray to the Lord") and the Hymn of Praise ("Glory to God" or "This is the Feast"), are vestiges of days when armies of clerics, choirs, and assistants joined the bishop and his attendants in grand processions down long cathedral aisles. It was a matter of logistics: it took a long time to gather everyone for worship, so the entrance came to be rather long. But our ministers, including the choir, are all in place by the end of the first hymn. So, except for festival days or particular seasons when the Kyrie may be appropriate, we could legitimately eliminate either or both of those elements. Notice that there are other elements of our worship with may rubrics, too.
The answer is to distinguish the fundamental elements of worship from those optional elements that help to make worship festive (the may rubrics). The two pillars of Christian worship, from the first days, are the Word and the Meal. Begin with scripture ("The baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers," Acts 2:42) and review the "Foundations for the Christian Assembly" on pages 6-7 of With One Voice. They testify that the fundamental elements are the word in scripture and preaching, together with the meal. The meal is not "extra." We simply eliminate some of the optional may rubric elements to stay within our allotted time. The more basic question, of course, is to ask if there is anything more fundamental to our life than our weekly worship of God, so that one hour, more or less, is the least we might give of our time. Either way, our sharing the meal seems to have far greater importance than any concern related to time. Command and MissionThe confirmation class has been working its way diligently through the 10 commandments. And in preparing for a presentation I will be doing for my home congregation later this month, I was thinking about other commands we have from God. All that led, ultimately, to this command: Do this. That is so clearly a command that it could well serve as the first example for any elementary school teacher to use when introducing imperatives.
But the apostle Paul goes even farther. When he describes the command of Jesus to "Do this" and the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-26), he concludes his remarks this way: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." The significance is that Paul has just described our mission as the church: to proclaim the Lord's death. Celebrating the meal is not only obeying a command from Jesus, it is also living out our mission as the church and proclaiming the Lord's death. Noted scholar and writer Henri Nouwen, in a Lenten devotional booklet entitled, From Fear to Love, adds this: "Every time we take bread, bless it, break it, and give it, we summarize the whole movement of God's love." Celebrating the Lord's Supper is, at the same time, obeying Jesus' command, fulfilling our mission as the church, and living according to the way of God and God's love. No wonder Jesus commands us to "Do this"! Sacraments of GraceThe Lutheran church recognizes two sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Both are rites we are commanded to do that combine a common earthly element with God's Word of salvation for us. Both are avenues God uses to give us, by divine mercy and grace, the salvation we neither deserve nor earn. This is made plain for us in Holy Baptism when we present infants to receive the sacrament. It is obvious to us that a month-old baby has done nothing to earn, learn, or deserve God's love and adoption as God's child. It is God's gracious gift that makes these things true for the baby. It is then the responsibility of the parents, sponsors, and congregation to instruct the child about baptism and the gifts God has given him or her, and guide the child to living a life of discipleship. Yet, over the history of our church, we have somehow come at Holy Communion with a completely different approach. During my days of catechesis, we received Holy Communion finally as a confirmed member, when we had apparently learned the right stuff and acquired the proper understanding.
Yet the church was uncomfortable allowing that radical statement to have full sway in its practice, so recommended that children at or above fifth grade should be admitted to the table after having received age-appropriate instruction. This is our congregation's practice to this day. Some critics have pointed out the inconsistencies of that practice from the beginning. Are we saying one thing and doing another by baptizing infants who have no understanding about baptism, but not communing them until they have come to some arbitrary understanding? Where do we get stuck not allowing Holy Communion to be a sacrament of grace when we have such a sound appreciation for it regarding Holy Baptism? The ELCA's 1997 statement on worship, "The Use of the Means of Grace," addresses some of these very concerns. It asks us to consider that regular participation at Holy Communion be a joint decision made between the child, the parents, and the pastor, made on an individual basis, and does not exclude communing an infant at his or her baptism. What do you think? Share your reflections, your ideas and your concerns with Pastor Charles Grube at pastorg@epix.net. Yearning for NourishmentLiving faithfully, making decisions faithfully, prioritizing our lives faithfully are often difficult. The options, choices, and temptations are many. That's partly why the regular gathering of the community of believers around the Word of God and the sacraments is so important to us people of faith. It reminds us of and renews us in the faith, priorities, and ways of God in Christ. We need to be nurtured and sustained in that way of God in the variety of ways God provides for us. A fifteenth century German monk, teacher, writer, and spiritual director, Thomas
à Kempis, wrote in his most popular writing, The Imitation of Christ,
We receive many benefits from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. But being nurtured for the way and for life itself is certainly motivation enough to yearn for the meal, as Thomas does. So what does a congregation say to us yearners who are deprived because the meal is not celebrated on a particular day? What do we say to those desiring the nourishment to live and decide and prioritize their life faithfully by denying them that heavenly meat?
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The first two outcomes assigned to the
We have had a unique opportunity these past weeks in our worship texts.
The lectionary (the assigned readings and prayers for each Sunday) directed us to explore a
sequential reading of the sixth chapter of John in which Jesus declares himself to be the
bread of life. This provides us an opportunity to explore this bread of life given to us
in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Gregory Dix, an English monk and scholar, illustrates a perspective opposite from ours in concluding words to his foundational book,
The Shape of the Liturgy, when he reflects on Jesus' words to "do this in remembrance of me" and asks, "Was ever a command so obeyed?"
Communion
is Jesus' action. We do nothing to give or shed Jesus' body and blood.
Yet, this action is direct and personal. Jesus gives and sheds his very
self, not for some un-named community or anonymous, theoretical person,
but for you. As one boy in the video we use for First Communion
teaching says, "Holy Communion is Jesus' body and Jesus' blood and
when I eat and drink it, he becomes a part of me." It's that
personal. Finally, this sacrifice of Jesus for you is not an exercise
in futility, but is for a very specific purpose: forgiveness. Jesus
gives himself in the sacrament and there he gives forgiveness,
salvation and eternal life. "For where there is forgiveness, there
is also salvation and eternal life", says Luther.
This flexibility in our liturgy helps to set church seasons or particular days apart while retaining the fundamental elements of the church's liturgy through the rest of our year's worship. But it also helps to answer one of the most frequently expressed concerns when a congregation talks about more frequent or weekly Holy Communion. The question has to do with the so-called extra time it takes to include the meal in our worship.
When we talk about the frequency of celebrating Holy Communion, we can't find a specific word from Jesus that says how often. We just have the command, "Do this." In the practice of his day and the Jewish festivals, and continuing through the early days of the church until modern times, the meal was an integral part of the weekly, and often daily, gathering of the community of believers. When Jesus said, "Do this," he never imagined we'd be concerned about "doing this" too frequently. From the time the believers "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42), believers just obeyed the command to "Do this."
The church critiqued itself in the late 1960's and, in a statement by the Lutheran Church in America, realized that it wasn't confirmation but baptism that made a person a member of the church, and thus eligible for Holy Communion. It is the baptized member of the church who should be invited to the table.
