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For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11:26
Reflect
I love Communion. I love everything about it, from the feeling of the bread when it touches my hands to the faint taste of the wine to the music that’s playing softly during church when I receive it. Communion for me is exactly that — it’s when I feel closest to the Lord, when I’m actually communing most sincerely with Him. Sadly, I think that most people miss out on this experience, in part because they miss what it truly is.
I’ve always grown up calling it “Eucharist,” which comes from a Greek word meaning “thanksgiving.” In the first couple of centuries after Christ, Christians began to use “Eucharist” as the term for the celebration of the Lord’s last supper to ensure they received it with thanksgiving. Today, that term has fallen away in most churches, I think because so many people associate it with the Catholic Church, and there’s an aversion to all things Roman Catholic among a lot of people. Honestly, the Catholic Church gets a lot of things right, and Communion is one of them … sort of.
Before I go any further, let me say up front that I understand that this is an area where people have some deeply entrenched feelings. With that in mind, I don’t think that Communion/ Eucharist is something worth fighting over between Christians. We can honestly disagree on this point, but I do think that it’s important to have a proper understanding of what the early Church understood it to be.
There are a view very common ways to view Communion. The first is the most common — the memorial meal. Most churches celebrate Communion as a simple remembrance of what Jesus did on the night before He died. That’s why it’s so easy to include it in church services only once a month, or even more infrequently than that. Some churches only have Communion once a year, sort of like celebrating the Fourth of July or Labor Day. I’ve talked with people who have said that taking Communion more frequently will rob it of its meaning and importance. A friend of mine responded to that by saying, “I wonder if your wife, if given the option, would want just one kiss a year because kissing more frequently will rob it of its meaning and importance.”
The Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist is “transubstantiation.” They believe that the bread and wine actually becomes flesh and blood once it’s consecrated. Christ is completely present during the meal because we are, in a sense, eating his actual body and blood. A lot of people have problems with that view for obvious reasons, but Jesus did say, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” so it’s understandable how that doctrine emerged.
In the Anglican Church, we have a doctrine of what’s called “real presence.” This understanding agrees that Jesus is completely present — we just don’t know how. He did say that the bread and wine were His body and blood, but we can obviously see that they don’t turn into flesh and blood — on the plate, in the chalice or in our mouths. But He said He was present in the elements, so we trust Him and take Him at His word.
The big sticking point for most people is one word — remember. The translation from the original Greek to English leaves a lot to be desired because the word used in the New Testament — anamnesis — translates as “remember,” but it doesn’t have exactly the same meaning as the English term. The term originated with Plato, who believed that much human knowledge was innate and came from within. The anamnesis he taught was a process of reconnecting with knowledge that was inside of us when we were born.
The writers of the New Testament used anamnesis when they spoke about Jesus and the Last Supper. This wasn’t a simple time of remembrance for them. Instead, they saw the meal as a reconnection with Jesus. When they received the bread and wine, they believed that it was almost as though Jesus himself was giving them the elements to consume. As such, the Eucharist was taken frequently — not quarterly or annually, but in some places daily. And yet, it wasn’t taken with a light or irreverent heart. Paul even wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:27 that, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.”
The early Church saw the Eucharist as a way to stay in the Lord’s presence on a regular basis, and that’s something that appeals greatly to me. One of the best teachings I’ve heard about Communion came from the Rt. Rev. Keith Whitmore, who used to be the Bishop of Eau Claire in Wisconsin. Bishop Whitmore told me one day that people hear “remember” in the Eucharist and think of a word whose opposite is “forget.” With anamnesis, Bishop Whitmore said, the more accurate antonym would be to “dismember” or to pull apart. Anamnesis, he said, is a bringing together of things across time and space — essentially bringing us into the presence of the Lord as though we were there at the Last Supper. When you think about it that way, the mystical nature of “real presence” makes complete sense.
You may not agree with having Communion more frequently. That’s a personal preference, and the Bible doesn’t specific how often we should celebrate the Eucharist. I encourage you, however, to consider the alternative of seeking the Lord’s presence through Communion as frequently as possible. We are reminded by Paul that “… as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” For me, I want proclaim His name and get into His presence as often as possible.
Reflection copyright © 2021 Doug DeBolt.
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