The Eucharist and Me: A Journey of Discovery

Our family recently returned to the United Methodist Church. My wife and I were both raised in Pentecostal churches but left it ten years ago and made our home in the UMC. A year ago, for various reasons, Shery and I made a deliberate decision to return to the Pentecostal church in an attempt to reconnect with our former heritage. While it was a wonderful experience in many respects, it was largely unsuccessful and in many ways, a defining one. While all churches participate in some form of liturgy, the formal and sacred quality of mainline liturgy has become an irreducible part of our worship expectations.

Yesterday, we experienced Communion for the first time since our return to the UMC. Over the year in which we attended Pentecostal churches, Communion was observed very little. Ten years ago when we first attended a mainline church, Communion was what drew us in. It was unlike anything my wife and I had ever experienced. The beauty of the language and the sacredness in which it was approached was entirely new to us. It was very moving, to say the least. Going an entire year without that left us feeling empty and wanting more. So, as you can imagine, the experience yesterday was tremendously refreshing.



As one might suspect, my understanding of the importance and primacy of the Eucharist within Christian worship and tradition has been progressive. I remember returning home after partaking of Communion in a Methodist church that first time and being overwhelmed with a sense of Christ's presence as well as being slightly confused as to how I could of attended church practically my entire life without ever being touched in this way. This inspired me to begin looking at Communion as a whole in an effort to see what I had missed, or what my faith tradition up to that time had failed to give me.

Coming up in the Pentecostal church, Communion was a very irregular part of our worship. At most, we would celebrate it two to three times a year. Most notably, I remember New Year's Eve services where we would bring in the New Year with Communion. While this was always a solemn and worshipful experience, overall, my feeling about Communion and its place within Christian worship was ambivalent at best. Since it had never been a consistent part of my worship experience, I never saw it as an essential duty or obligation but an observance that resided on the periphery and therefore, of minimal consequence. I am sure had you asked me about this at the time, I would not have characterized it in this way, but in practice, its omission was extremely obvious.

While it was largely unspoken, there was this feeling that there was something very "Catholic" about the practice of Communion. As a result, the liturgy (or lack of) and language of Communion was practiced in such as a way as to make a distinction between how we (as Pentecostals) observed it and how Catholics and others whose view was akin to theirs observed it. In fact, the very idea of it being a mere observance, rather than a pivotal Christian experience through which the very grace and presence of God is communicated to the participants, was a prevalent mentality. It was something that we simply did, rather than an expression of who we were. This is a very important distinction.

Obviously, there is huge gulf between those who take a perfunctory approach toward Communion and those who, in the language of Vatican II, see it as the "source and summit of the Christian life." In my studies, I was very amazed to find that the majority of Christians in the world take the latter view. The relegation of Communion to the periphery of Christian worship is a relatively recent phenomenon having its origins in a post Reformation climate. Many of the groups today who practice Communion in an irregular fashion do so in contradiction to the overwhelming majority of Christian history. One need only to take a cursory look at the sustained history of the Christian church, from its humble beginnings to its present day practice, to see that the Eucharistic celebration has always had a central place in Christian worship. And so it should.

It is this very fact, that Communion finds its origin in the directives of Christ as well as a continuity of practice from the time of the Apostles to the present age, that gives its practice an unparalleled sacredness. In the Eucharistic experience, we join the momentum of the universal and diverse body of believes who over the last two thousand years have partaken of this transcendent and irreducible fundament of Christian faith and worship. When I partake of the body and blood of Christ within its intended social setting, I am standing alongside all those who through the ages have proclaimed the Lord's death and subsequent resurrection and the hope of His return. I am participating in a memorial instituted by none other than Jesus Himself.

Of all the variations of Christian worship and all the things we can change or do away with, the Eucharistic meal is non-negotiable. It truly is the most fundamentally Christian thing we can do in worship. Christ presence has been consistently perceived and experience through the institution of Communion, making it a certainty. While we may experience God through singing or readings or in many of the liturgical elements of our respective traditions, there is a universal expectation that Christ is present in the Eucharist, when approached reverently and with anticipation. The presence of Christ in all its conferring grace is the wonder of the sacrament.

Jesus told us to do it in remembrance of him, proclaiming his death until he returns. This serves a dual purpose. First, it helps remind of of God's salvific intervention in the world through the life and death of the man Jesus Christ. As we partake of the body and blood of Jesus, we are reminded of that pivotal historical 'Christ-event' (a term originally thought to of been coined by John Knox) where God was in Christ, on the cross, removing the enmity between us and Himself through Christ's giving of himself in surrender to God in ransom for the sins of the whole world.

Secondly, and equally as important, the sacrament is for the purpose of reminding God himself of Christ's sacrifice. It is the building of a memorial before God. Joachim Jeremias, author of a classic study on the Eucharist, draws an obvious parallel between the Eucharist and the memorial meals of Palestinian Judaism. Dealing with this idea of remembrance, he asks who is to be reminded of Jesus? He said that it is less likely to be the disciples and more probably God himself. Through the act of Communion, the sacrifice of Jesus is being pleaded before God in the hope that it might hasten the consummation of the kingdom which Jesus inaugurated. [John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 67-8] Jeremias further adds that "God's remembrance is never a simple remembering of something, but always an effecting and creating event." [The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, pp. 251-2]

To put this another way, Geoffrey Wainwright says "[t]he eucharist is a dominically instituted memorial rite which, not only serving to remind men but being performed before God, is sacrificial at least in so far as it recalls before God with thanksgiving that one sacrifice, and prays for the continuing benefits of that sacrifice to be granted now." [Eucharist and Eschatology, p.67] In the sacrament of Communion we are cooperating with Christ for the purpose of ushering in the kingdom for which Christ body was broken and his blood shed. We are proclaiming the new covenant in his blood. There is so much more to this than a simple act of remembrance but the very grace and intent of God is being defined and communicated through this Eucharistic worship.

My understanding and appreciation of this mystical meal is ongoing. As I was humbled by the presence of Christ in Communion yesterday, I once again pondered its significance and what it meant to me. It confirmed for me that I am where I am supposed to be as far as my local community of faith is concerned, which is something that has eluded me for quite some time. It moved my spirit, making me aware that God is ever present in my life. The Eucharistic meal conferred upon me the awareness and assurance of Christ's presence in my family and life and I am so blessed and grateful for it.