Online Communion?

This one is really just by way of clearing my head and getting my own thoughts straight.  There are a good few articles out there at the moment addressing the question of whether we can celebrate Holy Communion 'together', and if so how we ought to do it, when the present crisis prevents us from physically gathering (for example, this from an Anglican perspective, and a pair of articles with different conclusions from TGC).  I can completely understand the caution around attempting this - novelty in liturgy, like novelty in theology, is always dangerous even when warranted and essential.  But I think I'm in favour of celebrating the Supper online, and this is my attempt to clarify (to myself primarily, and secondarily to anyone else interested) why that is.

To qualify this initially, I should describe our church situation and some presuppositions.  Our church is small, which means that for us meeting online means a Zoom meeting, in which we can all see each other and (at points when we don't have everyone except the preacher muted, hear each other).  We're not talking a livestream or anything like that.  Nor is anything pre-recorded (although I do record the sermon audio during the meeting for posterity!) - it feels as much like being together as is possible when we can't be together.

My theological presupposition around the Supper is that it is intended to be a community meal, albeit a very small one, taken together in remembrance of Christ; and that as it is taken together in faith, the Holy Spirit communicates the spiritual benefits of Christ's body and blood to the church and its individual members.  This understanding rules out entirely the idea that a minister could hold a Communion service apart from a congregation; there is no value in the liturgical act in and of itself without the collective meal.  So a livestream from an empty church of a clergyman reading the words of institution (or some more developed liturgical form) and eating and drinking is not Holy Communion in my reckoning, whatever else it may be.

What is essential, then, to a celebration of the Lord's Supper?  I take it the following elements:

1. The remembrance of the Lord's death.  In a normal meeting for corporate worship, where the gospel has (hopefully!) already been rehearsed in the liturgy and preached in the sermon, this might mean nothing more than the reading of the words of institution, to link the act of eating and drinking in to the gospel story.  In another context it might require something more extensive to ensure that what is done is understood, and is not a mere ritual.
2. Bread and wine being consumed together.  The elements are not there just to be looked at; the eating is an essential part of Communion.  It symbolises the gospel truth that Christ does not stand apart from us, but promises to dwell in us, to unite us to himself and thus communicate to us all the benefits of his death, resurrection, and ascension.  So there must be eating and drinking.
3. Recognition of the body of Christ.  The critique that the Apostle makes of the celebration of the Supper in Corinth is that it is not truly corporate, just everyone doing their own thing.  In particular, this has the effect that the rich feast whilst the poor go without; it is anti-gospel.  There is a necessary corporate element to the Supper, because there is a necessary corporate aspect to the gospel.  To take Communion as if it were merely about me and my spiritual state, and not about the church, is a denial of Christ's work.

Behind these three things, there are two essentials which are impossible to capture liturgically, although they may be alluded to - specifically:

1. Faith on the part of those who eat and drink.  Without faith, the celebration is of no benefit to the individual.  Just as a sermon heard without faith will not benefit the hearer, so a sacrament partaken without faith will be of no benefit.  (Albeit God in his mercy may use the sacrament to awaken and elicit faith).
2. The work of the Holy Spirit.  Only the Spirit can really communicate the benefits of Christ's victory to us, his people.  The Spirit unites us to Jesus (and also therefore to one another), doing really and spiritually what is done symbolically by the act of eating and drinking,.  The Spirit is not bound to the sacrament - but he is promised to those who look to Christ in faith.

So what does all that mean for online Communion?

Firstly, it must mean that any online celebration that did not involve the participants actually eating and drinking would not be Communion.  So we would all need to get our own bread and wine.  Can it be a shared meal, when we're not taking from the one loaf and cup?  I think so.  I presume we would all recognise that sometimes more than one loaf would be used in Communion - for example, in a very large church.  This does not impair the shared nature of the meal.  For the Apostle Paul, every Communion meal is "this bread" - a participation in the 'one loaf' which is Christ.  I see no reason why the bread which each person brings to the online gathering and eats in the context of the memorial of the Lord cannot be 'this bread'.

Second, I'd be anxious about taking Communion online if people weren't able to experience the body of Christ - that is, the church community.  Zoom is great for us in terms of creating a genuine togetherness even in our separation.  I wouldn't do online Communion through a livestream or any other setup where I couldn't see the others eating just as they could see me.

Third, the sheer physicality of Communion speaks to the importance of physical presence with one another.  Therefore online Communion could only ever be a stop-gap measure, which would be grounded in real physical celebration together in the past, and taken in anticipation of real physical celebration together in the future.  (I would reserve Communion and take it to the sick with a similar justification).  The Communion meal is always rooted in past celebration ("on the night he was betrayed") and always looks forward to future celebration (when we eat in the kingdom of God), so this weirdly strained version of Communion emphasises that.  All of which is to say, online Communion can never be normative.

Fourth, we need to remember that there is always another location involved in a Communion celebration - namely, heaven.  Lift up your hearts!  As Calvin emphasised (and there is a great essay on this in Sinclair Ferguson's book on pastoring, which I happen to be reading at the moment), the reality of the Supper is grounded in the ascended humanity of Christ.  We are to be lifted up faith to receive him in the Supper by the Spirit.  I would add that our unity as a body is also to be found in heaven; our little congregation on earth is just a foretaste of the great heavenly community still to be revealed.  Perhaps our separated Communion can bring out that emphasis clearly.

Given the positive command to celebrate the Supper, and given that we now have the technology to make something like an online Communion possible, I think we can do it.  I plan to do it on Maundy Thursday.  So if you think this is desperately wrong, please let me know ASAP!

Thoughts on Holy Communion for evangelicals

1.  There is a real danger that in our strong desire to put some distance between us and Rome we devalue the sacraments in general and the Eucharist in particular.  In particular, to avoid a mechanical approach to grace we can end up denying that the Supper is a means of grace at all.  This is not the position of our Protestant forebears, nor is it sustainable from Scripture.

2.  Whilst we're pretty hot on the Supper as a memorial ("Do this in remembrance of me"), I think we are less good on the Supper as a participation together in Christ.  Maybe it's because at this point we hit something we can't quite explain: how is this bread and wine a sharing in Christ's body and blood?  My guess is a) we probably don't need to explain it so much as experience it and b) there are some useful parallels in 1 Corinthians 10 that will help us to think it through, especially the parallel with "Israel according to the flesh" which participates in the altar by eating the sacrifices.  I've written about this before.  I take it that this means primarily that by eating from the sacrifice together the Israelites were enjoying the benefit of the sacrifice - namely, fellowship with God.  As we together feed on Christ by faith as he is represented in the bread and wine, we enjoy together the fruit of his sacrifice: relationship with God and with each other.

3.  The words "each other" are pretty important.  Paul's warning that a person ought to examine themselves before taking the Supper have often been, for me, the occasion for uncomfortable introspection.  Is my heart right?  Am I eating and drinking worthily?  But now it seems to me that the context is against this interpretation.  The problem in Corinth is that the rich are eating a leisurely and satisfying meal while the poor arrive late and go without.  For Paul, this is a blaspheming of the Supper; in fact, it is not the Lord's Supper at all.  It can't be, because it doesn't fit.  How can we selfishly celebrate a meal which commemorates the Lord's great self-sacrifice?  It empties the meal of its meaning by contradicting it.  But note that the point is not: examine yourself to see whether you are internally ready to partake.  The point is: check yourself to see whether you are recognising the body, the community for which Christ died, and celebrating appropriately.

4.  In terms of practice, I suspect the standard evangelical approach to Communion is a bit too 'head down, keep quiet, me and Jesus'.  How do we reflect the communal nature of this meal?  How does our practice reflect the fact that because we partake of one loaf we are one body?  Last week at CCC we took Communion together seated around a table, facing each other, with a time of open prayer for people in the church, our mission partners, and the church universal.  It was good.

5.  I have questions about the intersection of objective and subjective in Holy Communion.  I wonder whether we often lay a great deal too much stress on how Communion makes us feel.  It seems to me that Paul sees the sacrament as something much more objective - a proclamation of Christ's death.  There is, of course, subjectivity; each individual eats!  But I don't see too much emphasis on how the Supper makes us feel in the NT.

6.  On the subject of proclamation, Paul does seem to think that the Supper is a sermon in itself.  I don't think it needs to be surrounded by lots of words, just enough to make it clear what we're remembering and celebrating.

7.  I wonder if our emphasis on memorial sometimes misses out the formative aspect of Communion.  Back to ancient Israel: the remembering and the celebrating together was what continually re-formed the people as the people of Yahweh, the people of the Exodus and the Covenant.  I think as we gather around the Communion table we are re-formed as the people of the cross and the resurrection.

8.  If the Supper is (one of) the means by which God communicates his grace, the way in which we enjoy fellowship in the fruits of Christ's sacrifice, and the way in which we are re-formed as the people of God, I can't see why we wouldn't celebrate it as often as possible.

Anything but the blood?

At the moment I'm reading through Deuteronomy with our ministry trainee, and yesterday we hit chapter 12.  Two things are striking about this chapter.  On the one hand, there is the mandatory rejoicing!  When the people of Israel have entered the land, God will choose a place, and at that place the people are to make their offerings and sacrifices "and you shall rejoice before YHWH your God".  The sacrifices, it is true, are offered to God, but the meat of the sacrifices is then eaten in a communal meal of joy in the presence of the Lord.

The second thing is more unique to this chapter.  Provision is made for eating meat away from the sanctuary, slaughtered without the sacrificial system.  This is just a practicality - it may be a long way to the place where YHWH has put his name, and the people will want meat.  That's fine - Moses is keen that they be able to enjoy God's blessings in the land.  They can eat meat apart from sacrifice.  But they still can't eat the blood.  That is a long-standing prohibition, the rationale for which seems to be most fully unpacked in Leviticus 17.  The blood represents the life of the creature, and that has been give to Israel to make atonement - it is for the covering of sin, not for consumption.  Blood has a sacred function, symbolising the life of the animal which has been given in exchange for the life of the sinner.  Even so-called 'profane slaughter' is linked to the sacrificial system, and the pouring out of the blood on the ground is a reminder that the animal's life stands between the Israelite and death.

Against this background, Jesus says (of the wine which the disciples have just drunk!), "this is my blood of the new covenant".  In Holy Communion, we are commanded to not only eat the flesh, but also to drink the blood.  Surely significant!

I've long thought that the part of the sacrificial system we ought to look to for parallels with the Eucharist is the meal in the sanctuary.  The sacrifice made, the worshippers celebrate their fellowship with God by eating in his presence of precisely the meat of the sacrifice.  We Christians eat together in God's presence, feeding on the body of Christ.  It is not a sacrifice - the one and only sacrifice has been made - but is a fellowship meal, enjoying together the fruit of the sacrifice.

But if that's right, what does it mean that in contrast with the OT sacrifices we are particularly commanded to take the blood?  Somebody has surely done some proper work on this, but a possibility that occurred to me was that the OT sacrifices never could 'transmit' life.  The animal life given up made atonement, but did not 'go into' the worshipper and bring new life.  There was transfer of guilt to the animal, and vicarious death (all symbolic, of course, of the great sacrifice), but there was no transfer the other way - no life flowing from the animal to the redeemed worshipper.  It strikes me that it is this transfer which characterises the various descriptions of the new covenant in the prophets - not just sin washed away, but sinners changed.  Is that why we drink of the blood of the new covenant?