Are we really going to talk about communion?

Yes we are! But I’m gonna have to ask you to bear with me at first. I promise we’ll get there.

I am a contradiction. I have some key parts of myself that are quite a paradox.

On the one hand, I am a person of patterns and habits. I love repeating familiar things. I love remembering, reminiscing, being sentimental. Driving out past St. Paul is a familiar, spiritual experience for me, and has been for 20 years. When I go to a wedding, I make it a practice to say the traditional Quaker vows I said to Elaine on our wedding day. Aubrey and I have all sorts of verbal exchanges that we repeat over and over again…like whenever she runs ahead of me and beats me to something, one of us will say, “Hey! You’re faster than a pastor! Remember?” And we’ll laugh, remembering the first time she came up with that rhyme.

Those repetitions end up being shared experiences that express our love to each other. I have more things like that then I can count.

But on the other hand, I am a person who is constantly looking for new expressions, new things, new ways to act. Back when we only had one computer that we shared, I would drive Elaine crazy because I was always moving things around and changing the ways you opened programs. She never knew where anything was, because I was always trying to find a faster, better way of organizing things.

I like to put my iPod on “shuffle songs” so that I’m surprised by what comes next. I’m constantly making our pastoral team evaluate and rethink our patterns of how we do our goals, or how we think of celebrating the holidays. Sometimes, I think my motto is, “If it ain’t broke…then it’s safe to mess with it!”

Perhaps because I’m a contradiction, when it comes to communion, I can identify with very different perspectives.

Friends have had a historic practice of a living communion with God that is not dependent upon the elements of bread and wine. Because things we do over and over again can sometimes become stale and rote and without meaning, Friends have challenged believers to always look for the huge variety of ways God is speaking.

My “always new” side loves this. How can I find a real encounter with God in ever-new ways? Quakers have said, “It’s not that we don’t do communion or don’t have sacraments. It’s that we believe EVERYTHING in life can be an opportunity for communion with God. EVERYTHING-a bird flying, a conversation with a friend, a book we read, a worship gathering, the touch of a loved one-everything can be a touch of God’s grace.”

But my other side, my patterned side, my reminiscing side can relate to those who use communion with the elements as a regular, ever-deepening way to experience the forgiveness of Christ, and the connection we have to one another as his body, and to remember the powerful, saving work that Jesus did on the cross.

We really do need to talk about communion.

Some don’t fully understand why NFC doesn’t practice communion with the elements of bread and wine, and question whether the Quaker view is biblical, which causes defensiveness and pain.

Some present the Quaker view in a way that seems arrogant or elitist, like Friends have come to a “higher understanding” than anyone else, and this causes defensiveness and pain as well.

I’ve had many, many good conversations this week.

Some in person, some over e-mail, some via books with people who are long dead. I’ve asked people who aren’t from a Friends background what they miss about communion with the elements. I’ve asked long time Quakers what’s most meaningful about the Friends’ position. I’m only reading a very few of the things they wrote, but all of them helped me greatly in preparing.

It’s made me think again and again of the “groundrules” that I suggested at the beginning of this journey. Our goal is to move closer to Christ. We are not trying to win theological arguments or construct indestructible systems.

The primary goal is a true, deep, authentic, rich, and beautiful intimacy with our Creator God through the work of his son Jesus Christ, by means of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

In some ways, Friends stand alone and apart from every other denomination.

Just about every other church practices communion with the elements. But when we push deeper, the picture isn’t quite so unified. Some practice with a whole meal, while others have just the wine and the bread. Or the grape juice. Or the unleaven bread. Or the crackers. Or the wafers.

Some practice it every week on Sunday morning, others quarterly in the evening, and everything in between. Some teach that the elements literally turn into the physical body and blood of Christ, while others say that Christ’s presence is simply always with, under, around and over the elements. Some see it as a means by which God actually transmits forgiveness and special grace to us, while others experience it as a reminder and symbol of Christ’s work on the cross and our unity as his people, as his body.

I’m running the risk of boring some here, but I want to be clear about the great variety of things different branches of the church believe about communion. Some practice an open table, which means anyone can take communion, while others limit who can participate to just their own members in good standing. In some traditions people offer the elements to each other, while in other traditions only a male priest or deacon or pastor can distribute the elements.

At times in the history of the church, and even to some extent today, these differences have caused great division.

The very practice that is intended to be a mark of our connection with God and our unity with each other has instead divided us and become in some instances a means of power and control. In the 1500’s and 1600’s, people were even killing each other over these issues.

We’re not killing each other today. I bring it up, though, to better understand in what environment Friends developed their position, as well as to remind us that there isn’t a common, unified understanding that only Friends lie outside of.

George Fox and other early Friends had the life-changing experience of deeply encountering Jesus.

For a variety of reasons, these early Friends did not find this real Jesus in the existing churches of their day. But God became real! Powerful! Awesome! Tangible!

And those experiences, experiences of God outside of “church”, outside of common practices, apart from a priest or even a church building…out of the real experience of God, the Friends’ movement began.

This is why it is not at all accurate to say Friends don’t practice communion. The whole basis of Friends theology and experience is real communion with God!

This was everything! And the experience was available to anyone, anywhere. No priest could limit it, no experience could contain it. As individuals and as a gathered community, this was the experience Friends sought. The bickering over how the elements were given and who could give them seemed so utterly pale in comparison to the rich experience of the living God.

So Friends developed their beliefs after their experience, and they addressed a lot of the questions that are still present today.

Didn’t Jesus ask us to take bread and wine and do this in remembrance of him? Doesn’t the bible teach communion with the elements?

Quakers and many other students of the bible have noticed some things. 3 of the gospels tell about the Last Supper meal Jesus has with his disciples, where he shares wine and bread at a Passover meal (John alone doesn’t have this). Out of the gospels, only Luke has the words, “Do this in remembrance of me;” Paul also recounts these words of Jesus in 1 Corinthians.

What is the “this” that Jesus says to do? Many people think the best answer is the Passover meal. Whenever you remember how God saved all of you and delivered you out of Egypt with this meal, remember me. Remember my death that is your salvation, your deliverance. Do the Passover in remembrance of me.

There is no doubt that the early church practiced some form of communion, of the Eucharist, very soon after the time of Christ. But a solid, biblical argument can be made that Jesus did not command it as a new practice, but asked them to re-purpose their experience of Passover.

It’s interesting to look at the book of John, and notice the differences.

Talli read one of the passages I chose for today, John 15. The chapter begins with Jesus saying “I am the vine”–that would clearly have been heard by the early church as a connection to the wine taken at the Eucharist. In John 15, though, it is a beautiful description of the spiritual communion that Friends hold dear. Draw every part of your life from the vine! Remain and abide and make your home in me, and I will do the same in you. You are loved, you bear fruit, and you find your home in a deep, real, all-the-time connection with me.

The other passage I chose is much longer, John 6, where Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” John 6, the bread of life, and John 15, the vine, seem to be John’s extended teachings on what communion is all about.

I’m going to ask you to look carefully this week, if you haven’t already, at John 6. I don’t have time to read it all today. It begins with Jesus feeding the five thousand, by miraculously providing them enough bread. People chase him all the way around the Sea of Galilee, because they want more of this bread, and Jesus says, “Look, you’re missing the point. This isn’t about bread for your stomachs. This is about me. I’m the bread. I’m God’s coming-down-right-now-from-heaven bread. I’m the foundation of your diet. I’m more a sign of God’s presence than the manna God gave you in the wilderness long ago. I’m everything you need to live forever. Eat me up! Feed on me!”

It’s the same message, really, as John 15. I’m everything you need.

And if one thinks of it as John’s explanation for what communion is all about…well, when early Quakers did this, the fact that Jesus corrected everyone’s desire for literal bread became a teaching point that communion is not about literal food. It’s an example of something much deeper and richer and more vital: basing everything in your life on a real spiritual encounter with Christ, an encounter that feeds you and equips you and ushers you into life with God forever.

This is the biblical foundation that Friends rest on. We look as well to the teachings of Acts and of Paul that the physical act of circumcision is not required to follow Jesus, but a circumcision of the heart is: a new covenant and relationship is in place.

I want to be clear: I’m sharing this to explain how Friends see our practice as biblical; I’m not saying you must believe this, or that it is the only interpretation possible.

What led Friends to emphasize a communion not limited to wine and bread?

It was a passionate belief that God wants a real, spiritual, life-giving encounter with each of us! This is the Friends’ view at its best.

We have freedom from encountering God through a particular act given by particular people at a particular time. Life is an ongoing pursuit of God, as God reveals God’s self through any and all possible means!

As I asked people from other church backgrounds what they miss about communion with the elements, it’s crystal clear that we owe them the courtesy of hearing the best of what they are saying.

Their longing is not for a special grace to save us. It’s not a desire to limit God. No, if we take them at their best, people are longing for a tangible experience that will help them better encounter the living God, and remember the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Here’s one example out of many:

I do miss communion [with the elements] because it was a time where I entered into a place of deep contemplation of the life and work of Christ. It was often very convicting, thinking of the body and blood of Christ, and yet it was also a celebration of God’s redemptive presence in our world. The Eucharist reminds me of how much God has always loved humanity, and what incredible lengths God would go to in order to demonstrate that love and redeem a world mired in sin.

I’m a convinced Quaker, and if we had more time, I would tell you some of my story.

I have found great meaning in Friends’ teaching about communion. But I see some dangers in how some have pushed our beliefs. I also think we are guilty, at least here at NFC, of not being frequent and clear enough to remember the work of Christ on the cross, and to celebrate our community together because of it. We are guilty, perhaps, not of a faulty belief, but a faulty practice. In saying that “everything is a way to remember and encounter”…perhaps we’ve made it easier to slip into nothing causing us to remember.

I think repeated practices or symbols, whether that’s communion with the elements or a zillion other things, I think they all CAN detract from the reality of the thing they are symbolizing.

But sometimes, Quakers imply or say outright that symbols or rituals ALWAYS lessen the reality. I’ve come to realize that I strongly disagree with that position.

Thomas Kelly wrote about “Quakers and Symbolism”. I found it to be one of the most helpful things I’ve ever read about what we believe…and at the same time, one of the most troubling. Here’s one of his most troubling parts:

“Ritualistic groups believe that the symbol is increasingly invested with meaning, while Quakers believe that the symbol is increasingly divested of meaning as time goes by.”

Symbols, Kelly says, always lose meaning over time. But the pattern part of me, the Aubrey’s-faster-than-a-pastor part of me, just can’t agree.

We can’t be defined by our symbols to the exclusion of the reality. But if we give others the benefit of the doubt, if we choose the best of their desires and not their worst, I think many in the world today find the symbol of communion with the elements to be a helpful thing to getting to real communion, a real encounter with the living God.

There’s a sort of clichéd way of summing up the Quaker view: freedom from the elements in communion, and freedom to participate.

Our open worship time is a time to practice real communion, real encounter with the living God and with each other. It is sometimes called, “Communion after the manner of Friends.” I’d like to use the “freedom from, freedom to” statement to frame some questions you might consider in communion with God today.

Do you truly have freedom from?

Are you free from the untruth that certain people and practices control and dispense an encounter with God to us? Are you free from the “transaction” model of worship, where if we do certain things or certain practices, God must magically respond?

And, for those of us who are very at home with the Quaker belief: Are you free from spiritual pride, thinking the rest of the world isn’t as mature in their view of communion as we?

Do you truly have freedom to?

Are you truly free to encounter the living God in every moment of every day? Do you seek to draw from the true vine and feast on the true bread and notice the activity of God as the most important thing in your life?

Are you free to let symbols and habits and acts of worship draw you into the real presence of Christ? Are you free to let your body and your senses worship and encounter God, free from the lie that says the best worship is disconnected from having a physical body and living in a physical world?

Elton Trueblood is a good example of many Quaker writers who have given me freedom this week.

He writes:

“The Quaker attitude toward the celebration of the Eucharist, in whatever form, is today one of complete freedom. Anything that will help to deepen or sweeten human life is to be encouraged.”

“Ours, says the Christian, is a sacramental universe. Bodies are important, just as truly as minds and spirits are important…Quakers do not intend, and have never intended, to establish a merely spiritual religion. Quakers take so seriously the idea that ours is a sacramental universe that they cannot limit the notion to a particular ceremony… How many sacraments are there? There are seventy times seven.”

Do you have freedom from? And do you have freedom to?

May God grant us freedom! This is a moment, like any other, where we can remember the power and beauty of what Christ’s death on the cross did for us. This is a moment, like any other, where we can remember that we are a community together saved by God’s grace. This is a moment, like any other, where a powerful encounter with the living God is possible! Let’s commune together with our God!