Communion and Corona

The Lord’s Supper, that great symbol of Christian unity, has long caused contention. We may not be fighting tooth and nail over transubstantiation, consubstantiation or concomitance – but whether the wine should be wine, or juice, the bread should be bread, or gluten free, the cup one, or many, can cause real friction in congregations. Throw in concerns about hygiene, highlighted at the moment by the corona virus, and we can find ourselves in eucharistic chaos.

My experience of celebrating the Lord’s Supper has changed significantly over the years. Like many from a low, free church background, my experience of the Lord’s Supper was of a monthly-observed, painfully introspective, somewhat off-putting communion service. Then into a more charismatic and ‘grace-filled’ expression of church, communion became less regularly celebrated and when it was often painfully informal. Over the past ten years a recovery of a more Calvinistic emphasis on the real, spiritual, presence of Jesus in the supper has led to communion being celebrated more regularly, and more meaningfully.

In the church where I pastor our normal practice is to celebrate the supper every Sunday. There is theological conviction about this, as the instructions of the New Testament seem to necessitate regular participation in the supper. There is ecclesiological conviction as we recognise the manner in which our partaking in the bread and wine speak of our ‘one bodied-ness’ with the church universal. And there is hermeneutical conviction as communion brings into physical, visual, focus what has been expressed in words during singing, praying and preaching.

Yet the concerns of (and for) those with allergies and intolerances (did such things exist in the first century?!) mean that at times we have ended up with three different types of ‘bread’ available; so we have now taken the line of least resistance and use only gluten free bread – though at least one person has claimed to be allergic to this and others protest its consistency and texture. Concerns of (and for) those with alcohol problems mean that we were offering both real wine and grape juice but have now adopted alcohol free wine – though it tastes nothing like wine. At least now we do not cycle through a menu (literally) of options for those participating in the supper, though bread without any wheat in it and wine without any alcohol in it don’t feel quite in line with the habits of the first church. Read More