The Eucharist

The Eucharist

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.[1]

In traditional Roman Catholic masses, the pinnacle of the service is the celebration of the Eucharist – sharing the body and blood of Christ. The ritual blessing of the bread and the wine is believed to transform these common earthly elements of food and drink into the actual body and blood of the Christ to be consumed by faithful parishioners as spelled out by Jesus in the cryptic passage above. The belief is that by doing so, the parishioner abides in the Christ as the Christ abides in them.

With the advent of Protestantism in the 16^th Century, a product of the Age of Enlightenment, the pinnacle of worship services became the sermon – the preacher’s intellectual or philosophical sharing of their understanding of some portion of scripture. The Eucharist in Protestantism came to be called communion, but largely without the expectation of a religious ritual causing the transformation bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. That sort of magical hocus-pocus does not sit well with intellectuals, so communion is done as a symbolic remembrance of the Last Supper between Jesus and his disciples.

Interestingly, most Protestant churches also substitute grape juice for wine, likely due to a number of ethical and legal concerns about serving alcoholic beverages in church and to people of all ages. It is interesting that wine is grape juice that has been transformed by yeast, one of the common analogies Jesus used to describe the kingdom of God. I believe wine was a more common drink than water in Jesus’ day because the yeast purified it, making it healthier and safer to drink than the often-polluted water. In addition, wine in his day was a diluted version of what we drink today, making it less likely for someone to become intoxicated from it. I may be pursuing a distinction without a difference, but one way to view the migration from wine to grape juice is as an expression of how Protestants rejected many of the non-intellectual aspects of Roman Catholic worship. When the substance used by Jesus as an analogy for the impact of the kingdom of heaven (yeast) is removed from the wine, one is left with grape juice. No doubt, Jesus used yeast as an example of something mysterious causing a magical transformation in something else. By removing the transforming magic that yeast works on grape juice, Protestants removed an element of mystery in worship and replaced it with something more palatable to the intellectual mind, as if to make God less magical and more knowable.

The same can be said of bread. I grew up in a church that served unleavened bread for communion, which was bread that yeast had either not been added to or was not given a chance to work its magic. I suspect it was a nod to the story of the Israelites taking unleavened bread with them on their hasty escape from Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land because they didn’t have time to allow the bread to rise. Whatever the reason, the flat wafers I ate in church for communion were dry and tasteless. Thankfully, the church I attend now uses actual loaves of bread – rich, risen, and delicious – for communion. A much more appetizing representation for the body of Christ!

My purpose here is not to quibble about whether we should use leavened or unleavened bread or wine or grape juice when celebrating the Eucharist or offering communion. Nor is it whether the Catholic Eucharist or Protestant communion is preferable, holier, or more consistent with following the Christ. What interests me is examining the differences in the practices and the motivations behind those differences. The Roman Catholic church retains many of the mystical vestiges of its early days, many of which led to the protests against it and the Protestant religions. Protestantism, as a child of the Enlightenment Age, focused its worship practices more on the Bible as they interpreted it, dispensing with many practices and beliefs that did not have a literal basis in scripture. In doing so, the Protestant religions leaned heavily on intellectual practices, like interpretation of scripture, where the Roman Catholics continued to incorporate nods to the mystery and unknowability of God into their worship practices.

Which is better? I would say neither and both. Intellectual understanding can only take us so far in our search for God, but it can be helpful. Celebrating the mystery and unknowability of God can leave us confused as to how best to defend or describe our faith, but it recognizes that the nature of God certainly cannot be understood or experienced by intellect alone. I will continue this exploration in the coming weeks.

This is the 37thin a series titled Crucifying Christianity, Resurrecting the Way.Life Notes are my explorations into mysteries that interest me. They are invitations for readers to explore more deeply into life’s mysteries. Engage with me or explore contemplative spiritual direction at ghildenbrand@outlook.com.

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[1] John 6:54-56