Ramblings from the
Rector
"Why do your disciples break the tradition of
the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat." He answered
them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your
tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever
speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' But you say that whoever
tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is given
to God,' then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your
tradition, you make void the word of God.
(Matthew
15:1-6 NRSV)
What is it about traditions that hold us so strongly? Why is it that we hang on to traditions so
strongly even after we have forgotten what they mean? Traditions are important to us. They give us a sense of being connected to
the past. In hard times they give us
something to hold on to, something stable and dependable. Traditions also give us a starting point when
we try to learn about ourselves and about God.
So what do our traditions tell us about our church
today? One of our oldest traditions is
the Eucharist, the sharing of a meal among the disciples of Christ. Our sacrament of the Eucharist grew out of the
Jewish meal at Passover. In Judaism and
in the early church, this was a complete meal shared within the ritual. As Christianity grew, our ritual meal shrunk
until everything between the appetiser and the after dinner drink disappeared,
leaving only the bread and the wine.
Over time our understandings of both bread and wine have changed. In ancient Israel, wine was merely grape
juice. Since there was no refrigeration,
the only way to preserve the grape juice was to ferment it. So typically wine was fairly similar to what
we think of today. But sometimes wine
was “new.” New wine would have been
either lightly fermented or not fermented at all (grape juice). This was still wine.
Bread, at least that bread which we use for communion, has
changed drastically. In the early church,
they ate the same bread that they would eat at any meal. Fairly early in the churches history, the
councils of the church tried to regulate what type of bread could be used. They were quite clear that the bread was to
be unleavened and in most cases would be made of flour made from wheat and
water. These breads were typically
either very crumbly or very hard. As
early as the ninth century, a bread pressed in a mold, the early version of our
flat, thin hosts, started to be used in Western church. These pressed hosts have been used in the church
until modern times. At the time of the Reformation,
Calvinists rejected the use of these hosts on the basis that they are not
bread. Many of the churches which
rejected Rome stopped using hosts at this time, opting instead for either a
leavened or unleavened loaf of bread to be broken and shared. The Anglican church, being neither tied to
Rome nor part of the Protestant Reformation, finds itself somewhere in the
middle (as do some Lutheran churches).
Within our denomination, we use loaves of leavened and unleavened as
well as pressed hosts.
Our practice of intinction also comes from the Roman church. Intinction is one of the four methods of
distributing communion allowed in the Latin Rite, but like most things, we do
it a bit differently. In the Latin Rite,
the priest would dip the host and then place it on the tongue of the
communicant. Both the Episcopal Church
in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada have recommended that we
stop using intinction as it is the most likely way to introduce germs into the
cup. Our hands are far more likely to be
sources of germs than our lips are. If
there is a particular reason that you need to intinct, you should talk to your
priest (me) before you receive the host they will intinct it for you and place
the host carefully on your tongue.
Another possibility, in cases such as being highly susceptible to
infection, currently ill, or allergic to alcohol, simply touching the cup as it
comes to you is a symbolic way of sharing the cup.
Communion
bread recipe.
1½ cups whole wheat flour
½
cup white flour
¾
tsp baking soda
½
tsp salt
2
heaping tbsp shortening
¾
cup water – heated
3 tbsp honey – melting in
the hot water
Blend
dry ingredients. Add shortening – cut in
fine. Add water and honey. Gather together and knead to make smooth. Roll to ¼ inch thickness and cut 5 or 6,
5-inch circles. Place on a lightly
greased cookie sheet and mark a cross on each with a knife. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool and wrap or bag.
This bread is an unleavened
bread very similar in nature to what it is believed might have been eaten at
Passover in Jesus’ time. I bake it
myself as part of my personal devotions.
If you would prefer a wafer at communion, please hold out just one hand
when I come to you with the bread.
