Ramblings On Tradition and Eucharist

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.