DISQUS

Jonas Lundström · 1 year ago

To me it is a fundamental question what we mean by "the meal". To me, the practice Jesus instituted was a full meal. What would you view be on this topic? What do you refer to using the word "eucharist"?

Mark Van Steenwyk · 1 year ago

I think any time we break bread together as Christians--any meal--it is "eucharist." I'm using the word simply to refer to the practice of keeping the Lord's Supper. Sometimes, however, we do the wine and bread thing to re-enact the specific practice shown in Scriptures, and as a way to honor those people in our community that like to have bread and wine as a part of communion.

Jonas Lundström · 1 year ago

Ok. I am not sure I follow. I would understand "the Lord´s supper" as a full fellowship meal with the church with the specific intention to honor Jesus. So for me, every meal is not the Lord´s supper, but neither is the thing most churches do when they use only a little piece of bread and some wine, without a fellowship meal.

Mark Van Steenwyk · 1 year ago

I agree. I was being too vague about "any meal" being "eucharist." I do not believe, for example, that when I go to McDonalds with my friend Josh I am partaking of the Lord's Supper. At a minimum the focus of our meal must be the memory of Christ and the recognition of his continued presence by the Spirit.

Jason Barr · 1 year ago

I think you're justified in this, particularly given Jesus' words in Matthew 18:20 "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." After all I've said in the "Fringe Christianity" discussion, I have to say the way some sacramentally-oriented people treat eucharist is almost as if it were some kind of totem or magical charm - we have this, so we have Jesus. Instead I find it more helpful to talk about eucharist as the ritual of embodiment by which we re-member Christ and his death among us and consciously identify with him to re-affirm our in-him-ness.

It's awfully easy to overbalance one side of the equation the other way as well. If the people present are the church and the eucharist flows out of that, then it is entirely possible to get to the point where the importance of ritual and sacrament is left out. I think the overemphasis on the word in many Protestant churches points in that direction, as does the tendency to say things like "you don't have to be baptized - as long as you believe, you're saved". A better route, I think, is to look at how these practices are constitutive and indicative of who we are as the people of God, and also how they are formative. Just as the state has its rituals (registration and voting, tax time, national holidays) to form people into citizens, if we are to be formed into God's people we have to understand that our regular practices will confirm (or, God forbid, deny) our status as carriers of Christ (maybe the virus metaphor works here - in the sacraments we are "infected" with Christ to protect us against the "antibodies" of the world).

So I would say the relationship between the church and sacraments is synergistic - we practice them because we are God's people, and in practicing them we are shaped into being God's people.

Michael Cline · 1 year ago

I really like the synergistic model. That's very helpful Jason. This whole conversation is really helpful, especially for those of us in more "traditional" church settings. Perhaps the common expressions of Eucharist, Baptism, etc... could be a nice place to settle into some of these discussions with others different than us (meaning, less sacramental, less missional, less communal, etc...). Despite its infrequency, for example, baptism is still pretty revered in the local church. A thorough discussion of that more well-known (but perhaps less understood) topic could lend itself to furthering a discussion on what it means to be the Church, to be missional, and so forth.