Back to Bread
FROM THE RECTOR
When we relaunched our midweek service on Wednesdays at noon and decided to incorporate prayers for healing into the service, Adelyn reminded the staff that the Eucharist itself is our most powerful symbol of healing. Although using specific prayers for “health and salvation” adds an important focus to the service, even without them, our Communion with Christ and each other is the principal means by which the church invites its members to be restored in body, mind, and spirit. Because of God’s love for us and the power of that love to bring us out of death into life, our reception of the body and blood of Jesus Christ is how we give ourselves to God for that transformation.
When Communion becomes instead a reminder of sickness, danger, and death, the spiritual and theological poverty we experience has indescribable consequences. Like the corruption of a most trusted relationship, the one who has promised to heal us somehow becomes a sign of what plagues us, and, although we know that God is not using the pandemic to pour out God’s wrath upon God’s people, the loss of our ability to fully believe and trust in the church’s most important vessel for healing affects more than our eucharistic piety. It begins to undermine our faith in God.
A while back, at the encouragement of the vestry, I decided to adopt a radical but important step to help the congregation continue to receive Communion in both kinds without worrying about the transmission of the coronavirus through the common cup. Instead of allowing people to sip directly from the chalice or intinct the bread for themselves, the clergy have dipped the wafer into the wine and dropped it into your outstretched palms. This was a model that was being used in the Church of England, and, to my surprise, it caught on quickly and effectively here. Within weeks, we had, for the most part, figured out how to ensure that everyone who wanted the bread and wine could receive them without making too big of a mess and without raising considerable anxiety among those who were worried about getting Covid from the chalice.
We are now ready to go back to the common cup, and, beginning at the Easter Vigil, we will use the freshly baked bread provided by our Bread Guild and offer the cup without any pandemic restrictions. Last week, our bishop encouraged all parishes in the diocese to remove their pandemic restrictions associated with Communion, and we are prepared to do so. We will continue to provide hand sanitizer for those who want it. Anyone is welcome to wear a mask in church. But we are ready to share Communion without those overt procedures that remind us of danger and, thus, distract us from healing.
If you are worried about sipping directly from the chalice, please remember that, as always, Communion in one kind is fully sufficient—that the grace we receive from communing with Christ is the same whether we receive the wine or not. And, if you prefer to intinct, you may. As I have written before, dipping the bread into the chalice is a more likely source of contamination because something that has touched your hand is then immersed into the wine, but we will not require you to receive in any particular way. As Lowell Grisham, my predecessor, wrote in the parish newsletter back in 2013, those who intinct are encouraged to use care and only barely touch the bread into the wine both because real bread has a tendency to crumble into the chalice and because “fingers are much more unsanitary than lips.”
When it comes to keeping each other safe, there are many other things to consider besides how we receive wine in church. We should not need a pandemic to remember that, if you are sick, you should stay home. Throughout the years, and through multiple scientific studies, the spread of communicable disease has never been tied to the common cup, but gathering in large groups certainly has. If you are facing serious illness or are at high risk and are avoiding all indoor public gatherings, call the clergy and ask us to bring Communion to you. Even though we are returning to something closer to pre-pandemic normal, we know that there are many among us who cannot come back, and we want you to share in the ministries of the church.
I am particularly looking forward to using read bread in Communion again—something that needed to stop when we began intincting exclusively. In the ancient church, parishioners regularly provided the bread for the service until that duty was taken over by monastics. Though I am grateful for the chance to share Communion at all, there is something special about using the work of our own parishioners’ hands rather than pulling wafers out of a box. In a real way, going back to the common cup helps us celebrate Communion with a renewed fullness whether we receive the wine or not.
Many of us have been comforted by our pandemic precautions, and their removal can feel a bit jarring. While lots of people have told me how good it is to see each other’s faces in church again, a few have acknowledged that they are still a little anxious to be around so many unmasked people. If you feel that anxiety about the common cup, that is alright. That is natural. Keep taking part in our worship in ways that help you connect with God, the source of all healing, and trust that, in time, you will rediscover what it means to commune with Christ and the congregation without fear. This step moves all of us a little closer to that, and it is okay if it takes some of us longer to get there than others.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan