The Eucharist is an Act of the Whole Church

I asked my District Superintendent to identify local United Methodist churches which celebrate Holy Communion every Lord’s Day as John Wesley expected and as our General Conference encourages. The best that she could offer is a UMC congregation that “serves” communion in a “brief” activity in a different part of the campus between its two principal “worship” activities. Communion is literally a footnote in the weekly order of worship, wedged into the schedule, for those who might want that kind of thing. 

No thanks.

A Resolution on Holy Communion that North Georgia Delegates Will Not See

In January 2023, I properly submitted the following resolution to the 2023 North Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. On May 4th, with no prior dialogue, the Resolutions Committee informed me that the resolution will not be presented to the conference for a vote. The resolution, I am told, is not necessary and only the Discipleship work area of Connectional Ministries can speak on this matter. The rules for submitting 2023 resolutions are in section 700, page 171 of the 2022 Conference Handbook. The committee did not follow its published rules.

WHEREAS Jesus instituted, and in his holy gospel commanded us to continue, the sacrament of his body and blood as a perpetual memory of his precious death until his coming again [1], and

WHEREAS the Apostle Paul declares that the cup of blessing that we bless is a sharing in the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a sharing in the body of Christ [2], and

WHEREAS Jesus said that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you, and that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood have eternal life, and he will raise them up on the last day; for his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink, and that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in him, and he in them [3], and

WHEREAS the United Methodist Church confesses that the Lord’s Supper “is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death; insomuch that, to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ; and likewise, the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ” [4], and

WHEREAS “the practice of the Christian church from its earliest years was weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the Lord’s Day,” [5] and

WHEREAS John Wesley called Christians to receive the Lord’s Supper as frequently as possible, writing: “If we consider the Lord’s Supper as a command of Christ, no man can have any pretense to Christian piety, who does not receive it (not once a month, but) as often as he can. … Let everyone, therefore obey God, by communicating every time he can; like the first Christians, with whom the Christian sacrifice was a constant part of the Lord’s Day service. … As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ. … We must never turn our backs on the feast which our Lord has prepared for us,” [6] and

WHEREAS John and Charles Wesley published a volume of 166 Hymns on the Lord’s Supper in 1745, which the Duke Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition describes as “likely the largest single collection in Christian history of hymns devoted specifically to this focus,” [7] and

WHEREAS John Wesley directed superintendents to inquire whether the preachers were neglecting the means of grace through failure to take communion at every opportunity, and to press others to do the same [8], and

WHEREAS John Wesley prepared an abridged version of the Book of Common Prayer to send with Dr. Coke in 1784 to be the liturgy of the Methodists in North America and called on elders to administer the Supper of the Lord on every Lord’s Day [9], and

WHEREAS the weekly celebration of Holy Communion lamentably fell out of favor among American Methodists through a combination of unavoidable circumstances (scarcity of ordained clergy [10], long distances, slow travel) and human misjudgments, and

WHEREAS the 2004 General Conference of the United Methodist Church encouraged congregations “to move toward a richer sacramental life, including weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper at the services on the Lord’s Day,” [11] and

WHEREAS the Book of Discipline assigns to pastors the duty of administering the sacrament of the Supper of the Lord according to Christ’s ordinance and encouraging regular participation as a means of grace to grow in faith and holiness [12], and

WHEREAS “an ordained elder or a person authorized under the provisions of the Book of Discipline presides at all celebrations of Holy Communion,” [13] preventing the laity from receiving the mercies Christ bestows at the table apart from the sacramental ministry of the clergy,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church grieves for the faithful who are harmed by withholding Christ’s precious gift of Holy Communion, affirms both Word and Table as essential elements of weekly Christian worship, calls on clergy to lead their charges in sacramental renewal, and encourages congregations to take steps toward weekly celebration of the sacrament through leader advocacy, congregational education, experiential learning, and prayerful discernment.

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The Holy Trinity and Metaphor

All human descriptions of God are subject to the limitations of human speech and experience, but not all God-language falls into the same categories of analogy and metaphor.

How can finite human beings ever begin to grasp the infinite reality of God? How can creatures of time and space ever begin to comprehend the divine realities that transcend both? 

Christians believe that we can truly know the one true God because he has revealed himself in the history of Israel that culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the only begotten Son of God incarnate, who now sits at the right hand of God the Father, who with the Father pours out the Holy Spirit on his church, and who will come again in glory to restore and renew God’s creation. 

We truly know God through what he has done and said. However, as finite beings in a finite cosmic home – and that is what we will always be, even after Jesus comes again – we can never comprehensively know God in himself. There is more to God than human minds can fathom or human speech can capture. 

The Unworthy Centurion

Matthew 8:5-13
A Communion Sermon

Abstaining from Communion

This morning we will share the communion table together. When I began my journey to ministry about 50 years ago, it was common to observe that fewer people attended church when communion was offered.

Why was that do you think?

It was not a new phenomenon. When we lived in Virginia near Washington DC, we sometimes visited Pohick Church near George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. Washington helped build the church and he served on the vestry for many years. After George became more prominent, he began to worship at a Christ Church in the city of Alexandria, a little further away. As involved as Washington was in his church, Washington stopped taking communion after he became the commander of the American forces in Revolution. The pastor of a church he visited in Philadelphia chastised him for leaving the service at the beginning of the communion ritual. He promised he would not do that again, so he just stopped coming on communion Sundays. When his granddaughter, Nelly Custis Lewis, commented on Washington’s communion practices, she noted that abstaining from communion was a very common practice.

What was up with that?

The Duty of Constant Communion as a Response to the Book of Common Prayer

Considering this as a command of God, he that does not communicate as often as he can has no piety; considering it as a mercy, he that does not communicate as often as he can has no wisdom. 

John Wesley, The Duty of Constant Communion

In 1788 John Wesley published a communion sermon first written 55 years earlier for students at Oxford. “The Duty of Constant Communion” encourage readers to receive the Lord’s Supper as frequently as possible. The sermon has a simple outline: 

Christian should take communion as frequently as possible because:

1. Christ commands it
2. There are great benefits to it 

Don’t miss an opportunity to receive communion because:

1. You don’t believe that you are worthy to receive it.
2. You don’t have time to prepare.
3. You might be tempted to treat it less reverently.
4. You tried it and didn’t get anything out of it.
5. The church only requires it 3 times each year. 

Several of Wesley’s arguments have a particular focus that is not readily apparent until the sermon is read in the light of the communion ritual in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This was the ritual in effect in the Church of England during Wesley’s life, and the foundation of the ritual that he sent to the American church in 1784 in The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. As I noted in a previous post, Wesley excluded the exhortations addressed to the congregation prior to reception of the sacrament.  The full text of the three exhortations is here: Communion Exhortations in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. 

“The Duty of Constant Communion” takes direct aim at some aspects of the prayerbook and its theology, especially those found in the exhortations and rubrics. Wesley’s purpose is similar to that in the Exhortation to the Negligent, to encourage individuals to take communion more frequently, but his approach is very different.