Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

Susan and Andrew raise powerful concerns. Clearly, as Andrew argues, we should encourage people to approach the altar mindful that "being a Christian is a life-commitment and not something easy or casual," but I’m not sure that requiring people to be baptized before they can take communion serves that end. Most parishes that officially observe the baptism-before-communion requirement actually observe a “don’t ask (if they are baptized), don’t tell (if you aren’t)” practice that trivializes both sacraments and obscures the relationship between them. Sara Miles’s moving story of her first communion indicates that the free gift of the Eucharist itself can convey its own profound meaning, without any preconditions, and can lead at least some unbaptized persons to seek understanding and then baptism more thoughtfully than those who have been baptized as infants. Some have even argued that the canonical order has things backwards: that it misrepresents the Eucharist as something that one earns through baptism, when it should be affirmed as the free gift which prompts a baptismal commitment or recommitment in response. But the wisest and most faithful resolution, as Susan suggests, is probably to let go of any notion of proper sequence and to let persons join the covenant community in any order God chooses for them. We should look for ways of encouraging all of us, whether baptized or not, to come to the altar, not lightly or casually, but with awe and gratitude.

Andrew, to your question at the end of the first paragraph, all my instincts say "no." I understand about reverence but the only way to enforce these limitations is for one of us unworthy people to judge another as less worthy. That is a cycle I find repellent. The only way out is to see people as Jesus saw them - each as worthy. There are plenty of people who have jumped through all the hoops who receive the Eucharist and then go abuse people. There is just no way any restrictions we put on reception are going to guarantee anything. The only way out, I think, is to (try to) do what Jesus said and Jesus never said that this act was so removed from life that we had the right to put our own rules on it.

Joe: thanks for the interesting discussion. 

I was always told growing up that there was a sort of altruistic motive behind the church's exclusion of the non-baptized from the Eucharist.  There is that ominous verse in Paul, after all, about those who take communion in an "unworthy" manner bringing destruction on their own heads.  I'm not sure we should take that too literally, but do you think there is an argument from the power and importance of the sacrament to the practice of safeguarding against over-casual consumption? 

Early Christian catechumins had to "earn" the right to take communion by spending a year or more in supervised training, service to others, repentance, and also the learning of doctrine.  Of course, being baptized as an infant hardly ensures that any of us has reached the spiritual status of these early believers.  But I still wonder whether the symbolic reminder that this exclusionary practice provides -- that being a Christian is a life-commitment and not something easy or casual -- is valuable in its own way.

Just a little avocatus diaboli...

When St. Gregory’s welcomed Sara at the altar, it did so in defiance of Canon 17 of the Episcopal Church, which declares that, “No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church.” This isn’t the place for an extended debate on whether baptism should be a precondition for receiving the Eucharist (although I think Greenblade might want to make space for such a discussion) but in exploring the various arguments that have been advanced in that debate, I came across two observations in a blog discussion on episcopalcafe.com that pose deep questions about the Eucharist and hospitality.

The first observation was offered by Sara Miles herself: “I’m not arguing for inclusion of the unbaptized at communion because it’s friendly, or a good recruiting tool, or a way for baptized Christians to be “welcoming” to the outsiders. That would be like saying the reason for the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people is to be nice to them, to make them feel good. I believe the presence of unbaptized people at communion is a call to conversion for the baptized. That the presence of the unwashed, the queer, the Gentile, the Syro-Phoenician, all outsiders, is always a gift from Jesus to us. We welcome strangers because our own salvation depends on them: because through them God interrupts us, breaks down our idolatry, offers us new ways to experience God’s presence than if were we locked away in a small room with the like-minded and doctrinally pure. It ain’t our Table: and the ongoing converting power of the Eucharist can’t be contained by our attempts to control the ritual. But we can open the door, and pray to be changed. We can open the Table, and have faith.”

The second observation was offered by “Guyer,” who was arguing against changing the canon: “Politicizing the Eucharist … is a cop-out from the real work of hospitality, which takes place in the more intimate space of the dinner table and, perhaps, the home. To make the Episcopal Church a church that invited others into the home would be truly radical, and truly like Christ. It would also mean something more risky on personal and emotional levels, threatening the self-congratulatory, bourgeois complacency that shouts out loudly about “justice” from … the comfort of the pew. If people want true hospitality, let them toil for it! Let them get their hands dirty by laughing, weeping, and truly reaching out! Do not let them turn the Eucharist into mass-sanctified food dealt out in the name of a hospitality that exists in nothing but name only!”

Both Miles and Guyer challenge us to consider the relationship between the hospitality of the Eucharist and the hospitality we practice in our daily lives.

I have been pondering Craig's thinking about moving beyond the technical to the artistic way of living out our faith. To me, this is allowing the Holy Spirit to move within communities who are grappling with deep challenges, allowing imagination to work toward solutions to problems that had been thought to be unsolvable. This is something that is built into our belief - "where two or three are gathered, you will be there in the midst of them" - but we forget to let that happen, to trust it to happen. It is what I understand the Jewish idea of midrash to be: take an idea and riff on it, in the jazz sense. Tell a story about it, make it work today, on the ground.

So for instance, we at Greenblade are looking at how a deep Christian concept, community, can be expanded to include all of creation. Same idea but made more inclusive and now we have something we can work with at a time of dire crisis on the earth. "Mere appeal to rules," in Andrew's words (I love that phrase) would prevent us moving beyond the old understanding which has gotten us into trouble to begin with. If we believe that we are not going to be left alone in this, that Jesus promised us the Spirit, then we must move outside of rules or we will never learn anything.

Sara Miles took an existing idea - "feed my sheep" - and applied it literally to people who needed groceries. She didn't make up anything new, she riffed on an idea that she found when she arrived. Did that go smoothly, did it always look pretty? No, and she is going to tell us about that. But her actions were an artistic path toward a new understanding for all of us.

Okay, I should qualify what I said about the cover: it was just a first impression, and now that I've been carrying the book around a bit I'm a bit more used to it, though I still keep the book hidden from view when at the office.  There's no question that pb&j on white bread has its appeal; I just wasn't sure what the point of the image was on the cover of a book about someone who is a really decent cook.  Heather's point about comfort food for children helps me think a little differently about it (but still, isn't whole wheat just as comforting?).

Clealry in this second part of the book Miles does go beyond mere "milk" to the "meat" of the religious life in the Pauline sense.  One gets the sense that this is someone who does whatever she does (cooking, meditating, book-writing) with great intensity and fervor, and may be quicker to move beyond the milky phases of things than many of us.  Those sorts of personalities often make for interesting memoirs. 

I am intrigued by a different metaphor that Craig uses above: moving from the "technically accurate" way of living the life of faith to a more "artistic" way. What does that amount to?  Is it another way of saying that strict rules don't quite apply in the way we were taught, or that a kind of inarticulable intuition--almost like a 'muscle memory' of sorts -- is utilized by mature Christians in responding to various situations that confront us, instead of mere appeal to rules? 

If not, then how does the artistic metaphor cash out?

Heather, I like your statement,"many of us are fed some questionable ideas about religion."  In my experience I find most of what people think they know of Christianity or other faiths for that matter is what they have experienced, been exposed to in the media or is the dumbed down and spotty learning we received during our church school days through confirmation. Unfortunately it is hard for children to comprehend the nuances of creedal faith and the depth of complexity spirituality teaches, so we,as Paul wrote, begin by feeding on pablum but rarely do we as adults make the time or show the interest to move past the pablum of Christian Faith.  Sara's experience was very different.  Her training and spiritual development did not stop with the Sunday morning liturgy, nor was she a passive participant in the developing relationship she discovered with God on that fateful day that she entered and received at St. Gregory's.  Instead, she actively sought out ways to feed the spiritual hunger that was now unleashed in her 'first communion."

The other aspect of her conversion that Sara so articulately describes was the priviledge and gift St. Gregory's offers with open communion and its desire to be welcoming and inclusive of all who enter.  Sara was spot on when she said that so much of the church for years has been about exclusion and rules that even she at times in her development would have found comforting and easy.  This past Sunday, when speaking to St. Luke's, I talked about the  the law as the pablum of faith, it provides only a foundation from which to work, or as I really said, as if in skating it allows us the concrete understanding or what will gain us perfect technical scores.  It is when we grow beyond the technical that we begin to gain in the artistic part of living out our faith.  Sara was blessed in immediately understanding that reality and responds to it quickly.  The founders of St. Gregory's lived this by working towards a new understanding of how the sacraments are to be administered, Communion as a meal of welcome, Baptism as an act of commitment to the greater Christian Community and one's relationship with Christ.

Finally, I do want to comment on some of her thoughts on St. Gregory's.  While I am deeply indebted to the liturgical work of the founders of St.Gregory's, I think it is unfair to say  the church was osified as a whole.  There is no doubt that the Book of Common Prayer has been poorly used, and used to stifle the spiritual life of many communities, but the worship style of St. Gregory's works for that community.  The challenge Sara's observations bring to the fore is not that every church community should pray as St. Gregory's does, but to struggle together and to seek its own individual voice as a liturgical communty where it is planted.  If this could happen throughout the church this again would force us as communities to seek a greater understanding as to the role of liturgy in the life of the community and be pushed  towards more developed understanding of the Christian faith itself.

I just got the book yesterday, so I am far behind.  I don't want to belabor the issue, but I was rather intrigued by the discussion of the cover last week.  When I saw it yesterday, I actually thought the sandwich looked kind of appealing!  Is that wrong?

Then I read the prologue, and I had a thought.  PB & J - on white bread or whatever - is comfort food for children.*  You cut them up into squares to make it fun.  Scoot the cross-bar up a bit and you get the sandwich in the picture.  Many of us are fed some questionable ideas about religion as children, as Sara demonstrates here for three generations of her family.  Is it possible - or even desirable - to avoid these struggles?  That's what jumps out at me right now as I try to figure out how to feed my little ones and teach them to think about their world.   

  *Well, MOST children.  Of my two, the oldest prefers to eat one food at a time, and the youngest will open the sandwich, lick out the jam, and then enthusiastically make the sign for "more!"