On Sunday 12th June the Eucharist was celebrated with a preached commentary. We hope to make available an expanded version as a leaflet left at the back of the church. In the meantime here is what was said at that Eucharist. It’s purpose was to show where the various parts of the service come from, and how they fit together, and so to discover a deeper and perhaps more prayerful sense in what we do here week by week.
So to begin, if we were to travel, Dr Who-like back to the first century, we would find ourselves not in a church but in someone’s house. It would be a Sunday evening, at the end perhaps of a difficult and depressing week; we would have brought with us food for a meal. If we were a tradesman or a slave we would be hoping that the richer people here would be sharing their food with us. During the meal we might sing some psalms or spiritual songs; we would listen to readings from the Old and New Testament and an explanation of their meaning, and then as the climax of the meal, the host or the visiting preacher would repeat the words Jesus used at the last supper over the bread and wine and we would all share in it as it was passed round. And in doing this we might be reminded of the story in Luke’s gospel of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were feeling hopeless and depressed; they had the Scriptures explained to them, so that their hearts were lightened; they came together with a stranger for an evening meal; and then in the breaking of bread they had a vision of Jesus; they knew him and understood, as now in the house at the end of this meal or love feast as it could be called, we might feel the presence of Jesus and understand as the bread is passed round.
Our more formal service which grew out of that early meal. We begin with a process of preparation. There is the traditional greeting and a simple statement of the focus of this Eucharist, and then we call to mind our sins. This part of the service isn’t as old as the rest. In the middle ages many people thought the bread and the wine were so holy and awesome that they weren’t good enough to receive it; so though they watched, they rarely received. When the Church of England evolved as part of the Reformation in the 16th century, Cranmer and his fellow bishops wanted people to receive communion more often. So they put into their new communion service a prayer of confession and a prayer of absolution reassuring people of God’s forgiveness in the hope that they would feel more confident to receive communion.
When we say the confession as well as in the silence before the prayer, we are thinking of what we regret in our behaviour over the past week, and the things that we should be trying to resolve. Starting the service in this way means that by the end of it we may have discovered the strength to do something about the things we are confessing. The Gloria which follows, combines both an ongoing sense of penitence and a sense of God’s glory and goodness it’s a poem at least 1600 years old. The collect does what it’s title suggests it’s a prayer for collecting or summing up our thoughts to focus on this particular Eucharist and the set of readings chosen by the Church for reading in all churches today.
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The next section, known as the ministry of the Word, is modelled on what used to happen in a Synagogue service in Jesus’ day. He would go to the synagogue; he would sing a psalm and hear readings from Scripture with a common theme; he would listen to a sermon or sometimes he would be invited to give the sermon. And he would hear prayers which thanked God for what he had done in the past and which asked God to go on helping and blessing his people. So it was natural for the earliest Christians to combine what they had been used to in the synagogue with the ceremony of the bread and wine. And I guess if we went to a synagogue today we would see the similarities and understand more clearly our Jewish roots.
On the whole our services are rather shorter than those of the early and middle ages, but perhaps one change you might regret was that for many centuries there was no sermon. And only for the last thousand years have we been saying the Creed. The intercessions were however an important part of the early church’s worship; there is an important progression here; we move from listening to Scripture, to hearing it explained, and then we pray. Preaching should always lead to the desire to pray for someone or something or even for oneself. And then having prayed, we greet our neighbour. The peace is a very ancient gesture, it symbolises our reconciliation with our neighbour before we offer ourselves to God for the communion.
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The offertory procession, like so much in this service, is another important part of the central symbolism. Bread and wine are about to be offered to God at the altar. They come up from the congregation; they are given by you. And in the bread and the wine you are as it were giving yourselves to God. As you see people come up to the altar with the bread and the wine and the collection you might mentally offer yourself to God to be changed as the bread and wine are to be changed. How they are changed we shall consider in a moment. To start the great prayer of thanksgiving, the celebrant greets you with the ancient words ‘Lift up your hearts’. Then he prays a prayer remembering first what God has done for us. Originally the celebrant would make this bit of the service up for himself – he would improvise. Now there are various set prayers followed by the Sanctus, the words, ‘Holy holy, holy’ written by the prophet Isaiah; then we hear the words Jesus used over the bread and the wine at the last supper; and the holy spirit is invoked to transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Christians have often been deeply divided about what happens now.
I think it is simplest to say that through our self offering and our prayer God can change us as we receive the bread and wine, because Jesus is present in, or with or through this bread and this wine. Here God makes us more Christ-like if we are prepared to work with him. That’s what it means to receive worthily to be prepared to be changed by God in whatever way we need to be changed. That’s what we might be saying to God at the moment we receive communion, ‘Lord, by this bread and wine, change me as you would have me changed.’
And just one practical note about receiving communion; when I went once to the cathedral in Addis Ababa I was struck by the children who came back from the altar after their blessing or communion with their hands over their mouths looking as though they had just experienced something of tremendous importance. What happens at the altar rail is holy; grown-ups and children alike should in their own ways treat it as a very special moment; for example by not rising too quickly when the person next to you is still receiving the chalice, because what we are receiving is the possibility of new and transformed life.
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There’s a lot we’ve had to leave out in this brief survey; the Lord’s prayer said as close as possible to the prayer over the bread and wine which makes the life of Jesus present; the breaking of the bread which symbolises the breaking of Jesus’ body on the cross; the very ancient chant of the Agnus Dei (O Lamb of God) with it’s plea for the reality of the peace which earlier we have offered each other; and then the very simple ending; we give thanks for what has happened, and we are blessed and dismissed; get going out into the world to live the new life which we have been given through this whole act of holy communion go out and create communion with all the people you meet, in the Lord’s name. Amen.
Stephen Tucker