(Trans-)Substantial Respect

"What is truth?" (John 18:38, ESV - Pontius Pilate speaking)

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life." (John 14:6, ESV - Jesus speaking)

Modern science seeks the truth, but the truth it seeks is a "what" rather than a "whom," much like Pilate. As a result, this experiential truth is necessarily limited to "what works" rather than the "who is" of revealed truth.

Not that that's a problem, as long as we understand how far it goes. In fact, Christianity could sometimes benefit a bit more from "what works" in our journey to appreciate revealed truth.

The case in point I have in mind is the Lord's Supper, also known as communion or the eucharist.

Generally speaking, Protestants and Catholics differ on whether the bread and wine (or grape juice in some cases) are actually the body and blood of Christ, or whether they just represent it or are somehow inhabited by Christ without actually being real body and blood. Of course, there are also many Catholics whose level of education in the faith is not sufficient for them to believe the doctrine of transubstantiation either.

In fact, this is such a big stumbling block that people have been unable to accept it since the first time that Jesus proclaimed it (John 6:51-66). Our scientific sense tells us, "that just doesn't work!" How can bread and wine become the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, while still appearing to just be bread and wine? And yet, that's what the doctrine of transubstantiation proclaims.

My own experience, however, leads me to see that it does work from a different perspective: respect.

Begin with: if Jesus referred to eating his flesh and blood during his ministry, and then proclaimed that this is what the disciples were doing on the night before his execution, it must have been pretty important to him. In fact, it is one of a very small number of rituals that Jesus himself prescribed.

Continue with: therefore, whatever this mystery actually is, we must treat it with utmost respect.

Arrive at: no attitude to it other than taking Jesus' words throughout the gospels literally brings us to respond with the respect worthy of such an important practice.

To illustrate this, when I was young and still going to St. Paul's Presbyterian church, I happened by the church kitchen one Sunday after a communion service. We had those several times a year.

One of the church elders was using a special plastic bottle capable of syringing the grape juice from those small glasses which were untouched, and then transferring it back into the original bottle of Welch's grape juice where it originated. He then returned the partly-full bottle to the refrigerator.

Now, it's important to point out that this was why Welch's grape juice was invented: in 1869, Thomas Bramwell Welch devised a way to pasteurize grape juice so it could be used in communion services without having alcohol, an important matter for this supporter of the temperance movement (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape_juice). This was a much bigger deal than you might suppose, because before that time all grape juice inevitably fermented and became wine, alcohol and all. (In other words, all references to wine in the Bible refer to the kind with alcohol in it, as there was no other kind of grape juice until 1869.)

In any case, what this incident with the syringe and the juice bottle meant is that the same grape juice which had, at least symbolically, been recognized as the same ritual body and blood that Jesus had instituted, was now being allowed to return to a situation where it had the potential for secular use.

I've seen worse: at one church, powdered juice and cookies were served. However, this was a denomination I already had some question about, so I'll leave it at that.

Of course, as long as the wine (or juice) and bread are just symbolic, it doesn't seem like such a bad thing to treat them casually, and dispose of the leftovers in an even more casual manner.

Contrast that with the Catholic Church's extreme respect for the elements of communion, based on the belief that they are the physical, body-and-blood presence of Jesus Christ. Nothing is treated casually. Only people who have gone through a process of preparation are allowed to partake. And leftovers are either consumed by communion ministers in a respectful manner before the service is over, or, in the case of the host (i.e. body that was bread), stored in a secure, locked container known as the Tabernacle.

As Jesus said in Matthew 7:16 and 20 (ESV), "you will recognize them by their fruits." For me, the respectful treatment of this definitively important ritual is the fruit of understanding it properly as being literally intended by Jesus, and not just a nice symbolic snack.

And that works.


(Copyright (c) 2011, Reg Harbeck, all rights reserved)