Something important

At the end of the first part of their walk to Emmaus, two of the disciples experienced something that I and my best friend Brock have also experienced when we used to work together. Every day without exception, we would get together in some out-of-the-way place, and pray, mornings before work, evenings after work. And every day without exception we would eat lunch together, usually going out and purchasing our daily bread at a local restaurant or lunch counter.

Every time we had lunch together in sincere fellowship, calling on the name of our God, even at a lunch counter, we experienced a non-ritualized version of the same Presence of Jesus with us that can be experienced in the Holy Communion service. That's why even if there were two bread rolls and two of us, we still broke each roll in half and shared it, the same with the cheese, the grapes, the olives, whatever we were eating—if it could be divided and shared, we did it. That's because the sharing was better food than the eating.

In the context of worship, communion takes on a glorious and supernatural aspect. At the humble dinner table of love's bread, Christ comes among us in no less real a manner, just humbly, intimately. It's there that we can really touch Him in touching each other, love Him in loving each other, and share His generosity in the literal breaking of bread.

"When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him…"
Luke 24:30-31 NIV

The reminiscence above is taken from an old post on this blog, Thinking of Communion. It's one of my very favorites and I've adapted it only a little by adding more biographical detail, such as revealing that it was with my best friend and co-laborer that I shared these kairós moments. What made me think of it, is some astonishing things I just read in Fr Stephen's blog, at his post The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Let me conclude with the passages in his post that really spoke to me, sharing them with you.

It has been a common observation that when various reformers set about to reform the Church, they declared “all days to be holy days,” and thus rid the calendar of any particular holy day. The unintended result was that before long not only were all days not holy days, no day was a holy day.

In the same way, the decrees concerning the “priesthood of all believers” rather than making every individual a priest, became a meaningless phrase, for without the sacramental priesthood, the phrase lost its reference of meaning. No one had seen or dealt with a priest so to be told that they had some kind of “priesthood” from Christ was meaningless.

The same has been true of the more recent democratizations of the liturgy where the “people” gather around the altar and God is in our midst. Somehow, God becomes lost. All boundary between myself and the holy disappear and I can no longer know the holy.

Strangely, most of these reforms were not misguided. They were rooted in Scriptural truth and embodied a certain amount of truth. But invariably they were reforms that were lost in the “law of unintended consequences.” The general principle triumphed over the particular instance and the result was the abolition of something important.

But God is indeed “everywhere present and filling all things.” One of the clearest examples of this in Scripture is to be found in the resurrected Christ’s encounter with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They conversed and the disciples did not recognized Him. Indeed, their hearts “burned” within them as they walked along and He instructed them in Scripture concerning the Christ. But things became clear – they recognized the risen Lord when He stopped with them for the evening meal. There He “took bread, blessed, broke and gave it to them,” and we are told, “their eyes were opened.” Those four verbs, “take, bless, break, and give,” are always used in Eucharistic encounters in Scripture. They are keys for our understanding. Nonetheless, the Scriptures do not say that there was a “formal” liturgy or even a clearly demarcated sacred meal. Only that Christ was present, and that He “took bread, blessed, broke and gave it too them.” And He was made known to them.

The Eucharist reveals Christ to us. But as Fr. Alexander Schmemann always noted, the Eucharist not only reveals Christ to us, it also reveals the true nature of creation to us. Bread can no longer be the same if Christ has taken it and made it His body.

It is always possible, indeed it has already happened, that we build a fence around that sacred moment and confine it to the liturgy itself. Outside the service, everything returns to “normal and ordinary,” and the Orthodox become as secular as every Christian around them. This is a denial of the Orthodox faith.

You are right, Father Stephen, you are right!

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Indeed, it mustn't!