Eucharistic controversy

 

‘Twas God the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it, And what the word did make it, That I believe and take it’. In twenty seven words Queen Elizabeth I devoutly summarises millions of words uttered and written about the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the eucharist.  Her words cleverly duck and dive around how the words of Christ are said over the bread and what actually happens to the bread. The beauty of the sentence is its stress on what the Bible says, capturing an emphasis of the English Reformation, whilst not attempting to reduce the categorical and presumed transformative words of Jesus, ‘This is my body’.  The Reformer Martin Luther held to the same biblical faith and fell out with the more radical views of Zwingli and Calvin which disowned any transformation of the eucharistic elements: ‘Since we are confronted by God’s words, “This is my body” – distinct, clear, common, definite words, which certainly are no trope, either in Scripture or in any language – we must embrace them with faith . . . not as hairsplitting sophistry dictates but as God says them for us, we must repeat these words after him and hold to them’.

The sixteenth century divisions over how we understand the eucharist are still with us. Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans are unable to receive Holy Communion together other than in exceptional circumstances laid down by RCs. Formal disagreement continues over how the presence and sacrifice of Christ are found at the eucharist although light has been shed on these issues by agreed statements in recent years. The physicality of the eucharist remains a stumbling block for Christians with some adoring the bread and wine as if God and others seeing them as bare symbols with their residue discarded after Communion. The relationship of the eucharist to the Cross is immediate for some and a visual aid to others. As in a court when a judge asks a witness to recall what happened, and the witness tells their memory, the Protestant eucharist is close to mental recalling of Calvary. In the same court image, a judge can recall a witness, and it is that physical recalling of Christ which is closer to the Catholic view. This sees a special manifestation of Christ’s presence in the elements at every mass and presentation of these elements to God in a renewed pleading of the body and blood of Christ offered sacrificially on Calvary.

‘For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes’ (1 Corinthians 1:23-26). In those words Paul recalls what he received from others to hand on to us, which we receive from him and the Gospel writers, in obediently celebrating the eucharist. Christianity’s Founder ordained this sacrament so his followers might be able to engage with his sacrifice and presence. At the eucharist we join the showing forth of his eternal sacrifice before the face of God the Father, are fed with his sacred body and blood and made more into one body, the Church, the body of Christ. It is the recent recovery of this last aspect of the eucharist, building unity through Holy Communion, that highlights the visible disunity of Christians at this sacrament, whilst encouraging work and prayer towards full unity across denominations.

Disagreement about Christ’s presence in the eucharist centres on how, if at all, the action makes him present in the bread and wine. Reformation differences here are being superseded by common recognition of Christ’s being made present in the rite through the scripture and preaching as well as in his people since Jesus said ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’ (Matthew 18:20). Modern rites, Catholic, Anglican or Protestant, have recovered the importance of scripture, through an ecumenical lectionary, and the sign of peace which affirms Christ’s presence within individual Christians assembled for worship. Catholic rites still centre on the elevation of the host (consecrated bread) and chalice but with a balancing veneration of the Gospel book as instrument of Christ’s presence with his people. 

Differences over eucharistic sacrifice are now more hidden in the text of the eucharistic prayers used which now mention the self-offering of the people. The recovery of that emphasis, distinctive of Anglican tradition, helps build out from the relationship of the altar to Calvary into the lives of worshippers. An Anglican Bishop involved in a discussion about what if any was the key moment in the eucharist was very pragmatic. For him it was the moment worshippers pass out through the church door! The Anglican- RC statement on Eucharistic Doctrine section on ‘The Eucharist and the Sacrifice of Christ’ concludes with that emphasis on self-offering in worship: ‘The eucharistic memorial is no mere calling to mind of a past event or of its significance, but the Church’s effectual proclamation of God’s mighty acts. Christ instituted the eucharist as a memorial (anamnesis) of the totality of God’s reconciling action in him. In the eucharistic prayer the church continues to make the perpetual memorial of Christ’s death and his members, united with God and one another, give thanks for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole Church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering’. 

Though Anglican eucharistic liturgy bears the scars of the Reformation with the studied ambiguity of some prayers, unlike RC prayers, it keeps an important emphasis on both Christ’s sacrifice and Paul’s call for believers ‘by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship’ (Romans 12:1). Eric Mascall makes this constructive summary: ‘To the question which has caused so much dispute among Christians: ‘Is anything offered in the Eucharist, and if so who offers what?’ the all-inclusive answer is not just ‘Jesus offers himself’ or ‘Jesus offers us’ or ‘We offer Jesus’ or ‘We offer ourselves’ or ‘We offer bread and wine’, but ‘The Whole Christ offers the Whole Christ’, an answer which can be seen to include, in their right places and proportions, all the others’. Mascall’s synthesis echoes the age old Orthodox liturgy which pleads at the consecration: ‘We offer you your own from your own in all things and for all things'. A similar understanding is stated in that last sentence of the Anglican-RC statement quotation on the nature of the eucharistic sacrifice, that we ‘enter into the movement of Christ’s self-offering’.

If any synthesis is possible from the five century eucharistic controversy it might be in this missionary aspect. Jesus uses our participation in the eucharist as a means of bringing us and the world into what he wants them to be. As the Orthodox priest and author Alexander Schmemann expresses it: ‘When man stands before the throne of God, when he has fulfilled all that God has given him to fulfil, when all sins are forgiven, all joy restored, then there is nothing else for him to do but give thanks. Eucharist (thanksgiving) is the state of perfect man. Eucharist is the life of paradise. Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God's creation, redemption and gift of heaven. But this perfect man who stands before God is Christ. In him alone all that God has given man was fulfilled and brought back to heaven. He alone is the perfect eucharistic being. He is the eucharist of the world. In and through this eucharist the whole creation becomes what it always was to be and yet failed to be’. Day by day Christians have an invitation to participate in a blessing and distribution of bread and wine that impacts the cosmos through the eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus who died in our place and comes here and now, there and then, to be in our place and that of the whole world before our Father. His institution of the eucharist calls forth obedience - ‘do this in remembrance of me’ - but more profoundly obedient self-offering in his own for our salvation and that of the whole world. ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (Hebrews 10:7).