WHAT IS COMMUNION?
Photo by Erika Giraud on Unsplash.
Anyone looking to understand the Christian faith must encounter the concept of communion. It is most commonly used to refer to the near-universal Christian practice of breaking bread and drinking wine at weekly Sunday services, which we Anglicans believe to be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ (internal church infighting as to what exactly that means notwithstanding). Communion is the “it-factor” that separated early Christians from the culture of imperial Rome: this audacious concept that life, love, fellowship, and God were encountered not in isolation but in a bonded community of believers. It also serves as a symbolic term, with the meaning of “togetherness” and “unison” as represented in the concept of the “Anglican Communion,” or when a church agrees to partner in “full communion” with another. One may also encounter it in the historic creeds of the church, with terms like “the communion of saints.”
Put simply, the term “communion” carries with it a variety of different meanings in the Christian faith, so perhaps it would be helpful to anyone exploring Christ and His church to break down “communion” into three distinct categories; communion as Eucharist, communion as community, and communion as mystery. These categories, while not exhaustive, serve to provide one with an idea of what a Christian might mean when they use the word “communion.”
Communion as Eucharist
The most common use of the word “communion” is in reference to what Anglicans and other Christians call the “eucharist.” The eucharist is the oldest sacrament of the Christian faith and can be traced back all the way to the subject of its devotion, Jesus of Nazareth. Shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus convened his disciples at a meal, where he uttered these words, known as the “Words of Institution”:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when we had given thanks he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them.(Mark 14:22–24).
This strange meal that Jesus initiates is both literal and symbolic. Sensing that the time has come for His crucifixion, Jesus demonstrates the spiritual weight of such a groundbreaking event, the execution of God, in the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine, with the broken bread serving as Jesus’s soon-to-be broken body, and the wine his spilt blood.
In doing so, Jesus is demonstrating the unfathomable love of God—that in addition to feeding humankind physically, God would suffer humiliation, torture and death, to bring all of creation to eternal life, and to share fully in their suffering. The “Lord’s Supper,” as this meal is also called, gives us a quintessential Christian understanding of God and humanity, the belief that God suffers alongside God’s creation as an act of solidarity and salvation.
Christians believe that the eucharist is the most powerful and enduring symbol of a God who feeds, a God who sees, a God who shares, and a God who saves. This is the true power of communion as eucharist, and this explains why in the decades, centuries, and millennia since Christ’s ascension, Christians around the world have shared in this holy practice.
The eucharist is not without some controversy. Christian churches disagree as to what extent the eucharist is symbolic or whether it really is Christ’s literal body and blood. These age-old disagreements have contributed to dramatic shifts in Christian theology, perhaps most notably in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.
Even today within Christian denominations, there are a wide variety of eucharistic beliefs and practices. Should the eucharist be given exclusively to those who have been baptized, and thus have made an affirmation and commitment to the faith and its sacraments? Or is the eucharist an open table for all, a model of Christ’s inclusivity, even among the non-believing and the unbaptized? To what extent is the eucharist a sacrament possessed by the church by means of Christ or by Christ Himself? What food and drink qualifies as “real” eucharist? And what exactly do you do when there is wine left over in the chalice?
These questions are thoughtful, significant, and important, but they all fall far short of the love demonstrated by Jesus to his disciples at that little table in Jerusalem, and all Christians, regardless of church affiliation, can acknowledge that it is the ancient practice of the eucharist that binds us together and grounds our faith in love, embodiment, and hope.
Communion as Community
Central to Christian praxis is the idea of “discipleship,” one’s commitment to following Jesus by living as Jesus himself lived, serving those in need, loving and caring generously for every person, walking humbly with God through prayer and intercession, and embodying resurrection through hopefulness and joy. But how does one actually do all of these things? And what does the eucharist, as mentioned above, or “communion,” have to do with Christian life?
These questions enter another category of “communion” terminology, one that isn’t limited to the weekly practice of eucharist as a meal of wafers and wine at church, but one which extends beyond the church’s walls, the one where a Christian not only receives the bread and wine, but goes out and “breaks their body” and “spills their blood” for the sake of others.
This language could appear problematic at first. After all, we do live in a world where burnout, exhaustion, mental and emotional distress, and trauma are all very real and very present aspects of human existence. How can we talk about “bread and wine” when millions are without secure food, housing, and healthcare, and our criminal “justice” system and military industrial complexes break enough bodies and spill a lot of blood, often without any consequence? How can anybody, Christian or not, be expected to break their bodies and spill their blood?
It is precisely for these members of our human family, the suffering, the barely-surviving, the victims of injustice, the oppressed, the fearful, the poor, and the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40) that the concept of communion as community exists in the first place.
The church is called to model for the world a community which the world has failed to organize and model for itself. Thus the members of the church are to model Christ to the world, and to live in a servant-community of people who orient their being around the needs and concerns of those who are in most need. Put simply, the communion of Christians is God’s alternative Kingdom, which always contradicts the Powers of the Age that say “Greed is good” and encourage us to indulge our selfishness and “grind” ahead, regardless of who gets hurt and abandoned in the process. God’s Kingdom is one where the poor are centered, the marginalized are centered, the oppressed are centered. As Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”.
Christianity does not hold to the belief that the Kingdom of God that Jesus spent His life preaching about and proclaiming, and one that cost Him His life, is some far-away image of nostalgic clouds, cherubs and golden gates, but that, when empowered by the Holy Spirit, it is a Kingdom we can co-create with God on Earth. The communion of Christians is that Kingdom, is that manifestation of Christ’s love to the world, and is central to the Church’s mission to, as the prophet Micah said, “do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.”
Thus, whereas the eucharist emphasizes God’s love for His people, the communion of Christians emphasizes our love for each other. A prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi says it best:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
To be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
It is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.
Communion As Mystery
What does “mystery” mean? Mystery refers to the concept of communion as “other-wordly” or “heavenly”— not, as mentioned previously, that communion is something that exists “up there” in isolation from the needs of the people “down here,” but rather that communion is modeled in both the church’s work in the world and the past work of the church’s saints who now reside in heaven.
One of the most appealing things about the church catholic is its emphasis on ancient practice, and particularly in following the examples of historic faithful Christians who modeled Christ to the world in their contexts, often while facing death. These faithful, called “saints” in many Christian traditions, serve as examples, sources of solace and comfort, and even as objects of devotion or intercession for some. Their collective modeling of Christ on Earth and their enduring faith have culminated in their heavenly union, in what we now call “the communion of saints.”
Though there is wide disagreement among Christians as to what extent these saints are to be revered, prayed to, or simply respected and admired, this mysterious combination of a “communion of saints” in Heaven and our earthly communion of current saints is what “communion as mystery” means. Not only is there a current calling for all Christians to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, but there are also saints in Heaven who have fulfilled that same calling in ages past, and who can humble and instruct us as to how to serve Christ even better.
To be a “communion” in the ecclesial sense of the term is the calling of the church as demonstrated in the words of the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” The church is to be “catholic,” meaning unified, despite its various disagreements, differences, and schismatic tendencies, and it is also called to be “apostolic”, that is, consistent with the traditions and theological spirits of the apostles, the saints in Heaven. Even the eucharistic prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer mentions this mystical communion when it says, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven . . .”
It isn’t just current Christians doing the work of Christ and proclaiming His Kingdom throughout the world; it is the “company of heaven”, serving as our cheerleaders, our comforters, and our friends. This is why the calling of the church to put aside its differences when it can, and engage passionately and graciously in its differences when it must, is so crucial to the life of the church. It is bigger than us; it is transcendent. Transcendence, in love, service and worship, is the true meaning of “communion as mystery.”
Communion unites all Christians, not in specific practice, theology or even belief, but in essence. If you’re wondering what motivates an Episcopalian to wake up in the morning and attend Holy Eucharist, their answer is communion. If you don’t quite understand why so many Christians are passionate about social justice, and why Christianity as liberation is making a long-awaited return to ecclesial discourse, the answer is communion. If you want to know what that weird bread and wine thing the Christians do on Sundays is, the answer is communion. And if you want to encounter Christ, be immersed and embraced in His loving arms, and truly understand both the life-giving and liberating nature of His ministry and your role in carrying it through the world, you’ve guessed it—the answer is communion.
