Small 'e' Eucharist
Ancient Testimony ~ Luke 15: 1-2
February 3, 2008
by Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper

I remember being at the installation of the Roman Catholic Bishop in Western Massachusetts in 1992.  It was the most primary Eucharistic experience of my life, and I will tell you why in a minute.  Its only competition is when Carter Heyward spilled the wine from the goblet all over the lace communion table at the “irregular” ordination of the 11 Episcopal women.  Instead of keeping everything nice and neat, prim and proper, she stained the table cloth, intentionally, with what might be construed as the blood of God.

Usually the act of eating and drinking with God and people like you is a nice experience for me.  It warms me.  But that warmth has been hard to come by.  There are many fences in front of the table, for me and for many.  Today I want to talk about small ‘e’ Eucharist: the essential Eucharist, the minimalist’s Eucharist.  My table manners certainly don’t have to be yours!  That is one of the things I mean by small ‘e’ Eucharist.  There is a freedom to it, at least for me.

Back to the Bishop.  He has since been deposed for sexual misconduct, which is not really part of the story, but could be.  Exclusive behavior finally scares us more than it protects us―and out of fear we do stupid things, to ourselves and each other.  At the time of this installation, I was the Area Minister for the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ and thus represented our judicatory. I was seated in the front row of the church with a half dozen other judicatory representatives.  An architectural fence of about three feet fenced us in―and the ushers were placed at each side of our pew.  Why?  Too make sure that at the time of the mass we Protestants would not eat.  We were all in our ecclesiastical garb and thus a bit weighed down by skirts.  Nevertheless, we passed a note and determined that we would either sneak out of our pews at the time of the line up for the mass or climb over when no one was looking.  The climb was necessary.  It had an absurdist feel as we hauled ourselves and our multiple vestments over the fence.  We ate with everybody else, much to the simultaneous horror and amusement of the ushers.  They didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

When I think of how important Eucharist is, I think of the poor hopping fences to get food.  I think of the invitation to God’s table being real.  I think of the primacy of the symbol of the mass or communion or welcome table or agape meal―or whatever word your tradition uses to centralize table in humanity―and imagine that we would extend its meaning by making it small and accessible rather than large and inaccessible.  I follow Jesus and David here: Goliath is felled by a small stone; Jesus uses seeds as salvation.

Einstein helps me, too. He says that we can think of nothing as miraculous or everything as miraculous.  I favor the latter as sacramental large thinking as opposed to sacramental small thinking, which results in all kinds of trouble, including the disenchantment of the earth.

There is a saying in the Arab world that any problem can be solved over three cups of tea.  When we say let’s do lunch or let’s have a drink, we are asking for more than liquid or solids.  We are extending relationship.  The invitation is part of a ritual.  The language is larger than the language just as the drink is more than liquid: it is invitational, and the very invitation transforms the previous relationship into one that anticipates a deepening.  “He asked me for a drink.”  “My wife wants to take me to dinner on Friday after work.”  Even in patterned relationships, the invitation to eat together extends and deepens what is already happening.  The layers of Eucharist are here: they are ritualized forms of eating and drinking in the moment for something longer and larger.

In Christian theology, populist and incarnational itself, we imagine the table as the site of divinity meeting humanity in broken bread and poured cup.  We mean a lot of big things by Eucharist.  In fact, Christians are so twitterpated by the excitement of having drinks with God that we often claim way too much.  We begin to see Eucharist everywhere, which is a good thing.

I daresay the now disappeared Washington Square Park fountain was a site of public communion, lunch after lunch, guitar after guitar, picnic after picnic: table set, table cleared, food eaten.

Of course I am speaking incarnationally here.  I am using a deeply Christian device to open a larger than Christian meaning.  It seems silly to me to think that Eucharist is confined to Jesus as body and blood, bread and wine.  That is too small a meaning for Eucharist.  Eucharist is thanksgiving at the sight of food and drink.  It is a universal human experience.  Eucharist is also the picture of a table at which everyone is both welcome and also eats of what is before us.  We don’t need a tablecloth so much as a telescope: eating sees more than just its food.

Eucharist is both holy and “just” eating.  It is eating that involves our own life’s sustenance as well as that of the planet.  It is eating that honors earth and does justice.  It is eating that rejoices that the person who picked the berry was paid well.  It is eating that does not fear that soil was depleted for the food to appear.  It is eating that Styrofoam cannot contain.

As a Christian who has a “low” theory of Eucharist in ecclesial terms and a high one in my own opinion, I am constantly touched by Jesus’ problems with food.  People did not like the way he ate.  Consider Luke 15: 1 and 2 (from the New Revised Standard Version): “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”  Many scholars, especially John Dominic Crossan, argue that “commensality” ―the eating with, literally stated―is the real cause of Jesus’ crucifixion. It was finally what he did at table that bothered people.  Way too many of the congregations I have served in 34 years of pastoring have been so uptight about the right way to do communion that they have destroyed the meaning.  I have already expressed by a climb what I feel about the exclusive practice of the Roman Catholic Church.  When I approach sacred texts about Eucharist, I like to start right here: even Jesus did it wrong, which puts many of us in good company.

Tom Driver makes a similar but more general observation in The Magic of Ritual: “…Christian communion services have become funereal, in general.”  I know we do communion differently here, in an agape meal where we give each other spiritual permission to talk and to eat and to be. I rejoice in this practice.  Note, however, that no one practice has scriptural warrant, despite enormous cultural and religious powers claiming attachment to the right way of doing things.

Mark, Matthew, Paul, and Luke have different versions of the Eucharist, while John has no last meal ritual. The codification of the words of Institution in I Corinthians 11 is followed by an unfortunate section called “Unworthy Ways of Practicing the Eucharist.” Different names alert us to the presence of liturgical diversity: Lord’s Supper, Last Supper, Eucharist, Welcome Table, Agape, and Holy Communion.  Each image in turn conjures up a variety of associations.  The issue of different emphases is important.

• a Passover meal
• Jesus’ death on the cross
• the atoning and saving death of Jesus, imaged as a sacrifice
• our participation in this event as a memorial
• our communion with Christ as a personal encounter
• a somber supper where we recall our past sin and guilt and ponder the cost of salvation
• the power of resurrection and the presence of the risen Christ
• a foretaste of the feast we will experience with Christ when he returns
• the future and the coming of God’s realm
• communion as fellowship with Christ
• the supper as a feast of thanksgiving

For some time, the basic fight has been whether Eucharist is a funeral or a feast; whether we are atoning for sins or enjoying human community; whether the Real Presence is at table or some metaphoric version thereof.  My own feeling is that the table is large enough to contain all these meanings and some not yet discovered.  I have been profoundly touched by Catholics who come into Protestantism and tell me everything is great about who we are and the way we worship except for a certain lightness to the sacrament and table.  We are, they say, word heavy and table light.  I think Protestants can cling to smaller ‘e’ Eucharists while becoming more deeply sacramental.  We can side with Jesus in getting it “wrong,” as well as getting it right.  I don’t like any kind of fence, I guess, including the one that gets built around my kind of theology.  If that doesn’t make sense to you, why don’t we go out for a drink and discuss it?

This Sermons uses material from the following books as background:

Defecting in Place: Women Claiming Responsibility for Their Own Spiritual Lives, by Miriam Therese Winter, Adair Lummis, and Allison Stokes

Of Windows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts, by Reta Halteman Figer

“Reimagining Communion,” a lecture given by Bruce Chilton

“Reimagining Communion,” a lecture given by Hal Taussig

Sex, Race, and God: Christian Feminism in Black and White, by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

Small E Eucharist, by Miriam Therese Winter 

Soul Banquets: How Meals Become Mission in the Local Congregation, by John Koenig