remember--it's been a while since i've posted about this--the third side of the chicago quadralateral:
"the two sacraments--baptism and the supper of the lord--ministered with
unfailing use of christ's words of institution and of the elements ordained by him."
the anglican bishops meeting at lambeth palace in 1888 made no change in this wording in their resolution, as they had done with the first two statements.
laying aside the recognition of more sacraments by many parts of the church--seven by the romans, for instance, twelve in the church of the east--there remains problems even with these simple words. my own malabar rite, using the anaphora of sts. addai and mari, does not contain the "words of institution," and it has been accepted as "valid" by at least the roman church, and i should add that i have often celebrated that rite in episcopal churches in at least three dioceses.
and, even more potentially heretical, i have "received" communion--i use that word not because it really reflects my own eucharistic theology but because it does point to the part of the eucharist i am talking about now--in churches whose pastors were not ordained in apostolic succession as recognized by my own lineage, nor who seemed to use any eucharistic prayer. there was bread. there was wine. we commumed as the body of christ.
oh. i forgot to mention something. there was grape juice.
and in the case of baptism, there are of course many instances of "weird" baptisms in the book of the acts of the apostles. (see, for example, acts 18:25; 19:3)
and there are of course wide disagreements about what constitutes the "element" instituted by jesus for baptism. although most churches consider the desired "element" to be running water sufficient for immersion, we often come short of what might be desired.
so, i am wondering, where am i going with this? but, remember, this is part of my lenten koan. i still have a two and a half weeks to solve it.
6 hours ago
2 comments:
I hope this doesn't make you cringe too much, but more than once such "unholy" items were used for "communion" as beef jerky and mountain dew. There is beauty to me in the extremes of this portion of the Eucharist. Together in order, organized, reverent...and together with whatever we could find, however we could manage, and whatever prayer we could offer, we still managed reverence. I don't know where you're going with this either.
if one goes with the "theological equivalency" idea that bread and wine were the most common foods, then of course the mountain dew is all right, unless one is from georgia, in which case it should be orange crush. the beef jerky seems a stretch.
it seems to me that at least part of what you seem to be pointing to is that the "discernment of the body" about which blessed paul warns us is about the body of christ, the church, as well as the body of christ, the bread and wine.
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