The Sacred Meal
Eucharist. Communion. Blessed Sacrament. The Lord’s Supper: The Sacred Meal. I read this book by Nora Gallagher as part of BookSneeze (Thomas Nelson’s blogger review program), so I’ll go ahead and disclose right now that I received it for free in exchange for the candid thoughts you’re about to read.
The Eucharist, at least for those in the “high church� traditions, is kind of a big deal. Just how big of a deal is, of course, a matter of debate. Roman Catholics hold to what is called Transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and the wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus. Lutheran and Reformed churches have different understandings, as do Anglicans. Many nondenominational evangelicals, the stream of the Christian faith to which I belong, consider it more symbolic, and pass the stale crackers and Welch’s grape juice accordingly, maybe once a month. The church where I've experienced communion practiced most meaningfully is Grace DC, a Presbyterian church I attended for a few months while doing an internship. At Grace, communion was celebrated weekly and was very clearly not just another add-on to an already full service that we manage to squeeze in now and then. It was my favorite part of Sunday and, in some ways at the time, my favorite part of the week.
In this book Gallagher, herself Episcopalian, doesn’t focus too much attention on what is actually happening to the bread and the wine. Rather, she focuses on what is happening to and among people. I like this, because for something like the Lord’s Supper -- which Christ commands his disciples to do in remembrance of him, the God who took on real flesh and blood -- locking the sacrament in an air-tight theological box with Is dotted and Ts crossed strikes me as a bit like missing the point.
I also like her emphasis on people because, at least with the term communion, it's obviously a relational word. The Christian life is relational in at least two distinct directions: vertical and horizontal. And it would make sense that in celebrating or commemorating communion with God, made possible through the shed body and blood of Christ, our communion with others (or lack thereof) would be important to consider as well. After all, in teaching his disciples what to say when they pray, he connected vertical and horizontal forgiveness, seemingly making the former conditional on the latter: “And forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who have sinned against us.�
Gallagher writes a bit like Anne Lamott, which is both high praise and cause for concern, coming from me. Like Lamott, she is a fantastic wordsmith and her writing is poignantly humanizing and empathetic. On the other hand, just as I don’t turn to Lamott to better understand orthodox theology, I wouldn’t consider Gallagher a particularly strong theologian, either -- she's more of a memoirist, at least here. This was a bit surprising to me, considering that The Sacred Meal is one of eight books in the Ancient Practices Series, about different spiritual disciplines (or practices), and as such not marketed as a memoir. The Religion/Christian Life/Spiritual Growth label above the bar code on the back cover is a bit misleading, though the subject matter is obviously religious and spiritual.
If this is a topic that interests you, and reflections on what it means for messy people in the midst of a messy community of Southern California Episcopalians to celebrate the sacred meal, this is your book. It’s intermittently heart-warming, sad and puzzling, and it's quite well-written. If you’re after a more practical or theological exploration of this ancient practice, however, you’re going to need to look elsewhere.
The Central American church’s impossible dilemma
Somehow I missed it when it was published a week and a half ago, but The Economist has a piece on the rise of evangelicalism (and the corresponding decline of Catholicism) in Central America. This trend is nothing new, of course. But the story has an interesting take on the reasons for it. If you ask pastors, missionaries or ordinary evangelicals in these countries, they'll undoubtedly have spiritual reasons to explain the shift. But approached from a secular vantage point, The Economist writes:
Some Central Americans switched during the civil wars of the 1980s, when Catholic priests began criticising their governments. To the authorities, if you were a Catholic you were suspicious, says Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the assistant bishop of San Salvador. After Archbishop Óscar Romero was murdered in 1980, many turned to Protestant churches.
I hadn't heard this specific explanation before, though it does make some sense. Throughout the era of brutal autocratic governments in the region, the Catholic Church didn't always take the side of the vulnerable and in various ways actually supported the oppressive status quo. Because of this, they undoubtedly alienated a lot of poor and indigenous folks. Finally taking the side of the poor -- as Archbishop Romero did in El Salvador -- would have seemed to help in bringing the poor back into their fold. But the effect was probably two-fold, since taking such a stance would have at the same time scared off some from the middle- and upper-classes, as well as parts of the indigenous population, who preferred to align themselves with the less politically engaged Protestant churches in order to avoid suspicion of supporting the guerrilla movement.
With the region increasingly violent and economically polarized these days, it will be worth watching what Christians in Central America -- evangelical and Catholic alike -- will do about it. Those who confront violence and injustice will suffer the consequences; if not from the dictators and death squads of the 80s, from drug cartels and organized crime syndicates of today. Those who avoid speaking or acting out, meanwhile, may attract larger numbers. This dilemma is extremely difficult to navigate, because the pragmatic answer and the faithful answer aren't necessarily the same. Because of the overwhelming circumstances in which these brothers and sisters find themselves, I hope we in the north will offer them our prayer and support. At the same time, I think we'd do well to listen and learn far more than we propose answers to the life-and-death questions they face. Our circumstances are far less dire, and the last thing Christians in Central America need is advice from a safe distance.
Nonetheless, questions for us to consider in our respective contexts: in the face of overwhelming opposition and potentially fatal violence, does the church have a responsibility to act? Can a church that puts self-preservation and safety above sacrificial love and the seeking of the common good truly be faithful to its calling?
Señor, ten piedad. Cristo, ten piedad. Señor, ten piedad de nosotros.
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy on us.
[Photo credit: Christian Science Monitor]
We’re all dreamers, one way or another
While Congress succeeded late last year in doing nothing about the need for comprehensive immigration reform, and as we now turn our collective gaze wherever the pundits deem best, please remember that the problem is far from resolved. Back when immigration reform was a topic that was fervently discussed in the public square (as recently as December), civility was rare. Truth was routinely sacrificed on the altar of sensationalism with folks on both sides of the aisle lobbing bombs of ego and emotion back and forth. Many of us fell victim to this in one way or another, at times apparently unaware of the irony that we don’t actually know any immigrants personally -- undocumented or not -- though they live in our neighborhoods and attend our churches and schools.
For those of us who are Christians, we’re compelled to consider what it means to welcome the stranger, and no, I wouldn’t say the answers are easy. But I do think the questions -- and their solutions -- matter. They matter a great deal because behind the debates, behind the fear, behind the anger, behind the hate-filled rhetoric flying every which way, are twelve million real living, breathing, dreaming, fearing, imperfect people. And if you read the Bible, you almost begin to suspect that all people matter, and that even if there are consequences for our actions, maybe all of us have more in common than we care to believe. We may even have a great deal in common with undocumented immigrants, pilgrims as we are in a strange, and at times hostile, land.
So if there’s one thing I wish all of us held onto as we consider our very broken immigration system and its possible remedies, it’s empathy. Empathy literally means identifying or vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another person. For some of us, it would be a good exercise to put ourselves in the shoes of the tobacco-chewing, shot-gun toting rancher in southern Arizona who fears for the safety of his family and the future of his country. Others would do well to consider the desperation that would lead a husband and father, at great personal expense and risk of life, to travel day and night, exposed to all the elements of nature and humanity, in a last-ditch effort just to be able to provide for his kids. Behind stereotypes are people who don’t always fit their stereotypes.
With all of that in mind, I invite you to check out Undocumented.tv, which features a short film called “A New Dream� that helps us get inside the hearts and minds of one family: an undocumented couple and their two citizen sons. The trailer is below, and on the website you’ll discover a bunch of resources and ideas for digging deeper. As we consider the question of undocumented immigrants, may God grant us the grace, wisdom and courage to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly.
An Introduction to UnDocumented.tv from UnDocumented.tv on Vimeo.
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