Aspirations and Hope (midweek message)

 

Aspirations and Hope

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

October 30, 2019

A news item from this week started me thinking about the role of hope and aspirations in our worship and common life.  On October 27, Father Robert Morey, pastor of St. Anthony Roman Catholic Church in Charleston, South Carolina, denied communion to former Vice President Joe Biden, making a campaign tour in the state, when he presented himself at the St. Anthony’s altar rail.  Fr. Morey explained his decision this way: “Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”

Even apart from the mis-characterization of Biden’s position, there is much in this statement that is just plain wrong.  Fr. James Martin, SJ, general editor of America magazine, explained it this way:  “Denying Communion to politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, is a bad idea and bad pastoral practice. For if you deny the sacrament to those who support abortion, then you must also deny it to those who support the death penalty, which is also a life issue. How about those who don't support programs to help the poor? Or refuse to help refugees and migrants? How about those who don't support [Pope Francis’ green pro-earth] ‘Laudato Si,’ which is, after all, an encyclical? Where does it end?  Besides, a priest has no idea what the state of a person's soul is when the person presents himself or herself in the Communion line. As we were taught in our theology studies, the person may have repented of any sins and gone to confession immediately before Mass. You have no idea.  Finally, as Pope Francis has said, the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.’  As Presbyterian minister Benjamin Perry wrote, “Do not deny anyone communion.  Ever.  Communion is not a reward.  It is not a privilege for the righteous.  It is an invitation to step towards God’s table where everyone has enough and everyone has a place.  Remember: Jesus fed Judas.”  

Of course, the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer and the Canons of the Episcopal Church do instruct priests to refuse communion to people whose stubborn persistence in notorious sin is a scandal to other people at the communion rail, most especially in cases where the faithful persist in open hatred of one another.  But in such cases, those turned away have a right of appeal to the bishop.  And very few Episcopal priests ever refuse communion to people for the very pastoral and theological reasons Martin and Perry give.   

Interestingly, the same Episcopal Church canon that tells priests to refuse notorious sinners communion also says that no unbaptized person can receive communion in this Church.  This is because baptism is the full, complete, and once and for all initiation into life in Christ, and Holy Communion makes little sense outside of the context of having been initiated into Christ’s body, the church.  But again, this is honored more in the breach than in the observance, since it is simply offensively bad pastoral practice to demand peoples’ credentials at the altar rail. 

A desire to protect the sanctity of the holy sacrament lies behind both refusing communion to notorious sinners and to the unbaptized.  After all it was St. Paul who taught that all who partake the sacrament unworthily, i.e., “who eat and drink without discerning the body,” “eat and drink judgment against themselves” (1 Cor 11:29).  But “defending people from hellfire” as a “loving” motive for refusing people communion rings hollow on the ears, whatever cause for the refusal. 

In addition to the pastoral concerns, there are solid scriptural and theological reasons for questioning the wisdom of refusing communion to anyone.  In the Synoptics, the sacrament is instituted at the last supper.  Jesus welcomed Judas to it.  In John’s gospel, the feeding of the 5,000 takes the place of the last supper as the origin of Holy Communion: and all are welcomed simply by virtue of their desire to be there.  There is no evidence of asking whether people had been baptized.  Jesus’ call for radical hospitality and welcome of the marginalized seems so strong that it might trump all other concerns. 

But I think that there is here a deeper issue:  the role of our worship and the sacraments in our lives, and how often these are aspirational and not legally conceived.  The Creed, for instance, is not a checklist of the minimum requirements of believing doctrines.  It is, rather, an affirmation of what the earliest church leaders taught, and by reciting it we affirm our desire to be part of what they began.  Again, it is aspirational, not prescriptive or even descriptive.  Many who recite the Creed need at times to “cross their fingers” at parts, depending on how their life at the moment is going and how their faith is.  But we recite it all the same.   Remember that the three great gifts of the Spirit are faith, hope, and love.  Hope is what aspirations are all about. 

Saying “the baptized are invited to the table, and the unbaptized are invited to baptism” may make theological sense, but enforcing it by a credentials check seems to short-circuit the work of the spirit who may touch and invite people to our common life and the Lord’s table at any stage in their life in Christ (even before formal catechesis and baptism, and even in the presence of real disagreement).  Denying communion as a pastoral teaching method of last resort may make sense if it is within the context of an ongoing pastoral relationship and there is real hope that reconciliation and forgiveness may be the fruit of such an action.  But it makes absolutely no sense as a tribal enforcement mechanism—if we use communion as a stick or a carrot to force conformity, we have cheapened it and denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.   When I give the sacrament to someone whose worthiness I doubt (or when I take it doubting my own worthiness), this actually is an act of hope and faith, aspiring that we all may one day be united in love and one in faith and doctrine.    

The driving factor in this should be love, and a desire to edify or build up one another.  So I invite and welcome all, and make sure when I find out that someone is receiving communion without having been baptized, I invite that person to an Inquirer’s Class to prepare for baptism.  That is also why I firmly support our use—our sincere use—of the Iona bidding to the table: 

This is the table, not of the Church, but of God.
It is to be made ready for those who love God
and who want to love God more.

So, come, you who have much faith and you who have little,
you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come:  It is Christ’s will that we should meet him here.

Grace and peace. 

Fr. Tony+