What is the Eucharist and why do we partake?
One of my
greatest stumbling blocks coming into the Orthodox Church was the closed
communion table. Growing up Protestant, my experience was that the table was
open to anyone who considered themselves to be a Christian. Attending an
Orthodox Church and not being able to partake of the Eucharist was difficult
for me. I believe in Jesus, isn’t that enough?
Perhaps
the best place to start is with scripture and the questions:
- When did Christians begin partaking of the
Eucharist?
- What is the Eucharist?
- Why do Christians partake of it?
- And finally, why is the table open only to
Orthodox members in good standing?
The
Initiation of Mystery
All four
Gospels record the last supper of our Lord. With that being the case, it would
be wise for us to pay close attention to what was done and said because it is
important.
Matthew
records:
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread,
blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this
is My body.” Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them saying,
“Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is
shed for many for the remission of sins.” (26:26-28)
Mark
14:22-24 and Luke 22:19-20 have nearly identical language to the Matthew
passage above to describe that evening.
As we can see from the above accounts, the initiation of this mystery
(sacrament) was during the Last Supper of our Lord. Christians have been
faithful to this life-giving command ever since that time.
What is
the Eucharist and why do we partake?
As
clearly outlined above, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself states that the bread and
wine are His Body and Blood. He never states they are “like” or “similar to,”
but that they are of Him. The Eucharist therefore is the Body and Blood of our
Lord Jesus Christ, which we take “for the remission of [our] sins and for life
everlasting.” This has always been the
understanding of Christians.
Not being
satisfied with merely recording the event, the Apostle John unwraps its meaning
through the teachings of Christ:
The Jews therefore quarreled among
themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I
say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you
have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal
life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and
My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in
Me, and I in him. (6:52-56)
In the
above passage, Christ gives as clear a teaching as possible: we are to partake
of His Flesh and Blood if we wish to have any life in Him. Boldly, He states
the consequence of disobedience of this command: those who disobey “have no
life” in them. Many disciples were
offended and walked away from Jesus at that point. Notice that he did not call them back saying,
“Hey guys, I was just being metaphorical!”
A
spiritual metaphor?
I grew up
believing that all of the above passages were to be understood in a “spiritual
sense,” which is a modern way of saying we are to understand it intellectually,
but not think of it as having any real significance. With that being the case,
I have attended several churches that serve communion only occasionally because
it has lost most of its meaning.
But that
thinking was foreign to Christianity and did not become “normal” until the last
few hundred years. The Apostle Paul, who
wrote much of the New Testament, verifies the Orthodox belief of Christ’s
presence in the Eucharist in the book of 1st Corinthians 11. He writes,
For I received from the Lord that which I
also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was
betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take,
eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of
Me.” In the same manner He also took the
cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do,
as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
All of
that should sound quite familiar from the Matthew passage above. But St Paul
continues,
Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks
this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood
of the Lord. But let a man examine
himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy
manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s
body. For this reason many are weak and
sick among you, and many sleep.
In the
above text, Paul makes it quite clear that those who were partaking of the
Eucharist in an unworthy manner were getting sick and even dying (falling
asleep). This was not some abstract or lofty theological opinion, this was
understood to be a life and death matter.
Why a
closed table?
As
mentioned above, those who unworthily partake of the Eucharist could
potentially suffer sickness or death. Additionally, the Apostle John shows us
in 13:26-27 that Judas received the Bread with malice in his heart and “Satan
entered him.” As one Akathist1 states, “What should have been for his salvation
is turned into death and damnation for him.”
In other
words, those that partook unworthily in the past and partake unworthily today
open themselves to demonic oppression or possession, sickness, and death. It is
nothing we should wish even upon our enemies.
The
Eucharist is not some nice gesture of Christian unity and brotherhood, nor is
it something we do while merely “remembering” Christ’s command as well as His
death. We Orthodox Christians honestly believe that we are partaking of the
Body and Blood of our Lord, and that when we do so in an unprepared manner
(either we have unconfessed sin in our lives or we lack proper faith in Christ)
then we eat and drink damnation unto ourselves.
Immediately
before communion, the priest holds up the cup and makes the following ancient
Christian proclamation:
“With fear of God and with faith draw near.”
We
Christians, since the time of the apostles, have always understood the
partaking of the Eucharist to be a sign that we are one in faith…not just that
we want to be one, or we love each other and have warm feelings of affection,
but that we share an identical faith. It
is a public proclamation that we adhere to the teachings of the Orthodox
Church.
St Justin
Martyr confirms this in the second century:
And this food is called among us the
Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that
the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing
that is for the remission of sins [baptism], and unto regeneration, and who is
so living as Christ has enjoined.
Anyone
who teaches otherwise, if they were to be honest, must confess that they are
teaching something new. Those who “believe that the things which we teach are
true” are either already Orthodox or they are actively looking into the faith.
Everyone else has a different faith than us, which I do not say to condemn
them, but merely to state the obvious.
We live
in a culture that has a very low view of truth and in which doctrine is not
held very closely. For several years I honestly thought, “There are so many theological
opinions out there, who knows what is really correct?”
It is
difficult to overcome our cultural tendencies without much effort. We tend to
interpret our faith through the cultural lens of “I’m ok, you’re ok.” But
historically, true Christianity has never done that. And the Orthodox Church,
which is a continuation of the ancient church of the apostles, never will cater
to our culture’s whims.
This is
not hostility
With all
of that said, please don’t believe that Orthodox Christians are antagonistic
toward others. Our Akathist for Holy Communion that many Orthodox Christians
prayerfully read before communion reminds us of one our Lord’s teachings,
“I pray that they all may be one, as Thou,
Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us; that the
world may believe”…
Jesus, grant that we all abide in oneness of
mind,
in faith and love for Thee!
Jesus, who cannot abide enmity and division,
destroy impious heresies and schisms!
Jesus, who lovest and hast mercy upon all,
gather all the lost sheep into one flock!
For those
of us who read this Akathist, part of our preparation for the holy Eucharist is
that we pray for those who are not one with us. It is true, we could
technically open up the table to anyone in the name of brotherly unity and love
regardless of the consequences I mentioned above, but it would require us to
close our eyes to the real differences that do exist in our beliefs. And the
end result with be nothing but a warm-fuzzy, feel-good, false unity. Two things
that we Orthodox love are truth and genuineness. Anyone else who feels the same
will agree that false unity is not sufficient.
Source: http://www.orthodoxroad.com/why-a-closed-communion-table-part-2/#more-1824
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