The Church Is Not A Community

For sometime now I have heard that many are tired of being in a church with so many divisions or so many points of disagreement. This fatigue has provoked some to inquire or even leave the Church in order to be with other “like-minded” Christians. The virtues of being with “like-minded” believers is argued for in many places such as the book the Benedict Option to caucus groups such as the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA).

There is nothing wrong with being with like minded people. It is good to be with like-minded people as it gives a peace and comfort knowing that I am not alone. The defining characteristic of a like-minded group is that the group is held together by what they have.

There is a name for a group of people who are together because of what they have. It is called a community. A community is a group of people who belong to one another because of something they all have or hold in common. The Benedict Option and WCA advocate the creation of like-minded communities. This seems innocuous enough. Like I said above, like-minded communities have many benefits.

The problem is that when we take the idea of community into the Church because the Church is not supposed to be a community.

In a very basic sense, a community does not fundamentally challenge one another to change because to do so would threaten the communities very existence. If members of the community change, then the community may not all hold the same thing in common. If members of my bowling community started to dislike bowling, then the bowling community would politely ask those members to leave and not come back. Because what makes the bowling community the bowling community is the shared loved of bowling. If some members of the community no longer like bowling, then group may not be all “like-minded”.

Additionally, at the core, communities are groups that are motivated by purity. If there is anyone in the group that is not of “like-mind” then they cannot be a member of the community because a community is only possible if the entire group is of like mind. There is little appreciation for the one who is not like the community (impure). The community that has some members who deviate from the communities norm, are asked to leave. In fact asking the “other” to leave is considered graceful. I cannot imagine being asked to leave the community is grace-filled, but communities that hold the same ideas as the reason for existence are convinced that this is graceful.

Peter Rollins makes a point in this 90 second clip in which he talks about a community and a communion. He reminds the viewer that the community is gathered by what they have or what they share. But a communion is gathered around a lack or by something the group does not have. For instance, Alcohol Anonymous (AA) is a group that gathers around a shared lack (ex: lack of alcohol) and loss (ex: loss of control). The group is made not on what they achieve or what they have done, but on what they each lack and/or loss.

Each Sunday, Christians around the world gather together to share in the sacrament sometimes called Communion. It is the sacred meal in which calls to mind the time that God in Christ ritualized the death of God on the cross.

The death of God is terrifying. It is the ultimate lack. It is the thing that so many of us (self included) refuse to accept because it is too much to consider that the eternal and all powerful God would enter death - even temporarily. The church is a gathering of people who recognize we have lack (sometimes we call it sin).

The church, each week, gathers together not because we all are of “like-mind” or all hold the same thing. The core of the Church gathers together because of what we lack. We gather because we lack forgiveness, mercy, and grace toward ourselves and others. Like Jesus said, we do not know what we are doing and we lack the way to go. We are in need of God because the communion of the church knows it is not God.

The Church is much too sacred and important to be a community. The Church is a communion.

Communion is Disgusting on Purpose

I no longer see a barber or hairstylist. I don’t think that I am too good to see a professional, but even a professional pianist cannot do much with piano that only has ten keys.

However, when I used to have a full keyboard, one of my favorite questions to ask the barber was, “If you see hair in your meal at a restaurant, would you send it back?” I have not done a scientific study of the number of people I asked and their responses, but the majority of barbers I asked said they would not send their food back. The reason? They shared that it is was more likely that they were the ones who had loose hair on them that fell into the meal. The vast majority of barbers said they would just pull the hair out and keep on with their meal.

Like it is no big deal.

Doctors talk about blood stuff with family members over dinner while everyone else gets queasy. Vets talk about lancing wounds on an animal, ranchers speak of pulling calves as they are birthed, and plumbers talk about the stopped up pipes they had to endure.

Like it is no big deal.

For so many of us, these topics trigger a sense of disgust, but these folk have crossed some disgust bridge. These topics are no longer disgusting. They are not a big deal.

Disgust is an “expulsive” response. It is that feeling of pushing things away or expelling them from your body. Humans are disgusted by so many things and sometimes, unfortunately, we feel disgust toward our fellow sisters and brothers. We push away the smelly, dirty, and unkept. We expel those who we think are unclean in some way. It can manifest in ways like pushing those who are sick away from us so we don’t get sick to pushing those who have a different culture away from us out of fear they will freeload. Disgust is a powerful influencer of our behavior and left unchecked it harms.

Christians have a sacrament called communion or the eucharist or the Lord’s supper. In a sacrament in which we say that the bread is the body of Christ and the juice/wine is the blood of Christ. Taken at face value, it makes sense why early Christians were accused of being cannibals.

This sacrament is mysterious and has a lot going on, but at a fundamental level communion addresses our disgust. We are associating bread with flesh and wine with blood. We make food associations all of the time. Many foods we don’t eat, not because they do not taste good but because of the texture (I struggle with eating the delicious lychee fruit).

The associations made at communion are intentional to aid and push us to encounter our disgust. If we can overcome the disgust of eating and drinking while thinking of flesh and blood then, surely we can overcome the disgust we feel toward our neighbor. Christians take communion as much as possible, in part, to practice confronting our own disgust toward each other. The more we confront the disgust we feel the more comfortable we are with these matters and the less expulsion we feel we need to do.

In this way, Christians are like the barber who is no longer disgusted with unknown hair in their food. There is no longer a need to push the food (or people) away, but rather bring it in close. Communion helps us invert our disgust and see that Christ does not call us to expel one another. That purity is an abstraction. That holding to what is clean only creates division among the body.

All of which to say that when a church leaders push for a “better” or “more faithful” or "traditional” or “prophetic” expression of the church, this is a nicer way of speaking about disgust. Disgust is always an expulsive response. We can expel others or we can expel ourselves. We can spit the food out (expel others) or we can avoid the restaurant entirely (expel ourselves). We can kick people out of the church who are unfaithful or we can remove ourselves from a church we “know” is unfaithful. Until we address the disgust we Christians have yet to overcome we will find that the denominational splitting will never end. Until we have a church of one.

Communion is disgusting on purpose.

Better to Eat Meat and Drink Wine Than Eat the Flesh of the Brothers

At Saint Mary’s University between 2002 and 2004, I was employed by the Campus Ministry Department. I was one of two “Ministerial Assistants” of the six or so people who worked in Campus Ministry. What that meant was that I was responsible to help the priests in Mass, tidy the chapel and ensure the two sacristies were in top shape. I was a crucifer, an Eucharistic minister, censer bearer, candle lighter and supplied a new host in the monstrance. The Father who hired me knew that I was United Methodist (and thus, not Roman Catholic) but it took the rest of the staff about a year to discover this not-withheld-just-never-mentioned fact. There were some questions, but the depth of our relationships were such that they knew where my heart was. Ecclesiastical differences were trivial.

Not a St. Mary’s Chapel, but my job would be the guy holding the cape.

Of course one of the big questions that I was asked with was around communion. As a Ministerial Assistant, I was privileged to handle the bread and the consecrated hosts. I put the consecrated elements in the tabernacle. I genuflected and bowed appropriately, or at least well enough that it took a year for someone to notice I lacked the smoothness of motion that comes with years of practice. I continued to hold to the United Methodist stance on the sacrament, but I respect transubstantiation even to this day. Communion or the Eucharist is a sacred thing and I was honored to serve at St. Mary’s University as the first non-catholic hired as a Ministerial Assistant.

One of the things that I came to appreciate in the countless opportunities to serve in Mass was the beauty of eating the actual body and drinking the actual blood of Christ. Before any theological argument breaks out over transubstantiation, or consubstantiation, or symbol; before our minds consider how cannibalistic the act of eating Christ sounds.; before we think about the difficulties imaging that bread and wine become body and blood, perhaps we can consider one truth:

We consume one another all of the time.

Benedicta Ward translates a saying of Hyperichius, ‘It is better to eat meat and drink wine than eat the flesh of the brothers by disparaging them.’

Through our language and through our actions we devour one another all of the time. Consider the headlines after a debate between two people. Someone always “slaughters” the other one. Sometimes they are “crushed.” If the conversation was good we might even say we were “consumed” in the moment.

With this in mind, transubstantiation, or consubstantiation may not sound as difficult to imagine. One of the differences is that when we consume another, we often do it out of violence. That is to say, we consume one another often against the will of the one being consumed. While in the Eucharist or Communion the one being consumed (Christ) is offering himself for consumption. It is as though Jesus says, “Rather than devour one another in violence, I offer myself.”

Jesus also says, every time you eat and drink do it in remembrance of me. We often limit ourselves to thinking about ever time we sit down to eat a meal. However, what if Jesus meant every time you want to consume someone or something, remember the one who freely gave himself for all to consume.

Replacing the Whole Blessing Thing

One of the joys of being a clergy person is that clergy are invited into people’s lives to bless things. We bless animals, babies, homes, and even cars. I have been asked to bless all sorts of jewelry and grown ups at weddings. Each Sunday we bless the congregation as the worship ends and the service begins.

Of all the things that I have been asked to bless there is a common element to them all. The things that we bless are whole. They are complete. They are finished. I have not blessed a broken bone. I have not blessed a crack in a house. I have not blessed a ring that is missing a stone.

The only exception to the “bless what is whole” rule is communion.

It is incredible to me that Jesus blesses bread and wine and then instantly breaks and pours it out. Can you imagine blessing a house then immediately breaking a window? Each communion we replace the “bless what is whole” rule with “bless what is broken” rule.

For all the times we feel less than whole. For all the people who are treated less than whole. Jesus blesses you. Not in your wholeness. You are blessed in the brokenness.

What sort of God is this that intentionally blesses the broken?