February 08, 2011
Chicken or the Egg
Our church has Communion every Sunday and in the past we’ve always passed two serving trays, the first one for the bread and the second for the juice. Recently the manufacturer of the trays devised a way to combine both the bread and the juice using only one tray. By placing a small round insert in the center of the tray to hold the bread, the juice cups can simply be arranged around the bread. Last Sunday Bill and I had a miscommunication as the tray was passed and he wound up drinking the juice and then eating the bread. I had whiplash of the head. It was just wrong – you’re supposed to take the bread and then the juice. Before the sermon started I picked up my Bible and turned to the Lord’s Supper and sure enough, the Lord passed the bread first and then the cup. Certainly there is no prohibition against reversing the order of the emblems, but personally I hate tampering with tradition.
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Gail;
-----I am certainly not one who believes that some knuckle-walking human ancestor learned a particular grunt for a stick and a chortle for an apple. God created man intelligent and with language. But thereafter, language has been in a perpetual state of evolution because it is simply a set of vocal symbols for concepts, and concepts are shaped by situation which never remains completely constant over time or across cultures. Tradition is also a language, because it is a set of behaviors or actions symbolizing concepts, however, much less in a mental manner and much more in a manner of nuance and feeling. So tradition is as important as language because culture depends upon a consistency in this sub-level of nuance and feeling, and language just does not effect a similarity of nuance and feeling throughout different individuals like tradition does.
-----But we are not as forgiving of fluctuation in tradition as we are with it in language. That the little Ozark boy warshes his hands is all the same to me as my daughters washing theirs. Even that my British friend might lift the bonnet of his car to check the oil makes no difference to my closing the hood for him when he’s finished. We might chuckle about the different expressions, but the idea behind them is all the same. Tradition is like that, too.
-----At this Presbyterian church with which I currently bear - ahem - with whom I currently fellowship, the trays of matzo are passed first and everybody holds theirs until everyone else has a piece. Then they all eat it together before the trays of juice are passed. And likewise, they all drink the juice together. I think I get their drift. It seems to be a statement accentuating the fellowship of the community. And they have a number of other traditions accentuating community fellowship, also, which is important. But you know me. I have an undying mind for the deeply personal relationship with God through Christ. So I break my matzo in half. One half rests on my knee until I get the juice so I can do communion with the Lord as I did in the Christian Church. The other half I eat with my brothers and sisters. I care absolutely zero that anyone else does or does not follow my tradition, because the nuance and feeling it expresses are mine alone. What is important across the hall, throughout the churches of the town, and in those around the world is that communion occurs. For whether we are warshed in the blood or washed in the blood, we are cleaned up all the same to enter His eternal kingdom.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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