Baptism & Eucharist in The Living Church

The folks at The Living Church deftly edited something for the magazine that I posted a while ago about the logic of expecting baptism to precede participation in the Eucharist. They've also posted it in its entirety at their web site (here).

Though to some this might seem an esoteric or insignificant issue, I suggest that it is not and try to show how it makes a difference in how we think about who we are and what we are about as the Church, the body of Christ.

I hope you'll to read it and leave a comment. Does it make sense? Is the argument persuasive? If not where and why not?

If you want, the less edited, more overgrown, version is here.

By the way, if you are inteterested in things Episcopalian and Anglican, I encourage you to subscribe to The Living Church. You can read about the magazine here. Not everything in the print version shows up online and it is worth the subscription.

Baptized into Eucharist

A Sketch of an Argument for the Logic
of the Traditional Discipline

Introduction & PART I – Baptism and Jesus’ Disciples at the Last Supper

PART II – Inclusion vs. Renewal and Incorporation

PART III & PART IV – Community vs. Association & Fellow Citizens

PART V – Under Judgment

PART VI & PART VII – Transformation & Whose Table?

PART VIII – Hospitality

Conclusion

Baptized into Eucharist, Conclusion

Conclusion

The Eucharist is the central sign and practice of the body of Christ. The normal way of becoming a member of that body is through baptism. To reserve Eucharist for those who are baptized does not limit God. As Luther insisted, Jesus – risen and ascended – is present everywhere and can surprise us in our cabbage soup if he so desires. While he is free to surprise anyone anywhere, the promise the Church claims is that he will not surprise us by not being present to his body, the Church, as Redeemer and Judge in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. God is free to surprise us by working outside the norms as has surely happend with some who have participated in the Eucharist before being baptized (cf. Take This Bread by Sara Miles).

Because God remains free to surprise us there is no need for hyper-vigilance to protect the purity of the Eucharist. But if we are not to be hyper-vigilant, that doe not mean that distinctions and norms are irrelevant or unnecessary. The discipline of reserving Eucharist for those already baptized is not about protecting anyone’s purity. It is about maintaining the very boundaries of identity that make a place in which to be formed as a community that can actually practice hospitality.

It is also about being honest about who we are called to be as the members of the body of Christ, what kind of God we have gotten caught up with. It is about being respectful of the real otherness of those who are not yet committed to the loyalties and commitments of this communion.

The body of Christ is a Eucharistic community with all that that entails and we are baptized into Eucharist.

Baptized Into Eucharist, PART VIII

PART VIII – Hospitality

1. Who is the Host and Who the Guest?

The practice of inviting all to the Eucharistic table without regard to baptism is often expressed in terms of “radical hospitality”. Hospitality is certainly a basic gospel virtue. The God revealed in the history of Israel and the ministry of Jesus is an hospitable God. We are encouraged to “welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed [us], for the glory of God.” (Romans 15:7). While that particular exhortation is about members of the body of Christ welcoming one another, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages a broader hospitality, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels” (Hebrews 13:2). Hospitality is thus unquestionably an essential mark of any church. But it is not clear that opening Eucharistic fellowship to the unbaptized is necessarily a good means of practicing such hospitality or that it is actually hospitable or all that radical to do so.

Thinking of the Eucharist in terms of hospitality calls for some reflection on who is the host and who the guest when we gather at the altar. The ultimate host of the Eucharist is, of course, God. But this is not the generic “higher power” as each one understands it. Our divine Host is revealed in the self-giving love of the Trinity, manifested on the cross in the sacrificial self-giving of Christ. To eat at the table of this Host is to participate in the life of this God who wills to reconfigure us in the image of Christ.

Along with being guests responding to the invitation of God, the penultimate host of the Eucharist is the body of Christ that is re-membered in the practice of Communion. But, to host anyone we must have a sense of identity and place:

A welcoming place is rich with stories, rituals, and a history. It is valued, and nurtures life. It is never simply a physical space, but a place alive with commitments and relationships.

Boundaries help define what a household, family, church or community holds precious. However, the modern world is deeply ambivalent about boundaries and community. Although we yearn for home and a place to belong, often we find ourselves more comfortable with empty space where we can “sing our own song” and pursue our own plans. Hospitality is fundamentally connected to place – a space bounded by commitments, values, and meanings. Part of the difficulty in recovering hospitality is connected with our uncertainty about community and particular identity.
- Christine Pohl, Making Room, p. 135 -136

If we are not clear about our own identity and the identity-forming nature of the Eucharist, we have nothing to offer but what Henri Nouwen named “a bland neutrality that serves nobody” (Reaching Out, p.99). It confuses mere pleasantness for deep hospitality. And since it avoids the scandal and offense of particular, bounded identity it is not very costly or radical.

If the penultimate host of the Eucharist is the Church, who is the guest? In a word, God. Paradoxically, in the Eucharist, the baptized are both guest and host and the divine Host is also the divine Guest. We invite the Holy Spirit to descend upon the gifts that they may be the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant”. Because the Guest is nothing less than the Holy Mystery at the heart of all, we pray that we might be sanctified by the same Holy Spirit “that we may faithfully receive” this Guest in the “gifts of God for the people of God”. It is significant that in the gospels Jesus is rarely the host, but rather most often the guest at the table of others. And as Zacchaeus and Simon the Pharisee discovered hosting Jesus brings us face to face with the expectations of Jesus. As those incorporated into the community of hosts through baptism, we have some inkling of who our Guest is and what expectations that Guest places upon the community that seeks to keep his company.

If, as has been argued above, participation in the Eucharistic feast entangles us in particular loyalties and implicates us in a web of mutual expectations and accountabilities, then inviting people to participate who are not already so entangled and implicated by baptism and without alerting them is neither faithful to our own identity nor respectful of their otherness.

2. Hospitality in a World of No Place

Elizabeth Newman has observed that

a pervasive feature of late modernity: a gnawing homelessness, a lack of a sense of place. If we are truly to envision and embody a faithful hospitality, we must see how deeply our current understanding and experience of “home” and “place” have up to now perverted us from living a profound hospitality.
- Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality, p. 34

This is particularly true in contemporary America where our hyper-mobility means few of us live in the communities in which we were raised, surrounded by and connected to family and neighbors with whom we have long history and a sense of place characterized by particular customs and traditions. Absent that sense of place, we are reduced to detached individuals roaming context-less space as tourists and consumers. The public space of the shopping mall is the clearest manifestation of this condition, but it is pervasive. We have been deeply formed to think of ourselves as individuals and trained to be consumers living in space but with no sense of real place. If we are not careful, our worship will reflect and reinforce that formation and that training.

Worship informed by such assumptions will be unable to offer Christian hospitality, a practice that relies on a sense of place, a shared tradition, one in which we are not strangers in the universe (or to each other) but part of God’s good creation, created so that God might love us and so that we might I return love God, each other, the stranger, and even the enemy.” - Newman p.44

In such an environment, what does our practice of Eucharist signify? Inviting anyone to participate wherever they are on their spiritual journey reinforces the ideology of the individual-as-consumer. It signifies that a church is like other public spaces where individual consumers go to satisfy a felt need. The church is then like a sort of religious restaurant with spiritual food on the menu catering to individual customers who come and go through its public space. Is it really all that costly or radical? Should it not rather signify that here is a place where people belong to one another with mutual obligations and to God who gives them an identity as members of a diverse body with many members and many gifts reinforced by the Communion Meal? As William Cavanaugh suggests:

[M]uch of what passes for Christianity in our culture today is addressed to fulfill the spiritual needs of individual consumers of religion. . . . The practice of the Eucharist is resistant to such appropriation, however, because the consumer of the Eucharist is taken up into a larger body, the body of Christ. The individual consumer of the Eucharist does not simply take Christ into herself, but also is taken up into Christ.
- Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, p. 54

Church buildings function both as public space and the space where the body of Christ takes place. As public space, church buildings are open to many people coming and going – sometimes literally as tourists. But, of course, other times as servants and those who are served, as visitors and seekers, as those in need shelter, food, clothing, etc. It is space where the Christian community practices (or should practice) costly hospitality.

But the hospitality the members of church practice in the public space is rooted in the place of the body of Christ “made” in baptism and Eucharist. The community so made should be practicing among itself a hospitality – a hospitality of radical responsibility for, and accountability to, one another in light of the gospel. That we treat fellow members of the body of Christ more like acquaintances than with the deep hospitality due sisters and brothers is a scandal that makes inviting everyone to the communion rail seem trite.

Next: Conclusion

Baptized into Eucharist, PARTS VI & VII

PART VI – Transformation

The sacraments can be understood as where the body of Christ “happens”. In baptism a new member of the body is “made” by incorporation. In the Eucharist the body happens in more ways than one. It is the feast by which we remember the life, death, and resurrection of the one whose historical body was broken for us. It is the feast in which the bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ. And it is also the feast by which the body of Christ, the Church, is both re-membered and fed on the body of Christ in the bread and wine.

This understanding of Eucharist as transformation is expressed on page 316 of the Book of Common Prayer, “[I]n these holy Mysteries we are made one with Christ, and Christ with us; we are made one body in him, and members one of another.” To partake of the Eucharist is to submit to the process of being both ingodded and inothered. This is what Augustine was getting at in his well-known exhortation, “Behold what you are. Become what you see: the Body of Christ, beloved of God.” (Homily 57, On the Holy Eucharist). Augustine adds that when we consume the body of Christ in the bread and wine, we do not so much transform that food into our bodies, as we are transformed by it into his body.

Participation in the Eucharist is not simply about experiencing God’s consolation. It is that. But it is much, much more. It is about transformation. It is part of our conversion process on the way to what the Eastern Christian tradition calls theosis – our being made capable of being “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 2:4) - capable of bearing the absolute love, goodness, beauty, and joy of God. We expect to be transfigured, or as Dante would have it, transhumanized into glory.

We cannot, and dare not, expect that transformation, while good and desirable, to be easy or painless. Indeed the imagery of scripture suggest otherwise. Through Jeremiah, God promises, “Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do, because of my people?’” (Jeremiah 9:7, Cf. Zechariah 13:9 & Malachi 3:3). I suspect that, however wonderful the image of beautiful silver, shining brightly might be, the ore does not necessarily welcome the heat of the crucible. In John 15:5, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” But, before that, in verse 2, he promises, “Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, God takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit God prunes, that it may bear more fruit." We rejoice in the promise of more fruitful lives. But, does the branch necessarily welcome the pruning? In truth, we do people a disservice if we invite them to the Eucharistic table as if there was no promise (and warning) that it entails refining, pruning, and transformation.

PART VII - Whose Table?

It is sometimes suggested that since the Eucharistic table is God’s table it is not for us to decide who can participate. But, given the logic of the liturgy, one might more reasonably suggest, that because it is God’s table, we should not be glib in our own participation nor in inviting others to participate. Indeed, one might wonder if an open invitation is not more presumptuous in its certainty of our own adequate knowledge and goodness, or at the very least, that it presumes a particularly cheap grace. It suggests a notion of God that is altogether domesticated and sentimental.

Annie Dillard famously warns against presuming that God is tame:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” - Teaching a Stone to Talk

If, as we often claim, we “believe what we pray” (lex orandi, lex credendi – the rule of prayer is the rule of belief), we would do well to attend to the logic of the liturgy which suggests a certain caution in coming to the Lord’s Table. As Moses drew near to the strange sight of the burning bush, he was commanded to remove his sandals for he was on holy ground. Just so, symbolically as we move through the Eucharistic liturgy, we stop periodically to remind ourselves that we are approaching holy ground and that doing so is an awesome thing. The One into whose presence we are coming is awe-inspiring and, while not wholly unknown, remains a mystery beyond our comprehension. We are aware that in our ignorance, we are like children playing with nitroglycerine. We are also aware of our failure to live lives of love and truth and trust, and thus of the distance between us and God. As noted before, the Exhortation found before the Rite of Holy Communion found in the Book of Common Prayer warns against coming to the Eucharistic table unprepared.

The liturgy is like an elaborate spiral dance in which we symbolically circle around and around the altar drawing closer and closer to the great mystery of the Eucharist. At intervals along this spiral dance, we stop to "take off our sandals" and acknowledge our ignorance and sinfulness. And we ask for God’s mercy as we proceed deeper into the holy mystery. In the Collect for Purity, we ask God to cleanse the thoughts of out hearts that we may perfectly love God and worthily magnify his holy Name. And we dance a little closer. Then we sing the Gloria, the Kyrie, or the Trisagion; each of which asks again for God’s mercy. And we dance a little closer. After hearing God’s word read and proclaimed, we confess our sins against God and our neighbor and receive the promise of God’s forgiveness. We exchange the peace, recognizing that we cannot go to the altar of the Prince of Peace unless we are being and making peace ourselves. And we dance a little closer. In the Sanctus we declare that we know the one in whose presence we are is holy. And we dance a little closer. Before the breaking of the bread, we say the Lord’s Prayer in which we again ask for forgiveness. And we dance a little closer. Again and again, we acknowledge that we do not really know what we are up to, that the One with whom we are dealing is holy, and that we are ignorant, sinful and broken people in need of mercy. By God’s amazing grace we are invited and encouraged to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). But that confidence is born in baptism and is not the same as presumption. Our liturgy reminds us that we are all always in need of mercy if we are to gather in the Presence.

As "stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Corintians 4:1), it is indeed the Church's vocation to see that those who come to those mysteries are aware of what they are doing and assure that they are prepared through initiation into those mysteries via baptism.

Next: PART VIII, Hospitality

Baptized into Eucharist, PART V

Before the Rites of Holy Eucharist in the Book of Common Prayer there is An Exhortation to examine our lives that we might "share rightly in the celebration of those holy Mysteries." The Exhortation reads in part:

But, if we are to share rightly in the celebration of those holy Mysteries, and be nourished by that spiritual Food, we must remember the dignity of that holy Sacrament. I therefore call upon you to consider how Saint Paul exhorts all persons to prepare themselves carefully before eating of that Bread and drinking of that Cup.

For, as the benefit is great, if with penitent hearts and living faith we receive the holy Sacrament, so is the danger great, if we receive it improperly, not recognizing the Lord’s Body. Judge yourselves, therefore, lest you be judged by the Lord.

Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 316

Though not often read, this exhortation is part of our formal understanding of what we are about in participating in Eucharist.

PART V – Under Judgment

Participating in the Eucharist entangles us in particular loyalties, responsibilities, and accountabilities. There are expectations placed on the eucharistic community and its members. Are they living in communion with one another as the body of Christ such that partaking of his body and blood makes sense? Are they living together into the deep reconciliation God is working in Christ? Are they bearing one another’s burdens? The burden of one another? Is their common life reflective of scriptural mandates like those in Matthew 5 – 7, Luke 6, Romans 12, Philippians 2, Ephesians 4? Is their life together “a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair”? To participate in the Eucharist is to enter into such expectations. With such expectation comes judgment.

1 Corinthians 11 emphasizes that partaking of the Lord’s Supper carries with it serious expectations. That text is about how those who take part in the feast of Christ treat each other as members of the body of Christ. That is what discerning the body means. Unless we take seriously our belonging to one another and caring for one another, we have not discerned the body and our communion is false and our claim to be in communion with Christ, suspect. Thus the Eucharist is as much an act of commitment and accountability as is baptism.

The parousia is to be a time not only of redemption but of judgment, when the “world” – meaning that part of creation which refuses the sovereignty of Christ – will be overthrown. As the sacrament which anticipates the parousia now, the Eucharist is also placed in the context of judgment. Those who do not “discern the body” and become a member of Christ risk condemnation along with the forces that oppose Christ. The failure to “discern the body” refers not only to the body on the table but the ecclesial body as well.

William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ, p. 235

Beyond the responsibility for, and accountability to, one another as members of the body of Christ into which we are absorbed in the Eucharist, there is a call to mission. To partake in the Eucharist is to participate in the passion of Christ. It is not a matter of simple passive receiving. Feeding on the body “broken for you” and drinking from the cup, “shed for you” implicates us in the mission to be ourselves broken and poured out for the sake of a hungry and thirsty world. As our Lord told James and John, baptism and Eucharist go together and both implicate us in his life and passion. (Mark 10:35 – 45).

To share in the Eucharist is to be entangled with the body of Christ and the mutual obligations and expectations that come with that belonging. Baptism initiates us into that belonging and the pre-baptismal catechumenate prepares us for the obligations and expectations of belonging. Eucharist nourishes us in that belonging and calls us to live into it ever more deeply.

The fact that many who are baptized members of the Church do not understand the responsibilities that go with discerning the body is a shortcoming of the Church’s catechesis. The fact that all too often the Church does not live into those responsibilities is a scandal that places it under judgment. Inviting people to partake of the Lord’s Supper without being clear about the expectations laid on those who participate places them under a particular judgment unawares and is neither responsible nor particularly hospitable.

Next: PART VI - Transformation & PART VII - Whose Table?

Baptized into Eucharist, PART III & PART IV

"No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church." Canon I.17.7 of the Constitution & Canons of The Episcopal Church

This canon affirms that the communal expectation and practice of the Episcopal Church regarding Holy Communion is in communion with the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church." Here are parts 3 & 4 of my ongoing sketch of a defense of the expectation and practice of this canon.

PART III – Community vs. Association

The Eucharist is a communal meal, hence its other name, Holy Communion. That communion is not simply a matter of our communing with God. It is also an expression of and means toward the communion of the gathered body of Christ.

It is consequential whether we believe the divine-human drama centers on the individual or on community and relationship. While not strictly a matter of either/or it does matter where we put the emphasis. Are we essentially individuals who associate with other individuals for one reason or another or are we persons shaped in community in which case belonging is essential?

Historically, Christianity has emphasized community and belonging. Part of the Church's rejection of Gnosticism has to do with the latter’s appeal to esoteric knowledge focused on individual enlightenment separate from the communal traditions and communal disciplines.

In an American, post-Enlightenment context shaped by the ideology of individualism, the difference between real community and an association of individuals can be hard to appreciate. Inviting anyone to partake of the Eucharist, “wherever they are on their spiritual journey” puts the emphasis on the individual and her or his personal spiritual journey rather than on our being members of one another with responsibility for, and accountability to, one another. The Church cannot counter the ideology of individualism by reinforcing that ideology in its central communal practice.

The God we come to know in the history of Israel and the mission of Jesus always works through a people. Christianity is about belonging to a people shaped by particular ways of being and believing. Our communion is not just an individual spiritual encounter, but communion with, and commitment to, a very physical body gathered in space and through time.

PART IV – Fellow Citizens

That belonging is belonging to one another. It is also belonging to “another country”. We are citizens of heaven and of the kingdom of God (Philippians 3:20, Ephesians 2:9). One of the things we need to look at more carefully is how we understand ourselves in a post-Christian/post-Christendom context. Another reason inviting the unbaptized to Communion is problematic is that it seems to be, ironically, a Christendom move in a post-Christendom situation. Under Christendom, the Church acted as the chaplain of a (presumed) Christian society which included everyone. When, out of long habit, the Church continues that role in a post-Christian context, the distinctive practices, disciplines, and beliefs that are the marks of membership become an embarrassment. To continue to serve as society’s chaplain, it becomes imperative to minimize the particulars of Christian discipleship and emphasize the generic spiritual journey of all citizens of the larger society.

Where our true citizenship lies is a question both the religious right and the religious left in America tend to get wrong. Baptism is our naturalization into a nationality other than that into which we are born (1 Peter 2:9). The creed is our pledge of allegiance. And Eucharist is the characteristic privilege and responsibility of citizenship that shapes us as a people and calls us to live as members of the body of Christ with each other and in the world. As William Cavanaugh writes in Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ:

In the Eucharist one is fellow citizen not of other present “Chileans” [or Americans] but of other members of the body of Christ, past, present and future. The Christian wanders among the earthly nations on the way to her eternal patria, the Kingdom of God. The Eucharist makes clear, however, that this Kingdom does not simply stand outside of history, nor is heaven simply a goal for the individual to achieve at death. Under the sign of the Eucharist the Kingdom becomes present in history through Christ the heavenly High Priest. In the Eucharist the heavens are opened, and the church of all times and places is gathered around the altar. p. 224

The Church is a body of people who are citizens of another country and the Eucharist is one of our constitutive practices. It incorporates us into a body whose loyalties are often at odds with other loyalties. That Christians all too often subsume Christianity under other loyalties does not negate the responsibility to seek to get our loyalty (that to which we are faithful) straight. It is also incumbent upon us to be honest with others that participating in the Church’s characteristic citizenship meal entangles them in particular loyalties, responsibilities, and accountabilities.

Next: Part V - Under Judgement

Baptized into Eucharist, PART II

A couple of years ago, I was invited to serve on a panel at Seabury-Western Seminary discussing the practice of inviting those not yet baptized to the Eucharist. I was asked to serve as one committed to the traditional discipline of not doing so. This is the second post of a series of reflections prepared for and growing out of serving on that panel.

PART II – Inclusion vs. Renewal & Incorporation

Jesus famously welcomed sinners and outcastes into his movement. But, it is easy for moderns to ignore the particularity of Jesus and his ministry in ways that are misleading. Simplistic modern appeals to his inclusiveness miss some of the contours of what Jesus was about. He was not a generic spirit person teaching universal truths about God to generic people. Nor was his summons simply inclusive without context or expectation.

There is no reason to suppose that Jesus did not accept the particularly Jewish belief that God had chosen and called Israel to bless the nations even as he recalled Israel to that mission and ultimately fulfilled it himself. Nor was his summons to enter the kingdom a generic welcome of any and all regardless of repentance and the embrace of particular commitments (Luke 15:1-10).

Jesus’ movement was a Jewish renewal movement. His mission was to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:6, 15:24). His words and actions need to be understood in that context. Whatever symbolic fellowship meals he shared were limited to those already members of the covenant people of Israel. They make sense, as several parables indicate, as prophetic enactments of the wedding banquet of Yahweh and Israel. They took place in the context of the story of Yahweh’s courtship of Israel. Jesus welcomed the outcastes of Israel and called all Jews to repent of their neglect of their particular call to be holy and to be the light of the world. From within Israel, he gathered around himself a renewed Israel represented by the call of twelve disciples paralleling the twelve tribes.

Though Jesus showed interest in and compassion toward Gentiles and hinted at their eventual incorporation, he did not gather them into his movement. As one would expect of an observant Jew of his time, there is no indication that he ever ate with Gentiles - outcaste or otherwise. There is no reason to suppose that the multitude that was fed miraculously was anything other than a Jewish multitude. It was the fragments of Israel that Jesus gathered into the baskets of his movement.

It was only after Easter and Pentecost that the Church, as a New Israel, was understood to be open to Gentiles as it became more and more clear that the old divisions had been overcome by the breaking in of the Kingdom of God through Jesus’ death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now Gentiles, as the “wild olive branches,” were welcome to be grafted onto the “cultivated olive tree” of Israel, and become part of the New Israel (Romans 11:17-24). Thus the Church is not a generic faith community, but an extension of a particular people. Gentiles were welcomed, but only by means of repentance and baptism through which they were identified with Christ and incorporated into his body, the Church.

Baptism early on came to be seen as analogous to circumcision by which new members are incorporated into the covenant community (Colossians 2:12-13). Given the parallels between the Passover meal and the Lord’s Supper, baptism would be the logical expectation of those who wished to come near and keep the feast of this people of the new covenant (Exodus 12:48). It is about the formation of a people with normal boundaries and normative practices. To miss this is to make Christianity less Jewish than it is.

Next: PART III – Community vs. Association & PART IV – Fellow Citizens

Baptized into Eucharist

A Sketch of an Argument for the Logic
of the Traditional Discipline

Introduction

When we are baptized into Christ, we are made a member of his body, the Church. As the body of Christ, the Church is called to witness to and be a sign and foretaste of the kingdom of God. The central sign and practice of this body is the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the body of Christ, the Church, is nourished by the body of Christ in the bread and wine. We remember what God has done in Christ and anticipate God’s restoration of all things in Christ. And we participate in Christ and are nourished by his body and blood. The Church is thus a Eucharistic community living in remembrance and anticipation, nourished by its participation in Christ along the way. But, partaking of the body of Christ in the Eucharist also entails judgment. Is the community - and its members - living eucharistically as the body of Christ?

It is the ancient understanding of the Church that this act of remembrance, anticipation, and participation only makes sense as a practice of those who have been baptized into Christ. And that has been the traditional discipline of the Episcopal Church. Some in the Episcopal Church, though, question this traditional understanding and discipline. Thus, it has become the practice in many places to "open" Eucharist to the unbaptised. While this is well-meant, I suggest that such a practice undermines what the Church and Eucharist are about.

What follows is a sketch in several parts of a defense of the logic of the traditional discipline of expecting those who partake of the body of Christ in the Eucharist to be baptized members of the Church which is the body of Christ and living into its discipline.

PART I – Baptism and Jesus’ Disciples at the Last Supper

One question that is often posed is whether or not the disciples gathered around Jesus at the Last Supper were themselves baptized. The answer is that, in all likelihood, they were. Andrew was certainly a follower of John the Baptist (John 1:40) and thus presumably baptized. Even more significantly, Jesus is recorded as baptizing (John 3:26), or at least having his disciples baptize (John 4:1). Whether by John or after responding to Jesus' call, they were baptized before the Last Supper. And, of course, significantly, Jesus himself was baptized.

John's baptism is arguably irrelevant to subsequent Christian practice and we see the early Church understanding it as inadequate (Acts 19:1-7). But, the evidence that Jesus – or at least his disciples on his behalf – baptized those who wished to respond to his call suggests that Jesus was not bashful about making distinctions between those who responded to his summons and those who did not and marking that distinction in public ritual.

While the practice of baptism has its roots in John's and Jesus' practice, it is somewhat other. Since we are baptized into Christ's death and resurrection and in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; our baptism is not the same as John's or even that of Jesus and his (pre-Easter) disciples. It is an Easter event. And it is the risen Jesus who commands his followers to make disciples and baptize. Our baptism – and our baptismal discipline – has its roots in the historical practice of Jesus, but it is different in as much as it is an Easter event.

The same is true for the Last Supper. It was the Last Supper, not only because it was the last meal for Jesus before his execution, but because there had been other meals before. But, like Baptism, the Eucharist participates in the Resurrection. Whatever symbolic meals Jesus might have shared in during his ministry, the Eucharistic meal is more than a repetition of what Jesus did before the crucifixion. It is an Easter event. It is a participation in Jesus’ resurrection and an anticipation of our resurrection and the new heaven and earth. Baptism is how we are incorporated into the resurrection, or, at the very least, into the body of witness to the resurrection, and logically precedes the typical meal by which we are nourished in the resurrection life.

Next: PART II – Inclusion vs. Renewal & Incorporation