“There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood…

by Rev. Tim Gray

This is a part two of a series. Click here to read part 1.

“...Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.”

  --William Cowper (1772)

My worship professor, Dr. Jennifer Lord, liked to say that there was “always enough Jesus to go around” when distributing the elements of communion. My theology professor, Dr. Cindy Rigby, would often say that if we aren’t reminded of the real blood that was required of Christ, we have lost our way in understanding the very essence of Grace. 

In 451, Church leaders were gathered in Chalcedon, now modern day Istanbul, to discuss several theological disagreements. One of them was the nature of Christ: was he God or was he human? Several ideas were thrown around, including the idea of a kind of “swirly” amalgamation of God and human, but at the end of the meeting, a majority affirmed that Christ was both human and divine in one being, in a way that we are unable to distinguish one from the other.¹ What this has meant to us today is that defining how we understand communion is a rather difficult task. When Jesus said we were eating his body, did he mean his human flesh, or did he mean his divine presence? Obviously churches aren’t offering barbecue at communion, but maybe as the bread and wine touches one’s tongue in becomes flesh and blood? Perhaps it’s just a representation of Christ’s sacrifice, but in all reality, just bread and cup? 

In Presbyterianism, we affirm that for the most part, we don’t know. In doctrine we affirm that “...the bread and wine as his body and blood [are] signs of the new covenant…” and that we are to “...remember [Christ]  by keeping this feast.” But we also note that “[t]he Lord’s Supper enacts and seals what the Word proclaims: God’s sustaining Grace offered to all people. The Lord’s Supper is at once God’s gift of grace, God’s means of grace, and God’s call to respond to that grace.”² However, the mechanics of this process are not fully understood and as practical theologians, we tend to speak of the mystery of God when describing God’s grace in communion. 

What has made this conversation even more interesting over the last few years has been how folks have been participating in communion while in lock down at home during COVID restrictions. If you don’t have bread, is cracker enough to count as Christ’s body? What about iced tea as the blood of Christ? How about chocolate and peanut butter³? We have had to make considerable compromises in our understandings and interpretations, but by doing so, we have made more room in our faiths for God to show up and be present with us. At the end of the day, whether we understand communion to be representative or transubstantiative (meaning the substance changes to real flesh and blood), it is the Divine who does this work, not us - we are still guests at God’s table. The bread, the cup, tortilla, water, chocolate, and peanut butter; through the grace of God, they are all both representative of who Christ is and are real incarnations of grace when we celebrate communion together. 

Which brings us to World Communion Sunday: on one Sunday we proclaim that together, Christians from around the world are celebrating one feast of communion together, even though we are separated by geography, time, language, and culture. This too is a celebration of the mystery of God. How can we proclaim one feast when we understand the ritual so differently? God’s grace. How can we proclaim one body and one cup when we can’t even agree on the nitty gritties of Christ? God’s grace. In fact, it is in our Prayer of Great Thanksgiving that we proclaim that every celebration of communion is a feast that is timeless and without geographic center, because the feast is centered upon God and Christ, made real by the Holy Spirit. 

So come on October 2 where we will celebrate the one, holy, apostolic, divine and human feast together, remembering that communion is not centered upon us, that it is not American, not Presbyterian, and not only in English, but is instead a feast centered upon God’s compassion and desire for God’s people. And when we sit to feast, from east and west, north and south, we feast on grace itself, and having been fed, we are given all that we need to go out and serve one another this grace into eternity. 

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¹Those who didn’t agree became known as the Oriental Orthodox Church which includes: the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodox_Churches)
²Book of Order, W-3.0409.
³ This was a serious discussion in our denomination’s office of theology during the pandemic; whether pastors should or can bless such elements for communion, and whether we could practically renounce the practice.