My home is not inside the city limits of Milwaukie, or Portland, Oregon even though my postal address is designated as ‘Milwaukie’ locally and ‘Portland’ nationally. We get mail with either city named, but in reality, we do not live in a city. We are part of an unincorporated urban area bounded to the north, east and south by cities and to the west by the river. Some people love living outside the city limits, believing it gives them more freedom to do what they want without the kind of regulations or enforcement that a city might require. Others are happy to be unincorporated because they believe that they pay less taxes, even though that is not really true. When someone new moves into my area, they often believe that they live in the city whose name they find on their postal address, and it comes as a surprise to them when they discover that they are ‘city-less.’
Communities incorporate for a variety of reasons, but generally because they discover, over time, that they can achieve more for their community united than they can on their own. An unincorporated community has no unifying vision and no localized governing body to tend to the specific community needs. Someone may really dislike city building codes but then discover that having an overall plan for their community would be helpful for getting the sidewalks they want, slowing traffic, or funding crosswalks for their local school. It can be very frustrating for residents who understand the benefits of working together as one body. Shortly before the beginning of the Pandemic, I began meeting with a group of people considering how to improve the way that our unincorporated urban area is governed. The organizing work that we were doing around governance became much more difficult during the Pandemic. Online meetings are not conducive to community building, and the effects of the long isolation further fragmented our community setting our efforts back by years.
This weekend marks Corpus Christi, which the church now refers to as the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. The Gospel reading is from Mark’s narration of the last supper. (Mark 14:12-16,22-26) I confess that I prefer the Latin name for the Solemnity because it speaks more of unity while the English title focuses the church more narrowly on the sacramental bread and wine of the Eucharist. Just before Easter, at every Holy Thursday Service, the church celebrates the institution of the Eucharist, which feels sufficient to me for focusing on The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Corpus Christi literally means Body of Christ in Latin. Corpus, or ‘body’, is the root of the word corporal, corporation, incorporation, and unincorporated, among other ‘body’ words. Corpus refers to a physical or material body, the body of a person for example, living or especially when dead, but also to physical collections of knowledge, complete works of an author, or set of papers, etc.
The Body of Christ has a much larger meaning than the Eucharist, yet it is through participation in the Eucharist that people are continually incorporated into one Body in Christ. Becoming incorporated into the Body of Christ is not about personal salvation or reserving one’s place in the Kin-dom of Heaven. It is about becoming the hands and feet, the real-time presence, of Christ in our world. It is about stepping up to continue the work that Jesus started, creating a more just, compassionate, and loving world – not alone -- but as part of the physical Body of believers. Yet I fear that the way we celebrate the Sunday Eucharist, the way that the church has focused on individual salvation and the elements of Bread and Wine, has stunted our ability to embrace the full meaning of what we are doing.
Mary E. McGann, in her book The Meal that Reconnects: Eucharistic Eating and the Global Food Crisis, writes that “Early focus was not on the contents of the cup but on Jesus’ invitation to drink from a common vessel, drinking from the same cup rather than drinking the same wine. Sharing a common cup was a boundary ritual, a bonding in a collective commitment to costly discipleship… For disciples then and now, drinking from a common cup affirms the community’s embrace of the dangerous memory of Jesus’ life and ministry and their own shared discipleship. Moreover, it invites them to overcome the boundaries of race, sex, social status, ethnicity, and religion that would otherwise divide them (Gal 3:26-28) and to love one another as a community of friends, partners in the radical call to discipleship.” (Pg 163). To this I say YES and Yes again. It has always been a little scary to drink from the same cup, and assuredly there are times to refrain, but now, after several years, I long for the opportunity once again.
In the same way, individual hosts cannot easily reflect the One Body, the one loaf broken, shared, and put back together again as people are incorporated into the Body of Christ with conscious participation. In the early church the bread that was shared was made by members of the community, (a practice that some communities had prior to the Pandemic). Bread was simply part of the food brought by community members for their shared meal that offered real sustenance for those who came together to eat. Eating with people that were not kin and nor even part of one’s social circle was unheard of. The act of eating at the same table was scary then as it can sometimes be now. It intentionally defied boundaries to create something new. At the last supper, on the night that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, the disciples were eating a real meal together when Jesus lifted up bread to bless and share. Jesus ate even when he knew his betrayer was eating at the same table.
When writing about the meaning of the Eucharist, in The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change, Tomas Halik wrote: Jesus “empowered his disciples to be a provocative contrast to the world of power and to religious and political manipulation. When breaking bread on the eve of his death, he entrusted them with the task of imitating his kenosis – self-surrender, self-denial, self-giving.” (pg. 67). Participation in the Eucharist is not meant to be a private receiving of the sacrament for personal edification. It is a public participation in, and affirmation of, the radical vision of Jesus. Outside the Body of Christ, we are a fragmented and ineffective people.
It is past time for Christian communities to take back their power to bake and share real bread and drink from the one cup. They need not reject science and throw caution to the wind. It makes sense to ask members who are not well to refrain from the cup, and to wear a mask in church if they are coughing and sneezing, but participation in the Eucharist requires a full sign and symbol lest it be relegated to a private affair and the Body of Christ continue to dis-incorporate. If the cup is available, it is always a choice, always risky, and necessarily challenging to all who are invited. Bread broken from a single loaf reminds us over and over again of the Body we have been called into, the Body of Christ, once broken and poured out, now really present, and at work in the world.