Celebrating World Communion Sunday

While some of you have no connection with, and perhaps little interest in, this topic, many Christians around the world will participate in a World Communion Sunday service on October 2. This is a yearly, and meaningful, observance of a great number of churches around the world.

Introducing WCS

World Communion Sunday (WCS) is widely observed each year on the first Sunday of October, largely for the purpose of promoting Christian unity and ecumenical cooperation.

WCS dates back to 1933 when Hugh T. Kerr, a Presbyterian pastor, began the observance. Three years later it was endorsed by Presbyterian churches across the country. Then in 1940, the Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches), endorsed WCS and began to promote it worldwide.

I can’t remember when I first heard of WCS, but it has been fairly recently. I certainly don’t remember hearing of it before going to Japan 50 years ago. Few Southern Baptist churches then, and I assume few SBC churches even now, were/are inclined to participate in such an observance. 

Romero’s Legacy

Catholics, of course, do not observe WCS either. But all Christians (and others) can learn valuable lessons from the life and legacy of El Salvadorian Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while serving the Eucharist in 1980, and from people like John P. Hogan, who is the co-editor of a book about Romero’s legacy.

About a year ago I read the thought-provoking book co-edited by Hogan: Romero’s Legacy: The Call to Peace and Justice (2007). It contains the “Romero Lectures” presented in Camden, N.J., from 2001 through 2007.

Since reading “The Eucharist and Social Justice,” the 2002 Romero Lecture given by Hogan, I have planned to write this article. Today, a week before World Communion Sunday, seems to be a good time to post it.

In the lecture he gave, Hogan cited these words from St. Augustine: “We eat the body of Christ to become the body of Christ.” In the Catholic sense, as well as in the catholic sense, the body of Christ is worldwide and includes all who are followers of Jesus—including many who are poor and powerless.

Discerning the Body

Hogan went on to interpret the meaning of Paul’s warning about participating in Communion without discerning the body (see 1 Cor. 11:28-31) as not adequately seeing and understanding the needs of many within the worldwide church.

“We cannot claim to be . . . Christian, the body of Christ, and support structures and systems that keep people poor and powerless,” he said (p. 29). Communion, therefore, is not “an interior retreat,” a “spiritual” thing we do for our own edification. It is, rather, a call to solidarity with all segments of the universal Church—especially with those who are poor, marginalized, and mistreated.

So, for those of us who participate in World Communion Sunday next week—and I am happy now to be a member of a church that does observe WCS each year—let us remember with gratitude that we do so as part of a worldwide fellowship of believers in Jesus Christ.

But let’s remember not just the geographical meaning of this observance. Let’s also, and especially, remember those belonging to the body of Christ who are literally poor and lacking adequate food, those who are persecuted because of their Christian beliefs, those who are discriminated against (because of their skin color, their sexual orientation, or whatever), and all who suffer because of injustice.

May World Communion Sunday help us discern, and respond more adequately to, the needs in the worldwide body of Christ.

The Beloved Community

First coined in the early days of the 20^th century by the philosopher/theologian Josiah Royce, “The Beloved Community” is a term that was popularized and invested with a deeper meaning by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The website of the King Center gives a two-page explanation of “the beloved community” as envisioned by Dr. King. Foremost in his thinking for creating such a community were the characteristics of brotherhood and sisterhood, nonviolence, and justice.

To a significant degree, those of us who are a part of Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, Kansas, experience the joys of being in a beloved community. As an Anabaptist church, RMC regularly emphasizes the characteristics just mentioned.

Although King was a Baptist pastor, his emphasis on nonviolence is especially much more in harmony with the Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups than with most of the Baptist churches in the U.S. And one of King’s closest colleagues was the Mennonite scholar Vincent Harding, who passed away last May at the age of 82.

The goal of RMC is to accept all people “regardless of race, ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, age, economic or other life circumstances” (words from RMC’s homepage). The picture below, which shows those who served Communion at RMC this past Sunday, is one small expression of what that looks like.

As a rule, the Communion service is led by the pastor assisted by the worship leader for the day, who last Sunday was Carmen, and the deacon in charge of preparations, who happened to be me. In the picture Pastor Ruth Harder is handing the cup to Amy, who was helping serve Communion for the first time.

There are six deacons at RMC, always three women and three men, and they rotate being in charge of Communion preparation. Being in charge includes enlisting three other servers. In addition to Amy, I had asked Fred, an older African-American man June and I sit next to almost every Sunday, and Emma, a high school student who was baptized last year, to help serve. Because of the snow that morning, Fred didn’t make it, so Dave substituted for him.

At RMC there is no “qualification” for being a Communion server other than being a part of the “beloved community.” In the Baptist churches I had been part of in the States, the Lord’s Supper was always, as far as I can remember, served by the deacons—who except for the last Baptist church I was a member of were always white men.

It was in Japan that I first experienced women serving as deacons and serving Communion. And then for years and years at the Fukuoka International Church that June and I help start and which I served as (part-time) pastor for 24 years, there were no deacons. So the servers for the Lord’s Supper were more like those at RMC—except there were usually only two beside the presiding pastor.

By “the beloved community,” King meant more than local church congregations. But local congregations are a good place to start. If our churches don’t find ways to transcend race, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, age, and economic differences, how can we possibly expect to see the emergence of the beloved community in the larger society?

Note

This coming Wednesday, January 14, is the regular monthly meeting of Vital Conversations at the Mid-Continent Public Library in Gladstone (Mo.). The discussion topic will be “The Beloved Community” and several local African-American guests are expected to be present for the meeting, which begins at 1 p.m. Visitors are cordially welcome.

Happy 85th Birthday, MLK!

One winter, after June and I had visited my “snowbird” parents in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, we set out from there to make the long road trip to the Washington, D.C., area by way of Atlanta.

On our second day of travel, soon after heading east on I-85 in Montgomery, Alabama, we decided to turn off the Interstate and to visit what is now called Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who was born 85 years ago today, on Jan. 15, 1929, became pastor at Dexter Avenue in 1954 when he was only 25 years old. And it was there that he became a nationally known leader of the Civil Rights movement.

Founded in 1877 as Second Colored Baptist Church, it was long called Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. But in 1978, on the tenth anniversary of King’s assassination, its name was changed again to what it is now.

A bookstore in the basement of the church sells King’s books and various souvenir-type merchandise. There we purchased the print of a painting of the Lord’s Supper by African American artist Cornell Barnes.

That remarkable painting is a version of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples—but Jesus is sitting at a table surrounded by black leaders from over the years.

I have also been moved by a similarly provocative painting of the Lord’s Supper by Fritz Eichenberg. In that 1953 painting, Jesus is surrounded at the table by homeless men off the street.

As I wrote previously, I have seen a print of that captivating piece of art on the wall at the Catholic Worker house in Kansas City—and have read that it hangs on the wall of almost every Catholic Worker house in the country.

One of the most impressive contemporary portrayals of the Lord’s Supper is the closing scene of the 1984 movie “Places in the Heart.” That dramatic film tells the story of a Texas widow (Sally Field, who won an Oscar for the part) who struggles valiantly to keep her farm with the help of a blind white man (John Malkovick, who was nominated for an Oscar) and a black man (Danny Glover) during the Great Depression.

Iconic movie critic Roger Ebert wrote about the film’s powerful ending: “The movie's last scene has caused a lot of comment. It is a dreamy, idealistic fantasy in which all the characters in the film—friends and enemies, wives and mistresses, living and dead, black and white—take communion together at a church service.”

In a joint review, a couple of other film critics wrote how in that final Lord’s Supper scene, “the wronged and the wrongdoers, the betrayers and the betrayed, are all together as one. It is an unforgettable cinematic statement about hope.”

I don’t know if King ever saw the Eichenberg painting, but I think he would have liked it, and he surely would have been moved also by Barnes’s work.

But it is a shame that King didn’t live to see “Places in the Heart,” for I think he would have been most favorably impressed with that powerful closing depiction of reconciliation between people of different races and classes.

It is a crying shame, though, that King wasn’t able to continue his valuable work for peace, justice, and reconciliation after 1968 and isn’t here to celebrate his 85^th birthday today.

Who is Communion For?

The practice that Jesus intended to be a sign of unity has become one of the most divisive aspects of the Christian religion. There is not even any agreement on the name. Some of us prefer to call it the Lord’s Supper. It is more widely known as (Holy) Communion or the Eucharist. 

Invitation to participate in Communion runs the gamut from only the members of the local church (or only to Baptists in the case of those known as Landmarkers) to being open to absolutely everyone. “Open communion” used to refer to being open to all Christians who had been baptized, or even to all Christian believers whether than had been baptized or not. But more and more the Lord’s Supper, by whatever name it is known, has become open to literally everyone who wishes to participate.

Soon after making my blog posting on July 5, I received a fairly lengthy e-mail from Bob Sherer, a Thinking Friend who is a former missionary colleague and a good friend from many years back. Among other things Bob made reference to a controversy that has been swirling around the Christians in Japan, especially around those in the United Church of Christ (Kyōdan, UCC), the largest Protestant denomination in Japan.

A UCC pastor was dismissed because of opening Communion to everyone, whether baptized or a Christian believer or not. That has been an issue for many years among Baptists in Japan also. Years ago I received a telephone call from another Baptist missionary who was rather incensed that his Japanese pastor had started inviting everyone, believer or not, to participate in the Lord’s Supper.

 
Last week I finished reading a fascinating book, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion (2007) by Sara Miles. Her grandparents had been Christian missionaries, but her mother rejected the Christian faith and Sara (b. 1952) grew up as an atheist. More or less on a whim, several years ago she attended a service at an Episcopal Church in San Francisco where she lived and partook of Communion—and her life was drastically changed, as she narrates well in her book.

As a “dyed in the wool” Baptist, I have trouble affirming the sacramental aspect of Communion forwarded by many denominations—and by Sara Miles (whose interview about her book you can find here). But I have nothing but admiration for what she has done, and what she has become, since as an ardent non-believer she first took Communion and experienced a radical conversion.