Blog Posts
This is a Table For All Who Are Hungry (If You Are Hungry, Come)
Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash
We share this reflection from Atlanta-based writer, Laura Jean Truman, originally published on Laura Jean’s blog in February 2020.
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
Rumi
It is Christian orthodoxy that only Christians can take communion. This is a “family table,” as some theologies put it. Taking communion is something that you do once you are initiated into Christian community – whether that means baptism, “accepting Jesus into your heart,” or a lengthy confirmation process, every Christian denomination believes that eating the body and blood of Jesus (whether it’s called communion, Eucharist, or just the Table) is something for people on the inside, not the outside.
I don’t believe that anymore.
This may be a family meal, but we are all family.
In my conservative background, communion was paradoxically “not such a big deal” because it was just a “symbol” or “remembrance,” but it was also treated a bit hysterically, thousands of new weird rules around what kind of a mood you had to be in to “take communion” always cropping up (don’t be mad at anyone! don’t have any unrepentant sin! don’t be in a bad mood! you gotta be perfect or feel perfect before you take this shiny silver plate!). Like my hippie friends warning me about psychedelics, evangelicals were always saying things like you have to be in a good headspace before you eat!
I don’t remember feeling any particular way about communion as a kid and young adult. I remember those two things: it’s just a symbol people and it’s only for Christians. Why something so bland and meaningless, relegated to weeknights and intentionally downplayed in salvific importance, would be so aggressively protected as just for Christians is beyond me.
After college, I was furiously angry at the church and briefly identified as an atheist before finding myself wandering back to spirituality – not an atheist, not a Christian, but in an in-between place where it felt like God was reaching out to me, but I felt too tired to have that conversation. So I didn’t. What I did do, though, was end up at a silent Anglican monastery during Lent, and in that woodsy set-aside place, I took communion.
I ate it every single day, walking up to the altar with the monks and nuns and holding hands in a circle. We sang very old prayers and the priest put a thin wafer on my tongue, every day, for a month.
I didn’t go to the monastery believing in Jesus, but I left the monastery believing in Jesus.
Was it taking communion that made me a Christian? Was it the rhythm of liturgy, the silence of the woods, the communion of saints, the space to walk and breathe, the good books? I don’t know always how God finds our wounded, wandering hearts when they are too battered to come searching for Her. I don’t know how Jesus still finds us when we are too tired to have that conversation.
I do know that when I didn’t have words, Jesus found me in my body – in what I ate, and in what I drank.
When I came back to Christianity, I went back to my old “communion is only for Christians” ways pretty quickly, because orthodoxy is a helluva drug, and because I had never heard anyone give a defense of another way. I went through life with my personal experience in my back pocket, and my contradictory theology in my front pocket, like we all do in some ways. But when I read Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread, where she shares her own story of moving from atheism to Christ during Eucharist, I wanted to holler and shout and dance. This was my experience, this was what I believed, this was how God is longing to break into the world and into our souls, in the food that we eat and the wine that we drink.
Nothing made more sense to me than that someone would encounter Jesus for the first time at the Table, just like Paul thrown off his horse on the way to Damascus. I think I’d always believed that you could meet Jesus in physical things, bump into Him the way you bump into a friend out at a restaurant. Oh, hello, Jesus, here you are, at the diner, sharing waffles.
That this encounter could happen at the Table – it wasn’t orthodox, but it felt right.
I wrestled in conversations with more traditional friends over this. “If everyone just comes up, without thinking about it, without knowing it’s important, it loses some of the sacredness. If everyone just eats and drinks like it’s another religious ritual like sit-stand-kneel, the holiness is lost.”
How do we practice radical hospitality, but let everyone know exactly what it is that they’re getting into?
I was asked to preach at my seminary’s chapel service in my final year, and I invited my then-pastor to come preside over the Table. He was a conservative Presbyterian, and if there’s one thing that a Presby likes, it’s a good Table fencing (fencing the table is a fancy way of saying that it’s your job to tell the congregation who is allowed to take communion and who is not). My seminary didn’t fence the Table at their services, at least not out loud, so I had to tell him that he wasn’t allowed to tell the non-Christians to stay away. He was surprisingly chill with it. I thought he’d balk, blessed conservative that he is, but he only nodded and promised that he wouldn’t.
My pastor stood up and spoke over the bread and wine, casually and informally, like evangelicals do. Then he held the Body of Christ out over the congregation of grad students and professors and said –
This is a table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.
I will never say anything else when I preside over the table, ever again.
This is a table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.
An open table theology matters so much to me because it feels like the Gospel, the Gospel that says that at the very center of our life with God is reckless, unimaginable grace that comes seeking us on our good days and bad days and weak days and strong days alike.
This is a Table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.
On the days that we are so entirely burnt out, on the days that we’re tired and sad and scared and lonely and we don’t know if being a Christian makes any sense, but we know that we’re hungry, God’s table is set and God’s table is radically hospitable.
Open Table theology might be the worst theology in the whole world. Maybe one day I’ll find my way to a more orthodox way of being, but for now, I can’t imagine a God who doesn’t want every single person to come and eat and drink, no matter what we believe, no matter what we can articulate, no matter what conversations with God we are able to have or unafraid to have or entirely incapable of having. This God is open to everyone, at all moments, calling us and wanting us and holding us no matter if we come with good intentions or terrible intentions or as perpetrators of dysfunctional family systems or as oppressors or as oppressed.
God is opening constantly the doors and inviting, inviting, inviting.
And experiencing this God only in a disembodied way – praying, writing, talking – doesn’t feel like enough.
Our invitation into the Presence is visceral. It is in our eating and in our drinking.
That embodied invitation matters.
If you’re hungry, come.
This is the Gospel.
We all experience hunger differently. I know it as a gap in my soul between what I am and what I want to be. I know it as an ache inside me that wants to be whole and doesn’t know how to be. I know it as a longing for Narnia, as the feeling that there’s something just around the corner that I haven’t seen yet but I want to swing open the door and turn the light on, and maybe, maybe, I’ll catch it before it hides.
I’m a “wanderer and a worshiper and a lover of leaving” (Rumi) and these are exactly the people that God has set God’s table for.
Is this an adequate and complete theology of the Table? No. Absolutely not.
But some theologies we carry in our guts and not in our brains, some theologies we feel in our bodies, and sacraments are physical things, to taste and touch and eat and be dunked under. They are water. Bread. Wine. Oil on our heads. Dust on our foreheads.
Don’t “think and believe” that the Lord is good, “taste and see.”
All the questions of “am I enough” and “am I good” and “do I belong” fall away as bread dissolves on your tongue because there’s no question that I’m good, because I am in Christ, and in Christ’s death, just as Christ was with us in His life.
We are all inside this suffering and death and resurrection together.
The first time I ever served someone communion, it was to a seminary classmate that I’d just had a fight with in class. One of my professors had grabbed me in chapel to serve at the table and I was still hot around the collar from me and Emily’s head-butting. We were both strong-willed seminarians, and while I don’t remember what we fought about, we were both still really mad. I was sitting in the front of chapel stewing, and my professor snagged me to serve communion (“Say whatever you say in your tradition. Doesn’t matter”), and then Emily was walking up in line towards me.
I ripped off a piece of the dark molasses brown bread and placed it in my ornery colleague’s open hands and told her,
This is the body of Christ, broken for you, Emily.
She looked me in the eyes and we both got a little teary, and she took and ate.
I’ve presided at the table a lot since then. I’ve served communion in retirement communities and queer living room churches and at weddings and once, in a hockey stadium.
This first time I looked at my enemy who was my neighbor and told her that this is the body of Christ, broken for you, is still my favorite.
This is the table for the ragamuffins and failures and the ones who pick fights in seminary classrooms and the ones who don’t want to talk to God at all and the ones who have made terrible mistakes that they don’t even know how to begin repenting of and the ones who don’t think their whole embodied self is welcome and the ones who don’t know for sure if Jesus is worth it and the ones who are sure that they are not worth it.
This is for the ones who have been kicked out of their families and the ones who have walked away from their loved ones.
This is for the ones who have succeeded at great cost to their souls and the ones who are afraid to try.
This is the family table for the ones who aren’t sure they really want to be family with the other folks coming up taking this bread and this wine.
This is a Table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.
Laura Jean Truman
Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, Laura Jean holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an MDiv from Emory University: Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism, mysticism, and existentialism.
Laura Jean’s essays and prayers can be found on their Substack and their retired Patheos site “Old Things New”; published in the collections Preaching As Resistance ed. by Phil Snyder and A Rhythm of Prayer ed. by Sarah Bessey.
Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com
Photo by Eric Sun
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
The Holy Thursday Revolution
This post initially appeared on Dr. Diana Butler Bass’ ongoing blog, The Cottage, and has been republished here with her permission. You can subscribe and receive regular posts from Dr. Butler Bass on her webpage.
Before the pandemic, I was often asked to preach on the second Sunday after Easter. The traditional verses for that day are always the same in liturgical churches — John 20:19-31 — the story of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, including the popular account known as “Doubting Thomas.”
One year, as I struggled to come up with a sermon on that perennial text, my attention drifted away from Thomas and back toward the first sentence of the story:
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
“The house where the disciples had met” leaped from the page. What house? Of course! The house where, just a few days before they’d had the Passover meal. The house where Jesus had washed their feet and called them his friends. Where they had shared bread and wine — the house of the “upper room.” In the wake of Jesus’ execution and the strange reports from Mary Magdalene of Jesus in the garden, the frightened disciples had gone back to the upper room. Perhaps to grieve, perhaps to remember, perhaps to await what they thought would be their own arrest. But they had gone back to the room with the table, their last gathering place.
Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash
Thus, on the night of the resurrection, Jesus showed up there. With his friends. At the scene of the Last Supper. On Easter, Jesus goes from the tomb back to the table.
If you are writing a play about this, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table. The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story. Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.
They never return to the cross. Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution. He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meets him there. He never valorizes the events of Friday. He never mentions them. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational — take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.
Table - trial - cross - tomb/tomb - table.
What if the table is the point?
Every Holy Week, Christians move toward Good Friday as the most somber — and most significant — day of the year. Depending on your tradition, your may sit in silence, reverence a cross, listen to a sermon, recite the Seven Last Words, fast in quiet prayer. You may weep, sing mournful hymns, feel the weight of injustice. It is sobering business, keeping watch with the execution of an innocent man. For centuries, Christians have been told that everything changed that day, the cross was the bridge between the sinful world and the world of salvation. The cross is all that matters.
Somber, yes. The most somber day. Of course. But what if it isn’t the most significant? What if the most significant day was the day before — the day of foot washing and the supper, the day of conviviality and friendship, the day of Passover and God’s liberation? What if we’ve gotten the week’s emphasis wrong?
Christians mostly think of Maundy Thursday as the run-up to the real show on Friday. And, because the church has placed such emphasis on Friday, we interpret Thursday through the events of the cross. Thus, when Jesus shares bread and wine with his friends, it becomes a prefiguring of his broken body and the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins. We return to the cross all the time. We see Thursday through Friday. From that angle, it becomes morbid. A doomed man’s final meal while the execution clock ticks.
But his friends didn’t experience it that way. They weren’t thinking about a cross or a blood sacrifice. They saw Friday through Thursday. They were celebrating Passover. They were in Jerusalem with friends and family (not just twelve guys at a long table — sorry Leonardo) at a big, busy, bustling holiday meal to commemorate God freeing their ancestors from slavery. Passover is a joyful meal, not a somber one. And, because Passover was about liberation from a hostile oppressor, it was fraught with political expectations and possibilities. Would God free them likewise from Rome? Was the promised kingdom at hand? They were thinking about their history and their future, and they were enjoying the supper at hand.
Jesus loved meals. They knew that. They’d had so many together. Go back through the gospels and see how many of the stories take place at tables, distributing food, or inviting people to supper. Indeed, some have suggested that Jesus primary work was organizing suppers as a way to embody the coming kingdom of God. Throughout his ministry, Jesus welcomed everyone — to the point of contention with his critics — to the table. Tax collectors, sinners, women, Gentiles, the poor, faithful Jews, and ones less so. Jesus was sloppy with supper invitations. He never thought about who would be seated next to whom. He made the disciples crazy with his lax ideas about dinner parties. All he wanted was for everybody to come, to be at the table, and share food and conversation.
“I think of Jesus,” wrote theologian Beatrice Bruteau, “setting up these Suppers somewhat on the order of the ‘base communities’ of liberation theology.” Gatherings of the Kingdom of God.
Bruteau continues by quoting Rabbi Kushner on Sabbath meals:
And the laughing. The sharing. And the singing. One melody is scarcely spent when another comes forward. We don’t even notice the racket of the children. There is a great holiness in this room. It grows with the sharing. [I take a large ceramic Kiddush cup, fill it with wine, offer it to my wife and then to the man next to me, who] hands it to his wife with the solemn instruction, “Here, keep it going.” And we do. From hand to hand. Drunk from and refilled. Time and time again.
Sabbath. A vision of the kingdom of God. The meal reminds us and continues the promise.
What if Maundy Thursday was that? The Last Supper of the Old World. The last meal under Rome, the last meal under any empire. And it is the First Feast of the Kingdom That Has Come. The first meal of the new age, the world of mutual service, reciprocity, equality, abundance, generosity, and unending thanksgiving. Pass the cup, keep it going, hand to hand, filled and refilled, time after time. This night is the final night of dominion, the end of slavery; and this night is the first night of communion, the beginning of true freedom: “I will no longer call you servants but friends.”
This table is the hinge of history. The table is the point. Thursday is the Last Supper and the First Feast. The Holy Thursday Revolution.
Pull up a chair. Bring a friend.
Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. Click here information on Diana and her work.
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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
The Body of Christ Made Known on Zoom: A Conversation with Diana Butler Bass, Deanna A. Thompson, Joshua Case, and Kelvin Holdsworth
What does it mean to be the virtual body of Christ in a pandemic?
Church Anew has closely followed the conversation around sharing communion through digital media. We are grateful for the generous contributions to this conversation on the Church Anew Blog by Diana Butler Bass and Deanna A. Thompson, and for the ongoing commitment of the St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community. The video conversation below also features Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland. This is posted with express permission from the authors.
Deanna A. Thompson
Dr. Deanna A. Thompson is Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community and Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Before moving to St. Olaf, Thompson taught religion for over two decades at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Thompson is a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from Martin Luther and feminism to the intersections of cancer, trauma, and faith, and what it means to be the church in the digital age. She is author of five books, including Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism, and the Cross; The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World; and most recently, Glimpsing Resurrection: Cancer, Trauma, and Ministry.
Nourished by Lutheran tradition, the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community engages people of all backgrounds and beliefs in deep exploration of core commitments and life choices in ways that foster inclusive community, both within and beyond St. Olaf College.
https://www.facebook.com/deanna.thompson.140
https://deannaathompson.com/
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
On Hoarding Eucharist in a Hungry World
Can Christians celebrate the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion —through technology? Is the sacrament valid if it happens virtually?
In this time of COVID-19 lockdowns and churches moving to virtual communion, Diana Butler Bass reflects on a conversation she had with Phyllis Tickle.
A decade or so ago, about five years before she passed away, Phyllis Tickle and I were talking about how technology would change the church. She was enthusiastic about the Internet, her imagination opened by the possibilities of virtual reality to form new sorts of community. She had recently joined a church in the online world of Second Life, and told me about her avatar (I had no idea what an avatar was!). I remember how excitedly she spoke about how “virtuality” would expand our sense of “reality,” and how that would, in turn, foster a new reformation in Christianity. This technology would be, she assured me, as radical as the invention of the printing press—and this emerging sense of space and time would be as revolutionary for faith as were the first widely available vernacular Bibles.
“It raises so many theological questions!” she exclaimed. “For instance, if an avatar priest consecrates elements online, is Christ really present? Is the liturgy valid?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“No one knows yet,” she said. “Because we haven’t thought about it. But pretty soon, we’re going to be arguing over these things. Maybe not about avatar church. But the first time a priest or bishop offers the Eucharist online, it will be like Luther nailing the 95 Theses on the door.”
Phyllis threw her head back, with the laugh for which she was justly famous—half joy, half a sort of gleeful anticipation of how the future was at hand.
I’ve rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in my mind over the last two months. Since the coronavirus lockdowns. Since real-life churches have moved online. The argument she anticipated has started in earnest: Can Christians celebrate the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion —through technology? Is the sacrament valid if it happens virtually?
The answers to these questions are intertwined with the diverse theologies of polity and sacraments of different Christian traditions. Indeed, Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, free churches, and many Methodists have no problem with online communion. Their beliefs about the priesthood of all believers and (generally) memorialist ideas of the Lord’s Supper have made possible online communion with few theological questions. But more liturgical churches—many Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Orthodox—have restricted or denied the possibility of online Eucharist. They say that “online community isn’t real community,” that “physical presence” of a congregation is necessary for the sacrament to be valid, that laity cannot be trusted with appropriate reverence of the elements, and that a priest (or duly ordained minister) must consecrate the elements in person. Indeed, some leaders in these churches have forbidden all virtual communion, warning against any form of lay presidency or consecration, instituting forced Eucharistic fasts, substituting “spiritual communion” for partaking bread and wine, or insisting that priests can celebrate the mass privately for the whole of the church.
Oddly enough, much of the argument against online communion has taken place online. Self-identified “traditionalists” have ridiculed and attacked those who see this moment as a time when churches might experiment with liturgies, including offering bread and wine virtually. On Twitter, I posted about my conversation with Phyllis Tickle, suggesting that online liturgy was not, in effect, very different than the sorts of liturgical innovations of the Reformation, and that this moment of virtual church was a perfect time to imagine church anew—to open ourselves a future where technology reshapes Christian practice as much as it was reshaped 500 years ago.
I’ve worried that in withholding communion, the church has been, in effect, hoarding the bread and wine, restraining the healing beauty of Eucharist when hungry people most need to feast. A forced fast is no fast—it is an expression of institutional power over and against God’s people in a time of emergency. And I can’t help but think the lack of theological imagination at this moment will give people already wary of church another reason to consign Christianity to historical irrelevance. The pandemic, however, has been a sort of Pandora’s box for churches and technology, letting loose the theological questions Phyllis Tickle once predicted with the fierce urgency of suffering and death. The lid is open and can’t be shut. Sadly, some denominations seem incapable of seeing this as gift and possibility, preferring instead to give into controlling impulses and fear.
Despite overall institutional reluctance to engage these questions, some clergy have been hoping their denominations would provide for online Eucharistic celebration—and have been worried and even cowed by pressure coming from those who insist that God cannot use “virtuality” as a vehicle for the sacraments. While online argument might be expected, a chilling episode moved from social media to an “in real life” space. After Easter, a bishop in the Episcopal Church gave permission for his diocese to celebrate virtual Eucharist in an attempt to meet pastoral needs and address some of these issues. He appears to have been pressed by the denomination—the same denomination of which Phyllis Tickle had been a member—to rescind the option he had given to congregations in his care.
Over the last weeks, I've been agitating for better, more creative theological thinking about the Eucharist, virtual community, and new forms of liturgical celebration—all of this in line with two decades of my own research and writing. The questions that were once speculative have arrived, and religious groups are going to have to face them with courage and creativity. The pandemic has forced the issue: God’s presence is uncontained by time and space. We are in need of the healing beauty of bread and wine, to sit at the table that exists at the hinge of time, the first feast of the Age-That-is-to-Come. All of this already exists in virtual time—the virtual reality that is the cosmic presence of God. The last thing we need right now—in a time of food shortages, lockdown, isolation, and separation—is the church shutting the people out of the banquet, unable to recognize that we live in the virtual reign of Christ. Virtuality isn’t just technology; it is theology.
A clerical-friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) shares my concerns for the bread and wine to be freed into the world, however that happens in this time of crisis. On a day after a particularly strained Twitter argument, my friend wrote this poem and sent it to me. The words capture the sense of urgency and power of Eucharist far better than my halting prose. Sometimes when the church can’t hear even the most loving critique, my hope is that it can still hear poetry.
* * * *
An Order for Communing in a Pandemic
by Anonymous
She took a loaf of bread,
broke it and gave it,
half to the hungry, the poor, the millions
whose gap-toothed pantries
are emptying,
dwindling sand racing
through the widening neck of an hourglass
and she felt the weight
of a sacrament pressing
into her soul
as the body and blood of Christ
spilled out of doors,
into streets,
into homes,
flowing as freely,
as slick and messy,
as uncontrolled,
as it did from his own tortured body,
as if God really could be present
everywhere and in everything.
Church Anew has closely followed the conversation around sharing communion through digital media. Following this blog post, Diana Butler Bass was interviewed by Religious News Service for their article, “Online Communion should be celebrated, not shunned, says Diana Butler Bass.”
Church Anew’s first blog post on virtual communion featured an interview with Deanna A. Thompson, Director of the St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community. St. Olaf published Deanna’s first and second blog posts engaging conversation with Christians across the globe around about Holy Communion during online worship.
Both Diana Butler Bass and Deanna A. Thompson participated in a May, 19, 2020 video conversation, “Being the Church in This Time of Pandemic,” which also features Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland. This is posted on Church Anew with express permission from the authors.
Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. For more information on Diana and her work, see http://www.chaffeemanagement.com/dianabutlerbass
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https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Virtual Communion and Body of Christ: A Conversation with Dr. Deanna A. Thompson
What does it mean to be the virtual body of Christ in a pandemic?
Dr. Deanna A. Thompson, author of The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World and Director of The Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community at St. Olaf College, wrote her first post on the issue of whether or not to offer Holy Communion in the context of online worship on March 26, 2020. Viewed over 8,500 times in less than a week, Deanna’s second post responded to comments from a variety of perspectives as we continue to discern what it means to be the virtual body of Christ in a pandemic. This week Deanna talked to Pastor David Lillejord, Church Anew Executive Board Member, in her first personal interview about this topic.
Pastor Lillejord: How did the issue of communion during online worship become an important one for you?
Dr. Thompson: I used to be really skeptical about digital technology. I didn't own a cell phone and I was really proud of that fact. And my kids didn't own cell phones. I didn't participate in social media and felt really self-righteous about that too, because I really did not see being virtually connected as offering anything value added. And then eleven years ago, I got diagnosed with stage IV cancer, which kind of came out of the blue. And as my world became really small, I went from being very involved in my work, and my kids’ schools and in our church, and that whole world kind of went away. I had to resign from my full and wonderful life. What I started to realize is one of the few ways I could be connected to other people was through digital technology. That experience really transformed my understanding about how we can use digital technology to help us better live into the call of being the body of Christ for one another.
But the issue of having communion as part of virtual or online worship was an issue that once I started writing and speaking about the virtual body of Christ, everyone wanted me to weigh in on. I didn't quite get around to it. I knew it would be controversial and it didn't seem so pressing. When we had all these in-person options of communion, why share the sacrament virtually? But then with the pandemic, it suddenly became much more pressing. And while church leaders were encouraging people to fast or refrain from the practice, I started noticing how more and more congregations were actually venturing into this area. And I didn’t see anyone weighing in on what it means to do this theologically. I thought it would be important to try and think through some of the issues given this was a situation facing many congregations right now.
Pastor Lillejord: And how is your health now?
Dr. Thompson: I am in my third remission, and I'm doing about as well as humanly possible with incurable cancer. It could change at any point, but so far it’s been in remission for about six years. So it feels good. Thanks for asking.
Pastor Lillejord: So why do you think communion in virtual worship is such a controversial issue?
Dr. Thompson: I think the challenge for people is that many see virtual connectedness or being connected via digital technology as diametrically opposed to being related to each other in person. A lot of people don't want to use the term virtual, you know, it means “almost” or “barely,” so it doesn't really enhance the sense that this is meaningful or real. A lot of people see virtual interaction, virtual worship as disembodied because it's mediated through a screen. I think there's a sense that worshiping online, taking communion in the context of virtual worship doesn’t involve the body. A really important challenge though, and this comes from my kind of conversion experience of being quarantined by cancer, is that there's not an either/or when we're involved in virtual worship. Actually our bodies are involved. I have a friend who told me that she found herself on her knees in her living room in the middle of her church’s worship service. She was moved to get down on her knees and pray, which she doesn't do when she's there in person. One person said he cries through every hymn that we sing virtually. In other words, people are experiencing worship in embodied ways. It's not an either/or.
I think sometimes, too, we romanticize in-person interactions. I think all of us have been with people who are physically sitting next to us but are not really present with us. Right? Their minds are somewhere else. They could just be emotionally distant, preoccupied. And one of the things that happened when I was really sick was that virtual interaction became one of the main ways I communicated with others. And in some ways, virtual communication often allowed a kind of intimacy that wasn't there in in-person interactions.
I think part of what we need to say is not all in-person interactions are inherently good and positive and not all virtual interactions are inherently subpar. All of our communication is mediated in some way. Our ways of being in touch and interacting with each other are complex and don't fit neatly into these virtual versus embodied realities. So what I'm trying to do is help people nuance their understanding of the relationship between virtual and embodied interactions and not see them as diametrically opposed.
Pastor Lillejord: So it's not just a theological thing? In fact, many of the things you listed were kind of cultural about what you learned when you had cancer and had to communicate in quarantine virtually, and now many more of us are getting to learn them for the first time through the pandemic.
Dr. Thompson: I think you're right and I wouldn't have believed it had I not had cancer. I would not have guessed that sometimes virtual interaction could be superior to in-person interaction. So I do feel like having had this experience before, or really having to depend on virtual interaction as my one of my primary ways of being in touch, helped me realize the virtual Body of Christ is alive and well and offers healing and care and compassion and support. It's helped me blow up that sense that one is inherently superior to the other.
Pastor Lillejord: What are some cautions for churches who are offering or considering communion, the online version?
Dr. Thompson: There's been a lot of cautioning against it. I think some of the things they're saying make a lot of sense. It is important to reassure people that if they don't get to partake in communion their faith is not at risk. The practice of weekly communion has become more and more popular in the Lutheran Church, so it's assumed that communion is pretty central to being a worshipping Christian. And so I do think there is likely a sense from a number of people who worry about what they are missing out on. To emphasize that the Word comes to us through the reading of scripture, that it comes to us in absolution, that it comes to us through preaching, that it comes to us through the blessing is all really important. The Word of God comes to us and we're not being denied that Word if we don't have access to communion.
One of the biggest issues that has been lifted up is the issue of access. I think that's a really important issue. And the issue of who has access to the internet is a big one. We've got economic disparities that are really significant. I know some of our partner synods globally are really challenged right now by not being able to physically gather and not having the option of gathering virtually. I think that we want to take that seriously.
I think there are ways for us as congregations to find out who in our congregation does not have access and consider how might we offer them access to the sacraments. I think there are ways to get creative about that.
At the same time, I do think that this issue of access is way bigger than internet access. There are a lot of people who can't get to worship when it's in person. Many churches have provisions for bringing people the sacrament when they can’t get to church. But these visits don’t always happen. I was never brought the sacrament when I was sick, I imagine I'm not alone. I think that many people who are really sick, many people who care for people who are sick, many people who work during the times when worship is offered regularly miss out on worship and the sacrament. I think we actually have quite a significant access issue regarding in-person worship, maybe even bigger than the access issue of the internet.
One of the things I’m concerned about is when churches start having in-person worship again is that the most vulnerable among us are not going to be there, right? They're not going to risk that. And so when you've got, I don't know, 30% of your congregation 20% of your congregation coming to in person worship. What is the church going to do?
Pastor Lillejord: This issue of access is going to be with us for a while. I think it always has been with us, or maybe we are paying more attention to it now. It's going be an issue going forward for quite some time. Turning to another issue, what are we learning about the office of the pastor during the pandemic?
Dr. Thompson: One of the things that I started to notice about the way the body of Christ operates virtually beyond the confines of the local church is how many people share in the role of ministry. That's something that I’ve always known, but when I got sick, I saw a new level of shared ministry. Lutherans talk about the priesthood of all believers, the way in which all of us are called to be ministers. I really saw that happening when I was sick, and I see it happening now. All the people who are part of congregations who are really tech savvy, who’ve jumped in to make online worship happen and run smoothly; those who offer musical offering for worship, taping things in their houses, mixing different voices and instruments together. We’re sharing the ministry of contacting people in the congregation to check in on how they are doing. For a lot of churches, of course, shared ministry is not new. But I feel like I'm seeing a shared sense of ministry in a way that, to me is much more visible than when we're not in a pandemic. And I think it’s increased visibility helps us live into that vision that all of us are part of the body of Christ, and every part of the body has a function, and they're all important. So it's really pushing us to live into that polity that we have in the Lutheran Church and in many Protestant communities.
Pastor Lillejord: How will virtual communion affect our understanding of church and worship going forward?
Dr. Thompson: One of the things that I've heard people talk about is the concern that if you open the floodgates and do communion at home, people aren't going to see the need for the church anymore. People will think that they don't need to come to church because they can do worship and communion at home in their pajamas. When I talk to pastors, I'm hearing that attendance for online worship is two or three times larger compared to in-person attendance from this time last year.
We had our first virtual coffee hour after church and there were over 100 people. We don't usually get 100 people for a coffee hour for our in-person gatherings. So what does this tell us? What are we learning about what people need and what nourishes their faith? As we move someday out of this pandemic I hope we don’t go back to exactly how things were before but we learn from the ways that the church is now meeting people's needs virtually. A lot of churches have had to pivot and it's been hard and they're longing for the day this experiment is over. And I can relate to that. At the same time, I really hope that we're paying attention to what we're learning.
Pastor Lillejord: What has the overall reaction been to you and your thoughts on the issue of virtual communion?
Dr. Thompson: I've received a lot of really positive feedback. I heard from someone in Indonesia who wanted to translate my writing about it into local languages so that worshipping Christians there could learn how I was thinking about this. I've had a lot of people get in touch with me and be really supportive. There are a number of folks who are religion scholars and theologians who really disagree with the approach I'm taking. And some of the disagreement has to do with the conviction that on-line communion is a disembodied kind of experience. That real presence can't happen because it's virtual. That it's not truly the gathering of the body of Christ because it’s being mediated by digital technology.
And so there definitely are theological objections but also then there's been by some friends and colleagues, objections to me weighing in on this because the Presiding Bishop encouraged fasting from the sacrament. For some people it's been unfortunate that I would publicly want to disagree with that.
The thing that really pushed me into the conversation was actually hearing from a Lutheran Bishop who said, despite what the Presiding Bishop has said, half the congregations in his synod were going ahead with online communion. And at that point, I consider myself a theologian of the church, and this is a topic that I've thought a lot about, and it seemed to me that someone should lay out the theological rationale for virtual communion and how to do it well.
I find that most people who aren't professional theologians don't really have a problem with it. I've had a number of people ask me why others would oppose it. They see us worshiping online and do not understand why people would support worship but not communion being offered at this time of great anxiety and challenge.
Pastor Lillejord: Well, I want to personally thank you for addressing it. Thank you for the wisdom, but also for your personal story. I think the church always has to engage in these discussions and not always agree with one another. This includes discussions about worshipping in person and/or online—before, during, and after this pandemic.
Dr. Thompson: Yes, and this is where many of us have been thinking in an either/or kind of way. Either church is fully in person and that's the way it's meant to be or it's virtual, and we’re being co-opted by market forces and settling for a poor substitute of the real thing. The experience of being terribly ill made me realize that digital technology is a tool that we can use well to help us better be the body of Christ. Or we can ignore it or use it poorly. And I think that we should have some robust discussions about that rather than just assume it's a poor substitute for the real thing. So, yeah, I'm hoping that we're being kind of forced into a conversation that could have been going on for the last 10-15 years.
I hope we will continue the conversation about what it looks like to be the virtual body of Christ faithfully in a time of pandemic. And this is where I think Luther at his best was thinking about caring for and meeting the needs of those who are suffering around him. He writes about the deadly plague because he cares about people who are dying and he wants church leaders and government leaders to respond to that. This is where the image of the body of Christ from First Corinthians comes in. The members of the body who are suffering deserve the most attention. So for me the call of the gospel is to help others know that when you're suffering you're not alone, God is with you and that being the body of Christ together is to be with people in that suffering and hopefully to alleviate some of it. And it seems to me that allowing people to participate in something like communion can bring great comfort and sustenance for their faith right now.
Church Anew continues to follow the conversation around sharing communion through digital media.
We were honored to have Diana Butler Bass write about this topic in a separate Church Anew blog post, “On Hoarding Eucharist in a Hungry World.”
Following her Church Anew post, Diana Butler Bass was interviewed by Religious News Service for their article, “Online Communion should be celebrated, not shunned, says Diana Butler Bass.”
Both Diana Butler Bass and Deanna A. Thompson participated in a May, 19, 2020 video conversation, “Being the Church in This Time of Pandemic,” which also features Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland. This is posted on Church Anew with express permission from the authors.
Deanna A. Thompson
Dr. Deanna A. Thompson is Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community and Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Before moving to St. Olaf, Thompson taught religion for over two decades at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Thompson is a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from Martin Luther and feminism to the intersections of cancer, trauma, and faith, and what it means to be the church in the digital age. She is author of five books, including Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism, and the Cross; The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World; and most recently, Glimpsing Resurrection: Cancer, Trauma, and Ministry.
Nourished by Lutheran tradition, the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community engages people of all backgrounds and beliefs in deep exploration of core commitments and life choices in ways that foster inclusive community, both within and beyond St. Olaf College.
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