Anglicans and the Lord’s Supper
When someone distributes the bread and wine of Holy Communion they have a vantage point that others don’t have. Besides experiences of accidentally dropping the elements and maneuvering around ladies hats and anxious children, I sometimes see tears of joy and comfort. A Sunday doesn’t pass that I don’t see someone who is deeply moved by receiving the sacrament. It seems evident that they are connecting in a deep and mysterious way with the Creator of the universe. So, what is God doing in Holy Communion? Can our Anglican formularies help us to understand?
Archbishop Cranmer was one of many Protestants burned at the stake for their views on Holy Communion in sixteenth century England - a time when Christians were willing to die defending their views of the sacrament. It was in relation to a person’s views about Communion that their “religion” was defined, and on that basis that the major alignments within Protestantism occurred.
In the 1530s Cranmer came to fully embrace the evangelical movement sweeping England and the European continent, including the Protestant understanding of justification by faith alone apart from works. “The question that would occupy Cranmer for the remainder of his life,” according to theologian Ashley Null, “was how exactly the sacraments of the church fit into this new narrative.” Cranmer and others knew that the Roman Catholic explanation of Communion was incompatible with the central reformational learnings: the Bible as the primary authority, justification by faith, and the priesthood of all believers. The Anglican formularies, including the Book of Common Prayer, teach us that the sacraments of the gospel have their meaning and significance in the light of the central message of the Bible.
Cranmer’s mission was to inculcate God’s word into the hearts of the English people so that they could ruminate on it, inwardly and spiritually digesting it to the strengthening of their union with Christ. As an extension of the word heard and received in the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, Communion is another way of feeding on God’s word. As Cranmer himself would vividly describe it: “chewing it by faith in the cud of their spirit, and digesting it in their hearts, feeding and comforting themselves with that heavenly meat.”
Archbishop Cranmer wrote extensively and about this in his A Defense of the True and Catholick Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Saviour Christ (1550). He devoted the third section of this work to the question: in what way is God present and active in the sacrament? He wrote: “They [Roman Catholics] say, that Christ is received in the mouth and entereth in with the bread and wine: we say, that he is received in the heart, and entereth in by faith” (Book III, Ch. II). This begins to lay out in broad strokes how Cranmer differed from the Roman church in his Protestant view of Communion. “Cranmer’s focus was not a change in, or even instrumental use of the bread and wine, but rather the transformation of the recipients, who by the power of the Spirit were linked afresh to the saving efficacy of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion.” The next generation’s theologian, Richard Hooker, was more nuanced than Cranmer, but his eucharistic doctrine was the same. Hooker taught that Christ is dynamically present in the liturgical action rather than statically located in the bread and wine in a moment of consecration. Hooker stated that “the real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament. . .only in the very heart and soul of him which receiveth” (Laws, V.67.6).
“They [Roman Catholics] say, that Christ is received in the mouth and entereth in with the bread and wine: we say, that he is received in the heart, and entereth in by faith (Book III, Ch. II).”
As faith is created and given when the word of God is preached, so also one receives the grace of the sacrament by faith. Communion is God’s instrument for extending grace to his church and it is effective in “such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same” (Article XXVIII). As a result, Ashley Null again writes, “receiving the sacramental bread and wine, not their prior consecration, became the liturgy’s climax. Now the sacramental miracle was not changing material elements but reuniting human wills with the divine.” God truly acts towards us in Holy Communion, and we are reset in our union (communion) with him by faith. This explains why some are visibly expectant and visibly blessed when they come to receive Holy Communion.
On the night before he died for us, Jesus took the ordinary bread and wine of the Passover meal and assigned to them new meanings: “This is my body/blood which are given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (see 1 Corinthians 11:24-25). Notice that he said two things: “this is my body and blood” and “do this in remembrance of me.” These two assertions correspond to the two different ways Holy Communion has been understood in history.
Roman Catholics focus almost exclusively on the first understanding. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas developed an elaborate explanation for the “real presence of Christ” that is the official doctrine of Roman Catholicism today. Transubstantiation, as it is called, is the teaching that the bread and wine of Communion become the actual, corporeal body and blood of Christ even though it still appears that they are bread and wine. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, Aquinas believed, is reenacted on the altar every time Holy Communion is celebrated. The English reformers opposed transubstantiation as “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture’’ because it gives “occasion to many superstitions” (Article XXVIII). They saw this dogma as contrary to the recovered biblical doctrines of justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers. Either Jesus was sacrificed once for all as a sufficient offering for sin (Hebrews 9:28), or there is something lacking in his death that requires a re-sacrifice on an altar by an Old Testament-like sacrificing priest. For the English reformers, it was a clear and easy choice.
Many Protestants, on the other hand, focus on the remembrance part, reducing Communion to a symbolic meal and an occasion to remember the events of the last supper and the crucifixion. As Jews each year remember and celebrate God’s deliverance from Egypt by celebrating the Passover, so this line of thinking views Jesus’ institution of Communion to be a constant reminder that he delivered us from the bondage of sin by his sacrifice on the cross.
Anglicans represent the middle way between these two understandings. We agree that Communion is more than a memorial meal: that God himself is acting towards us in the sacraments. And we agree that their effect is spiritual in the hearts of the faithful recipients. We believe that the reading and preaching of God’s word are the ordinary means and instruments of salvation, and that sacraments are an extension of the ministry of the word that offers the blessing of reunion with God. The real presence of Christ is not material, located in the bread and wine (as Catholics say), but spiritual in the hearts of those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith. Jesus is not objectively present "in" the bread and wine any more than he was materially in the bread and wine of the Last Supper. His corporeal body is in heaven “seated at the right hand of the Father” (as the Apostles’ Creed tells us), where he lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). It is not "Jesus" sitting on the altar as a result of the actions and words of a priest. No! It's far more glorious than that! By the Holy Spirit he is spiritually present in all his transforming power when the grace of the sacrament is received by faith in the hearts of God's people, uniting us again to Christ and Christ to us. For as we are reminded in our Communion prayers, the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ so that we may “be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”
The middle way held by Anglicans between “transubstantiation” and “memorial supper” is seen in the words of administration in the first three Prayer Books. When a priest distributed bread using the first Book of Common Prayer (1549) he said: “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee.” This soon sounded too much like transubstantiation for Cranmer and others, so the words were changed for the 1552 revision: “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and fed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.” This change sounded too much like “memorial meal” for some. So the first Elizabethan Prayer Book in 1559 brought the two ideas together with an emphasis on grateful receiving in our hearts by faith: “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life; take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.” These are the same words of administration in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the recognized standard for theology and worship for the Anglican Communion.
When Jesus instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion he told us several things to remember:
First, coming to Communion is not an optional, take-it-or-leave-it experience for Christians. Jesus commanded his followers to “do this.” He never made the same command for Bible study, prayer, or committee meetings. It is obviously a priority for Jesus that we continue this observance as a central feature of our corporate Christian life.
Secondly, in Holy Communion we anticipate the day that Jesus will come again — the great heavenly banquet! “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said at the Last Supper, “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25). Can you imagine what it will be like to sit at that table? St. Paul likewise instructs us to continue to celebrate Holy Communion until Jesus comes back (1 Corinthians 11:26). Communion is a foretaste of the new heaven and new earth in a day when few people give much thought to life after death or have much hope for heaven. The most obvious reason the first Christians were so excited and joyful was because they really believed that Jesus was coming back soon. They were anxious to experience the final installment of the Kingdom of God. Our experience as Christians is either rote and anemic or alive and vibrant - directly proportional to how much hope we have for heaven. Holy Communion proclaims that Jesus will one day come back to bring heaven to earth: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” It reminds us of that great and wonderful mystery, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory!” (Colossians 1:27).
Third, Communion reminds us that the church is central to God’s plan. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). We are born again, not in isolation, but into a Christian family. I laughed when I first saw the bumper sticker: “Lord, save me from your followers.” Anyone who has been ambushed by pushy Christians or victimized by vulgar evangelism can empathize with the saying. But it falsely suggests that someone can be a growing and healthy Christian and not be in the church that Jesus Christ started and heads. No local church or denomination is perfect and there are hypocrites in every one of them. But church is God’s idea and his plan for growing Christians (Ephesians 3:10). Holy Communion reminds us where we will find our spiritual nourishment.
Lastly, and most wonderful of all, when we “feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving,” we feed on Jesus. He comes into us and eats with us (Revelation 3:20) and he makes his home in us (John 14:23). As St. Paul said, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). Holy Communion is renewing and resetting the intimacy with Jesus that is our birthright as his adopted children - to be “filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him.”
Adapted from Chuck Collins’ Cranmer’s Church: Then and Today (currently being edited for publication in the next few months).