Recently I attended a ceremony calling itself a celebration of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in which the Words of Institution were not said. I suspect, giving the organizers the benefit of the doubt, that it was in this case an oversight due to a lack of coordination. However, it is not the first time I have observed this happening in a Presbyterian meeting.
Our Book of Order does not have many rules about appropriate worship. There are few “shalls” in the Directory of Worship. But there are two important places where certain specific words are mandated to be pronounced.
In the Sacrament of Baptism, the celebrant is required to repeat the Baptismal Formula from Matthew 28, and baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is not negotiable or open to pastoral or other discretion. “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier” doesn’t cut it. “In the name of the Holy Trinity” doesn’t either. I know why ministers do this: they purport to be uncomfortable with calling God by exclusively male terms. As I said to a pastor who was struggling with this language, “I appreciate your struggle; but when we administer a baptism, we say these words. Otherwise, we’re just getting somebody wet.” I say that because I believe we need to submit to the will of the Palestinian guy who was recently lynched by the Empire but who is now miraculously alive.
In the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the celebrant is required to repeat the “Words of Institution,” from 1 Corinthians 11:23-26: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The Book of Order actually requires reading the whole thing, but in the Book of Common Worship there are abbreviated versions that I assume are permissible. Each of the four gospels has similar words when Jesus shares the bread and wine with his disciples at the Last Supper.
I can only imagine why someone would deliberately leave the Words of Institution out of the Sacrament. Perhaps it was an error, or done out of ignorance. Then there is our Protestant craving for novelty or our allergy to some select kinds of repetition. Whatever. It is also possible that a pastor could be trying to get away from connecting the Sacrament to Jesus’ death, which some have lately decided to imagine as unnecessary, or a pernicious glorification of violence and suffering. It is actually a neutralizing of violence and a radical and redemptive identification with us in love.
But once again, if we don’t use these words in some form we are sharing no more than a little snack, not the body and blood of the Lord.
The whole idea that everything is up for grabs and I may customize the liturgical expressions of the church to suit my theological agenda is rampant in Presbyterian worship. It is in our DNA not to have a “set” liturgy; our tradition was born in an act of resistance to Anglican domination, with their required, State-approved service books. We wanted the freedom to go with the spontaneity of the Spirit! I get that. (Of course, Calvin and even Knox did have “set” liturgies that were apparently repeated weekly. Continental Reformed churches had service books. It is mainly the English Presbyterians, and subsequent evangelical influences, that had this idea that the Spirit could work through an individual in the moment better than in a group through a tradition.)
At the same time, the church is also always about what is happening forever, which we hear in Scripture, and to which our worship must remain tethered, lest it drift off into the neverland of somebody’s personal agenda. Another characteristic Protestant liability. Our Directory allows for plenty of room for creativity and spontaneity. I take advantage of that myself in composing liturgical material. But when we do as a communion insist that a line not be crossed, I recognize the wisdom of not crossing it. Ultimately, it is the Lord’s font and table, not mine. I have to find in myself at least enough humility and submission to acquiesce to the will of the larger church on these important, but for us rare, points.
And it is not just for the sake of mindless Book of Order legalism. The actions of the Sacraments are integrated into and grow out of stories. Identical actions connected to different stories become different actions. Maybe we need to make it easier for ministers to shift their affiliations to denominations that do not have the same understandings that we do. Surely there is a church somewhere in which it is okay to use whatever words you want in the Sacraments, connecting them to whatever story you like. Maybe they even have a pension plan. In this church, however, we explicitly want to stay connected to the New Testament, especially in these peerless means of grace, the Sacraments. Here, at least, should we not just do as we are told? For once?
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