Simple Church Minute 86--Simson's Thesis #12

86—WS #12

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            We have been examining Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Thesis #12 is “Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper as a real supper with real food.”  About this, Simson has written, “Church tradition has managed to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face.  However, the Lord’s Supper was actually more of a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning.  God is restoring eating back into our meeting.”  Unquote.

            Another word some flavors of church use for the Lord’s Supper is communion, which is a synonym for fellowship.  Communion as it is done in every institutional church I am aware of is done, as was said above, with tiny amounts of food, everyone being somber.  The Calvinist tradition, for instance, immediately proceeds this by asking everyone to examine oneself for sin.  It was a somber thing.  Conversely, I think back to when I was in college and a group of us from a Christian group went down the street and had soda and pizza.  I can look back and say that doing that together better represented what fellowship is and what true communion should be.  It wasn’t just food, the conversation brought us together as people who were catching what caring for each other is all about.  The Christian life is first about enjoying true fellowship with our fellow believers, the joy of which radiates to the world around us, as opposed to ritual, being somber, and parsing the fine points of theology.  The older I get, the more I see true church in a dorm room, parking lot or tenement versus an expensive building devoted to only the rituals and well meaning man made traditions.

            You can read back and ahead about Mr. Simson’s work at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info about simple worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

Simple Church Minute 54--communion

54—communion

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Whether one calls in the Lord’s Supper, Communion, or Eucharist—why is there virtually no food?  The words used before this function in almost all traditional churches come from First Corinthians chapter 11.  We have been told that this was the institution of the ceremony, but how similar is it?  Jesus and the disciples were celebrating Passover.  Although it was an Old Covenant ceremony, it was also a real meal.  For the early church, it was celebrated as a festive occasion for a believing community that could potentially be, and in many places was, both Jews and non-Jews, rich and poor, slave and free, men and women.  Jesus’ resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit to indwell them, that they could each be the temple of the Holy Spirit was a joyous thing.  Chapter 11 verse 27 may have had to do with some eating too much before poorer believers got off work to join the others, maybe some were drinking too much, and maybe some unbelievers were party crashing for free food—its impossible to know by now.  It wasn’t just a holy snack.

            Over time, pagan influences took the church out of homes of believers, set up buildings, ceremonies, and set up a caste of religious professionals.  It came to be not a meal, but first an offering, and later a sacrifice, which implies Jesus being a victim over and over again, instead of the final sacrifice for sin.  It went from being the Love Feast to being Eucharist.  Mystical explanations were attached to it.  The Reformation rejected the mysticism, but became a small piece of bread and a thimbleful of juice, to be taken with a serious attitude after examining oneself for sin.  In traditional churches, the church picnic comes closer to the original application of this directive as practiced in the early church.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com. For more info on organic

 Church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.