Two and a half years ago, before Covid-19 changed everything, I was invited to give a series of six Sunday sermons at an historic, urban, church in downtown Cleveland. While the church was not of my United Methodist denomination, I had – over my 32 years of pastoral ministry in the city – built valued ties with a number of the members of that congregation and most certainly with its senior pastors.
One of the summer Sunday mornings was also a Sunday on which the congregation was to celebrate the Sacrament of Communion as a part of the morning worship service. I was asked if, in addition to preaching for the service, I would be the celebrant for the Sacrament of Communion.
All went well. It was an inspiring morning sharing in the lives of the members of that congregation and having the privilege of offering the prayers of consecration at the altar for the bread and wine of communion, calling to mind and heart as has been done in churches for over 2,000 years, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Some weeks later however, it seems that local denominational authorities received the word that I had been the celebrant offering communion in one of their very prominent local churches. My being a United Methodist pastor was troubling to the denominational authorities. I had no recognized standing as a pastor within their denomination and therefore my offering of the Sacrament of Communion was not valid. The proper forms and permissions had not been filed by the congregation’s denominationally ordained and recognized senior pastor. He had not gone through the steps of requesting the permissions necessary for me to consecrate and share the sacrament in that local church. So again, the Sacrament over which I was the celebrant was not liturgically valid.
I get it. United Methodism also has such liturgical rules on who is ordained – set apart – for offering the Sacrament of Holy Communion in a local United Methodist Church. You just can’t have marauding pastors of various and perhaps suspect ordination credentials celebrating the most sacred ritual of the Christian Faith in a congregation which is an official part of a denomination. There are standards and a need for assurances that the Sacrament, when celebrated, is properly offered by a denominationally recognized pastoral officiant.
I get it. But as much as I understand pastoral qualifications and standards of any denomination, I also think that a great deal of such liturgical standard setting and recognition has very little to do with sharing in the life and teachings of Jesus and everything to do with power and the human capacity in all of our institution building to sanctify exclusion and substitute human-authored doctrine for meaningful discipleship.
The only thing, according to Jesus on the night of his ultimate betrayal regarding sharing the bread and wine of the annual Seder Passover, was that in the process, we remember him and the life of love which he led. But then, we human beings want to regulate for various advantage, such loving expressions. We have to get something out of it by regulating it.
So, we impose standards on the elements of our remembering. The unleavened bread must have the right amount of wheat germ to make the bread proper matter. The communion wine must have the proper alcohol content to be fit for use in the miracle of trans substantiation. There must be a properly trained and ordained officiant – priest – and a consecrated altar in an episcopally recognized sanctuary for Holy Communion to be a valid offering and to be spiritually efficacious for the congregants receiving the sacrament.
But for as much as I get it in regard to credentialing, ordaining, and carrying forward the aspects of a particular denomination or Christian tradition, so much of all of it is the work of men – not a lot of women, at least officially – serving the institution and maintaining their authoritative power base. Not advancing the Gospel of Jesus.
There is absolutely no greater threat to the living faith of any person than institutional religion. There is no greater threat to the vibrant faith in the life and teachings of Jesus than the various institutional churches which claim a special knowledge of his ways and works; and seek to ENFORCE them. Institutional religion mucks around with enforcing human-authored, church doctrine as if it were the teaching of God through those who have born witness to God’s transforming power in life.
The institutional church will break your heart and demean your soul as it serves and preserves itself. Therefore, it is absolutely essential never to give equivalence to any church doctrine or practice with the teachings of Jesus.
We fight over doctrine. We quibble over ritualistic practices. We exclude people as unqualified or heretical or worthy only of judgment for conflicting practices. Can a woman, for instance, really be unqualified to be a priest or pastor simply because of her gender? It is nonsense and astonishingly hurtful. Can the teaching that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves be restricted to neighbors like us? Can it be those doctrines like Original Sin, the inherent depravity of man, the enforcement of an adoption of God as a Trinity of Spiritual Persons, are more important than loving justice, mercy, and having a profound sense of spiritual humility?
Christian denominations have had brief, high moments in which they have done a great deal of good. They have also had long tenures of doing a great deal of harm and justified that harm repeatedly as maintaining standards and right belief.
It is also the case that ANY denomination exists to maintain and save itself. Those who are authorities within those denominations or traditions are pledged to this purpose above all else. That is why the meaning of Communion, and the Sacrament of Love and Grace, is often crucified on mindless adherence to some ecclesiastical Discipline and mind-numbing practiced rituals that have nothing to do with remembering the body and blood of Jesus and everything to do with breaking that body and shedding that blood.