Not in front of the children

I'm sure there's a perfectly sensible proposal behind this report on reforms to CofE communion practice, but how about this for a paragraph:

It comes despite fears from the Church’s most senior liturgical body that children could spill communion wine, which represents the blood of Christ. It would also mean children being invited to distribute alcohol in churches - almost a decade before they could legally drink it in a pub

a) adults can spill communion wine too. I know, I have. Maybe we should refuse to give it to people who have Parkinsons too? 

b) hopefully communion is closer to a family meal than a consumer transaction. I would hope that most children are involved in preparing and serving the food and drink of a meal by the age of 9 at home. So why not in church? 

c) my theology may be a little ropey, but for those who think transubstantiation actually happens, surely the wine is no longer alcoholic in that case? 

we really do tie ourselves in knots over some silly things. God is more offended by children being driven into poverty by welfare reforms than he is by them spilling communion wine. 

Putting the Wine back into Swine Flu

Just had some new guidance from our Diocese (Bath and Wells) which says that, given the dip in swine flu cases, churches can go back to having bread and wine if they want to:

we are content that incumbents and priest-in-charge, in consultation with their churchwardens, may resolve to return to the use of a common cup if they so desire, after careful consideration of the risks and factors involved. We append a helpful summary of some of the issues, which we hope you will take note of when making your decision.

This was also worth saying:

If people question the action that churches have taken in recent weeks, it is important to remind them that this has never been about ‘protecting ourselves’. It has been about avoiding transmitting infection unwittingly to others. Furthermore, we have never suggested ‘banning the Peace’ and we regard it as important that worshippers have the opportunity to greet each other in this way.

Most intriguing:
physical exchanges between members of a congregation... are almost impossible to avoid* There must be some pretty rough churches in Somerset then. Our lot only fight amongst themselves once a month at the most. At least I think it's fighting they're talking about.

Meanwhile here's the real issue.

* the omitted words are either directly or indirectly (through touching church furniture, for example), but I just took them out for fun...

Swine Flu Symptoms

Just trying to clarify a list of key swine flu symptoms for our church members, following yesterdays advice:

- sweating like a pig
- a case of the trots
- nasty rasher cross the body
- snuffling
- pork oncentration
- slops (either end)
- tender loin

best to wrap in a blanket until cured.

(and if you were after some serious reflection on swine flu and communion, Peter Kirk's blog has a debate on the theology of recieving only wine at communion, and Thinking Anglicans are discussing the practicalities. I hadn't realised the existence of the 1547 Sacraments Act until reading the latter.)

Swine flu and sacraments

Sorry to get theological, but this news prompted me.

If it's really holy water, then how come it gets infected? (a point made here)

Reflecting on the recent child abuse scandal in the Irish Roman Catholic made me wonder about communion too. Official Catholic theology is that Jesus is really present in the bread and the wine. If that's true, then how come it makes no difference? Some of the people committing the abuse had imbibed their own bodyweight in Jesus during the course of their lives, and yet they went ahead and did evil anyway.

Transubstantiation always seemed a bit iffy to me, and I just wonder how Catholic theologians interpret what's supposed to happen at Communion and what clearly fails to happen to the people who recieve it?

A colleague tells the story of a high church vicar who was distraught that somehow a dog had managed to gobble up a consecrated wafer that had fallen on the floor. He rang a senior clergyman for advice and was told "If God was clever enough to get in there in the first place, then he's probably clever enough to have got out again before the dog ate him."

anyway, back to that holy water, everybody sing along now...
I go down to speakers corner I'm thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they're Jesus one of them must be wrong
Theres a protest singer singing a protest song - he says
"they wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to keep their factories
They wanna have a war to stop us buying japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease

Theyre pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy incarcerate your mind
They give you rule brittania, gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in espana and sunday striptease"
Meanwhile the first Jesus says "I'd cure it soon
Abolish monday mornings and friday afternoons"
The other ones on a hunger strike he's dying by degrees
How come Jesus gets industrial disease?

Mission, Church and Communion

Our group has nearly finished the Mission Shaped Ministry course - last weeks session on worship and sacraments had provocative questions like

What is God's mission here?
What kind of community will sustain this mission?
What spiritual disciplines will sustain the community
What worship will reflect the mission and the community?

In other words, theology (God) shapes missiology (mission) shapes ecclesiology (church).

In the light of that there are some fascinating debates around Communion, triggered by the decision by Sydney Diocese to affirm that some laypeople can preside at a communion service.

On Bishop Alans blog, there is an excellent discussion on how creative approaches to worship and sacraments can emerge from mission contexts. He has a great phrase about the Anglican church: The genius of Anglicanism, its missional crown jewels within the whole Kingdom of God, has been its ability to run essentially (but not exclusively) primitive Evangelical software on essentially (but not exclusively) primitive Catholic hardware , and some of the discussion is about how to make it all work when the Catholic hardware is too expensive or impractical to maintain.

There are 2 threads currently running on Thinking Anglicans, this one is a mixture of internal Anglican politics (which I tend to avoid) and a really interesting discussion about the nature of communion and what it is the church is doing when it celebrates it. This one I appear to have hijacked (sorry folk!) with an innocent query about whether 'real' communion needs 'real' wine, and it's evolving into a good debate about how flexible we can be, and what it is that makes it all tick in the first place.

If you're more interested in traditional Protestant doctrines of communion, you'll find a few being expounded and explored at StandFirm, so if you're doing a doctrine essay you might find it useful, but if you want a mission perspective on the debate you won't find one! The discussion at the Ugley Vicar focuses on who is a 'priest' in the first place.

There's a good article on mission and church on Fulcrum, which looks at some wider issues on what a church shaped by mission looks like.

Update: really good post by Tim Chesterton at Tale Spin.

For other mission perspectives on the sacraments, Lindsey Urwins chapter in Mission Shaped Questions is worth a read, as a traditional Anglo-Catholic trying to work out which rules apply in a mission setting. Or see this account of Transcendence, a new night church venture in York Minster which blends ancient and modern with communion at the centre of it.

And of course communion is being celebrated in loads of other churches of other denominations without an ordained Anglican priest in sight.......

Meanwhile, great to hear that Graham Cray will be taking over from Steve Croft as the leader of Fresh Expressions.

Update: Huh?