World Communion Sunday
From time to time, we have used what are known as Taizé choruses as a part of our worship: for example, singing “Jesus Remember Me” on Ash Wednesday and the choir singing “O Lord, Hear My Prayer” as a choral call to prayer. These choruses are an essential part of worship in the ecumenical monastic community founded by Brother Roger Schütz in 1944 in the small village of Taizé in the Burgandy region of France.
Brother Roger was a Swiss Protestant, son of a Calvinist pastor. He studied Reformed theology, and yet he felt drawn to a monastic lifestyle and was passionately concerned with reconciling Christian denominations. Thus, the community of monks he founded was not Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox. By 2005, it included 90 brothers from multiple denominations and 20 countries. Since the 1970s, Taizé has been a popular pilgrimage site which welcomes all who come to pray and seek Christ. And come they have, at a rate of 100,000 a year [BBC], from every denomination and across the world. Youth especially have been attracted to Taizé.
In 2005, Brother Roger (age 90 at the time) was tragically attacked and killed by a deranged woman during an evening worship service. But at his funeral, a week later, Brother Roger’s ecumenical vision took on flesh. People came from around the world, some 10 to 12 thousand. Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox clergy were in attendance, including the leaders of several American denominations and several European and Global Protestant groups. Roman Catholic Cardinal Walter Kasper presided at the service. Readings were done by an Anglican bishop, a German Lutheran (Evangelical) bishop, and a French Reformed minister. The prayer for the deceased was said jointly by a Romanian Orthodox priest and a Russian Orthodox priest. But here’s the real embodiment of Brother Roger’s vision of Christian unity: communion was served and no one was turned away. Numerous Protestant clergy were seen receiving the sacrament from Catholic priests. Reporter John Tagliabue summed up the scene well, writing: “Brother Roger Schutz pursued many ecumenical dreams in his long life, but in death one of them came true: At a Eucharistic service celebrated Tuesday by a Roman Catholic cardinal for Brother Roger, a Swiss Protestant, communion wafers were given to the faithful indiscriminately, regardless of denomination.” [ https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/world/europe/at-his-funeral-brother-roger-has-an-ecumenical-dream-fulfilled.html; see also: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2005-09/taize-founder-buried-service-led-catholic-cardinal; and also: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2005/2-september/comment/letters-to-the-editor/brother-roger-s-funeral-at-taiz%C3%A9]
Brother Roger knew that, though much divides Christians, what unites us is far more important: the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Hebrews tells us that this love embodied by Jesus the Son of God unites us into one family: “11For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” (2.11)
Hebrews begins by declaring boldly that Jesus Christ is the image of God, an exact imprint of God’s being, reflecting God’s glory. He reveals God’s character and concerns. And one of the chief characteristics of God revealed in Christ is God’s passionate, parental love for us. We are estranged children whom God will stop at nothing to bring home. Indeed, as my seminary professor Tom Graves once said, “God would rather die than stop loving you.” [Graves made this comment during a Philosophy of Religion lecture at Baptist Theological Seminary, Richmond (VA) in the Fall semester of 1996] And this is precisely what Christ does for our sakes—taking on “the suffering of death” so that we might know the glory of life; tasting death’s bitterness for everyone so that we might taste the sweetness of love and know that God is good. (2.9)
Though we who call ourselves by Christ’s name divided ourselves by theology, church structure, class, race, ethnicity—often claiming, or at least acting as if, we and we alone are true Christians—though we divide ourselves, Jesus calls us all his brothers and sisters.
I have told the story of Sara Miles’ conversion more than a few times. She was an atheist who was converted to Christianity through the act of taking communion. She encountered Jesus in the bread and the wine and kept coming back for more, eventually becoming director of ministry at her Episcopal Church and organizing a large food pantry and meals program. After her conversion, she suddenly realized that she had just entered a whole new family, whether she wanted to or not. She recalls, “I was a middle-aged lady, set in my ways, when I decided to be baptized. And when that water poured over my head, I realized the big problem with my new religion: God actually lives in other people. I couldn’t be a Christian by myself. I couldn’t choose who else was my brother or sister. That’s a really different story from the one that’s sold to us every day, which insists each one of us is individually responsible for managing our own economic and political salvation.” [quoted on back cover of Sept. 26, 2018 issue of The Christian Century] Sara Miles discovered, and has since been trying to live out, the reality that we all belong to God and to one another, we are all a part of God’s family[—and we should live accordingly.]
It does not matter which denomination we belong to; it does not matter if we are Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox, if we are Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran or UCC; it does not matter if we are black or white or Asian or Hispanic; it doesn’t matter if we came from Hati or are native Ohioans; it does not matter if we speak English or Creole, Spanish or Swahili; it does not matter if we were born in Nigeria, or Nicaragua, or France or the Ukraine or an island in the middle of the Pacific; it does not matter if we are rich or poor, well-educated or illiterate, aged 5 or 95, male or female, gay or straight, liberal or conservative or moderate or unaffiliated---we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.
We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one cup of blessing which we bless—one cup of blessing by which we are all blest. We are all created and loved, redeemed and sustained by God our Father, Christ our Brother and the Holy Spirit our Mother--one God, who is an internal and eternal relationship of self-giving, other-affirming love which overflows in the acts of creation, salvation, and the shaping of Beloved community. And this God, this Triune being who is love, who has spoken to us in Christ and continues to speak to us through the Holy Spirit, this God desires our unity—not our conformity, but our unity in faith, hope and, above all, love. This is the vision and the hope that inspires World Communion Sunday.
Though we still have a long way to go to fulfill that vision, there are glimmers of hope, moments of unity, and they often happen not on the international stage like Brother Roger’s funeral, but at the local level. Robert Wall tells of such a local example of world communion. In the mid-1970s, Wall was pastoring an all-white church in New Jersey. One day he received an unexpected phone call. The caller was a young black woman named Mary, who had recently moved to the area. She had attended another local church but was not at home there. “Could I come to your church?” she asked.
Wall immediately replied, “Of course. Everyone is always welcome at our church.” Every church he had ever served or attended claimed to be that welcoming, he recalls. But of course they actually meant “everyone like us is always welcome.” Thus, Wall suspected that this claim of hospitality and openness was about to be put to the test.
Some in the congregation must have handled the situation quite well, for Mary was soon attending every week and eventually joined the church. Other, however, were not so gracious.
One long time member, Margie, told wall that she just couldn’t return to church now that Mary was there. Speaking far more out of fear than hatred, she said, “I just can’t go back. I wasn’t brought up that way. It doesn’t seem like the same church any more. I can’t go back.” And for eight months she didn’t.
One day, however, Wall noticed Margie sitting in the back with her husband, who had been coming without her. He never knew what caused her to return, but she was there every Sunday afterward.
When World Communion Sunday rolled around, the church was filled with a larger crowd than expected. The servers ran out of communion cups before everyone had been served. Remembering the chalice into which he had symbolically poured wine during the Words of Institution, Wall invited those who had not been served to come forward and partake from the chalice. The use of a common cup was not their regular practice, but Wall thought it a fine idea under the circumstances. At least, that’s what he thought before he looked out and saw that, not only were both Mary and Margie coming forward, but, worse yet, Mary, the young African-American parishioner, would be drinking from the chalice and passing directly to Margie, the fearful white parishioner. He immediately foresaw disaster. Surely the racial tensions which permeated the whole society and simmered under the surface of the congregation were about to erupt over the body and blood of Christ.
Despairing, Wall thought to himself, “God, why are you doing this to me? I had planned such a beautiful day to honor your name, and you conspired to use it all to destroy me! Open the floor and let me fall straight into the flames of hell, and get it over with now!”
But there were no flames and there was no destruction. Something miraculous happened. Something more beautiful than any ceremony any pastor could ever plan unfolded at the table.
As Wall describes it, “When I gave the chalice to Mary, she cradled it gently, drank and passed the chalice to Margie. Margie drank and passed the cup to her husband. He drank, as did all the others at the table. Then all returned quietly to their pews for the closing hymn and benediction.
“As the choir snag ‘Amen,’ I went to the door of the sanctuary, and as the congregation began to file out I prayed, ‘Lord, let your servant depart in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation.’” [Robert W. Wall, “A Local Display of World Communion,” The Christian Century, September 28, 1988, p. 828]
Surely, such unity between those who were once far apart is the saving work of God who was in Christ reconciling the world. Surely this is the will and the work of the gracious Host who invites all people to turn from their sin and separation and join in fellowship around Christ’s table. Surely, in such moments we see a reflection of God’s glory and receive a foretaste of the joyous heavenly banquet that is to come in God’s kingdom. Jesus has come to unite us all into one new humanity, one great family, one Beloved Community. He is not ashamed to call any of us his brothers and sisters. May God grant us grace, love, and humility so that we will not be ashamed to call one another brothers and sisters. May God inspire and empower us so that we will freely and joyfully act as brothers and sisters: working together to share the Gospel in word and deed and communing together at Christ’s table. Amen.