Sabbatical Reflections
Preparations Part II

I have struggled with the way Christian Churches have functioned in the public and private spheres. So much of our theology has not matured and remains mired in pre-modern understandings of our relationship with God and creation. Think about this for a moment. Our faith is forged during early adolescence. We learn the stories of our scriptures and traditions. We memorize precepts. But as our minds become capable of conceptualizing abstract ideas in mid-adolescents, how many of us continued to be taught a literalistic view of scripture and tradition? While it may be age-appropriate to teach biblical stories literalistically in early adolescence, we do a disservice to our children and the Church when we do not help our children move into the more nuanced and complicated aspects of our stories, let alone wrestle with our teens and young adults about how those stories apply to their adult world. And worse, so many people are quite comfortable staying there, willfully ignoring the disconnects we experience and, instead, simply compartmentalizing our faith from the realities of daily life. No wonder so many have grown disillusioned with their faith, and, as a result, have left the Church.

This struggle has consumed most of my vocational life as a pastor and as a Christian—I prefer the identity of “Follower in the Way of Jesus” over the heavy ladened and oft-misappropriated term “Christian.” In addition to the spiritual preparation for my sabbatical—prayer, discernment, conversations with members of my congregation, and many conversations with others who have been given a sabbatical—I tried to deeply consider how I could spend this precious time away from the daily routines of ministry to reflect on how we have gotten to where we are on our collective faith journey as followers of Jesus. I knew my struggle stemmed from frustration with the institutions of the Church, but even more so from grave concern for the people the Church has been charged to lead. How would I take my community with me on this sabbatical journey? How would I hold them in my heart? What might God invite me to discover or discern through these experiences with regard to those relationships? How might I walk with them when I return? How might I be invited to be different from what I was before?

In my doctoral work my attention was focused on researching how we “build beloved community”—a particular kind of community shaped by our Christian values. My exploration led me to our modern and post-modern context when nations, communities, and people, are more about building walls than trying to build relationships. I first looked at the most immediate context in my life, the border walls between the U.S. and Mexico. The walls represent a lot of things: fear of the “other,” protectionism, isolationism, a feeling of scarcity, among others. These borders and walls represent clashes of politics and culture. My denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has a tenuous relationship at best with the Presbyterian Church of Mexico. When, after more than 40 years of discernment, the PC(USA) moved to allow homosexual persons in committed relationships to be ordained as ministers, ruling elders, and deacons, the Presbyterian Church of Mexico decided to officially end the 139 year relationship with the PC(USA). But an interesting thing happened. On the ground where real life happens and lives hang in the balance between our two denominations, little changed. Mission partnerships remain in tact. No one erased anyone else’s phone numbers or emails from their address books. How they do their work may have changed, but the relationships and the work they do did not. People could not just suddenly stop being relationship. Build walls, change policies, and people will continue to be in relationship with one another and the work of the Church (the true Church that exists beyond our institutional structures and human limitations) continues.

All this led me to the central elements that help us define and understand our Christian faith: Baptism and Eucharist (or the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion). As I glossed over some current academic work, my focus drew primarily to Eucharist. Over the centuries many others have focused on the mechanical and most obvious theological understandings of Eucharist, but few took the extra step of mapping out the efficacy of the Eucharist: how does (or can) the Eucharist shape our lives and our social ethics, including the boundaries and borders we draw for ourselves? Conversely, my ongoing struggle with the Church led me to ask: and how might our social ethics be perverting our Eucharistic practices by serving our own self-interests and trying to allay our fears? How might our theological beliefs, no matter how sure we might be about them, warp Christ’s table, thus excluding those Jesus would wholeheartedly welcome, and maybe even Jesus himself?

As the Christian Church was defining itself in the first few hundred years, Eucharistic meals were a major focus. Little was asked of the elements because everyone knew that the elements were mere pointers to the reality of God’s presence among them, and a reminder of God’s call on their hearts into communion with God and one another. It wasn’t until decades into it that people started to wonder if the elements themselves had power. Infused within these debates was the question about what it all means.

Fast forward to the 15th and 16th centuries and we find the debate not only still going, it had reached a feverish pitch.

The Roman Catholic Church had developed the idea of transubstantiation. Basically, once the elements of bread and wine are consecrated by a religious leader (priest, bishop, etc.), and then consumed, they are transformed into the very literal flesh and blood of Jesus, though they may still look like ordinary bread and wine.

The growing scientific minds of the day could not be satisfied with such a perspective. One of those detractors was a young priest by the name of Martin Luther. After years of his own discernment, Luther challenged the Church with 95 grievances mostly focused on the church’s selling God’s grace through indulgences, but also against transubstantiation. Luther argued that the elements cannot and do not miraculously “change.” He did, however, argue that once consecrated, God’s presence becomes part of or “next to” the substance of the elements of bread and wine: thus, consubstantiation.

Others, like Ulrich Zwingli, argued that there is no more or less presence of God during Eucharist/Communion than is ordinarily every day of our lives. Zwingli and others argued that the meal is purely memorial—a remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice. A little later a young French lawyer turned theologian (common in the day) named Jean Calvin (or, John Calvin for most of us westerners) came along. He became the pastor at St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland. He argued that the Roman Catholic Church, Luther, and Zwingli have all missed the point. According to Calvin, Zwingli erred in the fact that God’s presence was uniquely present during Eucharist, whereas the Roman Church and Luther erred by trying to explain the mystery of God’s presence. We cannot explain it, he said. But we can and ought to experience it. Somewhere between the cannibalistic leanings of the Roman Church and the lackluster and spiritless view of Zwingli, Calvin pushed for a “real presence,” but also argued that this whole discussion missed the point of Eucharist. The Eucharist was, first of all, a statement of solidarity with God and community in Christ. Secondly, the sacraments, both Baptism and Eucharist, “present Christ the more clearly to us.” It was not so much the mechanics, so much as the efficacy of the sacrament—what difference it made in the lives of God’s people.

It is this efficacy of our practices—how they change and shape us, whether sacrament or prayer or singing or fellowship—that drew my attention. In my sabbatical I followed the 16th century Protestant Reformation, walked the paths of faithful protest against guardians of power. Eucharist was a central debate in the Church in the 16th century, centering around the Church’s abuse of God’s grace (talk about “using God’s name in vain”) and Luther’s understanding of God’s freely given grace. The question I had, given the state of Church and faith today in the west, was how we are still growing in our understanding. Or, are we stunted in our seeking understanding of God, one another, and creation?

Off to Wittenberg, Germany, I flew to soak up the Luther vibes, and to learn more about his partner philosopher, Philip Melanchthon, which I had known so little about. It seems it was Melanchthon who most inspired Luther’s theologies of grace, forgiveness, and equality in the eyes of God. From there I rode the train to Geneva, Switzerland, to soak up the Calvin vibes.

I learned that St. Pierre Cathedral, where Calvin preached, sits atop a mount that has for thousands of years been a holy site. Beneath the cathedral is an archeological dig that has unearthed hundreds of years of renovations and expansions, as well as the small wooden structure that started it all. Dating back to 120 B.C.E., archeologists unearthed what is believed to be the bones of an ancient chieftain, with remnants of what looks like several different structures that were erected around it, creating a sort of shrine.

Christianity was not established in this area until at least the 5th century. In many respects, the Christian faith, though ancient itself, has been built on the pillars of other faith systems as humanity has sought to understand its place in the cosmos. For too long Christian churches have arrogantly claimed superiority and absolutist beliefs, when, in fact, what we have inherited is very much a part of a history that spans the history of humanity. Which draws me back to Eucharist: a celebration of God’s love, a feast of thanksgiving for God drawing us together, and a banquet over which Jesus presides and where no one is turned away, the ultimate example we have of what a life of faith can look like.

The issues we’re dealing with—who’s in and who’s out—pale in comparison to the fundamental issue that institutions of the church and those charged to protect them seem to keep forgetting: God’s love is universal, unshakable, and forged through the unbelievable premise of grace (unbelievable because we can’t seem to trust it still). So, how’s that for perspective?