The Eucharist as an Act of Defiance

A recent experience of an Easter breakfast that included Communion prompted me to think about the implications of Christian worship.

When the early Christians said 'Jesus is Lord' and called him 'King of kings' and 'Son of God' they were making a political statement. Those were titles that belonged to the Roman Emperor. It wasn't just pious religious language, it was an act of defiance: Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord, King and Son of God. Of course, they didn't take up arms against the Empire. Instead, they undermined the Empire and its values by living according to the kingdom values of Jesus.

We today live under an empire that is no less powerful and no less cruel than that of the Romans. It is not headed by one particular person, but it has its firm laws that seem impossible to resist. It is the empire of global capitalism. Whenever we try to change anything, we are told that we can't get away from 'the economy' or 'the political realities'. Global capitalism tells us what reality is, no matter what we think the will of God is. And it is a cruel empire. It kills millions of people by malnutrition; it destroys communities; it robs farmers of their land; it locks people up in dangerous, unhealthy factories; it cripples people with debt; it robs children of the chance to grow into the human beings they can be; it inflicts stress and mental illness on the rich and the poor; and it destroys the planet itself.

When we say 'Jesus is Lord' today, it doesn't seem to make any difference. We say it in a context of religion, and it seems quite harmless. Perhaps part of our problem is that there is no one person against whom this statement can be directed. It is the big companies we all have a stake in, the media that shape our thinking, the democratic process that is so often enslaved to superficiality and selfishness - in fact, it is the system as a whole that is the cruel, dictatorial empire, not one ruler.

Which brings me back to the Communion. Not just in our ascriptions of praise to Jesus, but in this central act of the Church, if we take it seriously, we are defying the worldwide empire. It is 'Eucharist', i.e., thanksgiving, enjoying God's gifts not as something we have earned but as free gifts for all to enjoy. It is 'Communion', i.e., sharing, in a world where individual greed, competition and profit-making are the ruling principles. We are telling the world: sharing is what life in God's world is really about.

Of course, to do this we have to make it real. Perhaps we can start by making the Communion a real meal. Why are church suppers and 'bring and share' events never connected with the Eucharist? We can also make it real by making our church fellowship fully inclusive. Jesus sat down and ate with all manner of people. What a powerful witness it would be if we did the same. The tragedy is that the Eucharist has become the very place where we practise the most discrimination: we argue about who is entitled to receive Communion!! Let those of us who are in churches that practise a more open communion make it more open still, a feast free for all, a foretaste of the kingdom of God on earth, a liberated zone where differences of class, culture and wealth have no place, where the empire of the world is undermined.