Supermarket Communion

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” …

Luke 22:14-15

In some churches these days, Holy Communion is celebrated using a small disposable plastic pot about the size of a coffee creamer. Opening the pot reveals a small wafer for the communion bread in a top compartment over a small quantity of communion wine in the lower compartment. As I have experienced it, these pots are usually placed on or under the seats to be used by the congregation at the appropriate point in the service. On one occasion, the pots were placed on a table in the reception area for individuals to collect if they intended to participate in communion. Being strangers to the church and unaware that communion was to be celebrated, we completely missed the fact that we were supposed to collect a pot and so were unable to celebrate communion.

I had heard a few years ago that this practice was spreading amongst mega-churches in Singapore. I was unimpressed at the time although I could see how they might be attractive to churches wishing to speed up the administration of communion, but still, I felt that the use of these “all-in-one” do-it-yourself pots rather missed the point. Experiencing their use in practice only confirms and strengthens my distaste for the concept.

In the churches where they were used, the celebration of Holy Communion took less than five minutes and there was little if any sense of unity as individuals opened and consumed the contents in their own way at their own pace with little or no explanation or exposition of meaning and significance. The whole point of communion appears to have evaporated as the supermarket has been introduced into this central act of worship!

Holy Communion, or the Eucharist or Mass in more liturgical churches, is practiced in two basic forms across churches: either as a supper, in which the bread and wine are displayed on a simple table and then served from there by stewards to the congregation, or, as a sacrificial act where the bread and wine are consecrated at the altar of the church to which the congregation approach one-by-one to receive the benefits of the sacrifice. The two forms reflect the different theological emphases placed on the practice of the sacrament. Both are valid and help the congregation to remember the central, unifying tenet of our faith – that is, the Son of God sacrificed His life on the Cross for our sakes and that all who accept His sacrifice enjoy the benefits of forgiveness of sin, and the unity of loving fellowship that results from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.   Hence, the celebration is a communal celebration in which the spiritual truth of our joyful salvation and the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us is expressed in a physical act.

All of this is lost in the use of pre-packaged pots. It becomes an individual act of convenience in which the underlying spiritual reality is neither acknowledged nor expressed. It is, to my mind, the ultimate yielding of the gospel of Jesus Christ to consumerist mentality and the ideology of individual convenience.

A visiting minister commented, after I had once led communion, how much he appreciated the time we took to celebrate the sacrament. As the biblical quotation above reminds us, Jesus anticipated with eagerness that last meal He spent with His closest disciples when He inaugurated what we now celebrate as Holy Communion. It seems to me that we ought to do the same, Holy Communion should be given the time and space in our services for us to savour it, as our Lord did when He shared that last meal with His disciples.