Swine Flu and the Common Cup
— Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 —
As I type this there’s a bottle of hand sanitizer next to my computer. And there’s one on the table behind me. And there’s one on the credenza in my outer office. And there’s one in my coat pocket. And two in my car.
I don’t want the swine flu. And I’m not alone.
This past Sunday’s New York Times tells us that swine flu is wrecking two American traditions: the Saturday night beer pong and the Sunday morning Eucharist. At the same time, writer Lauren Winner says in the Wall Street Journal that swine flu fears are far-reaching enough to doom the common cup of the Lord’s Supper for the time being.
I’m all for losing the beer pong, but the common cup is too important to throw away.
The Christian concept of the church as household necessarily entails a recovery of the Lord’s Table in our churches, especially in “low church” evangelical congregations who have, for too long, defined our vision of the Lord’s Supper too heavily on what we don’t mean.
Table fellowship is a sign of familial solidarity and of the messianic reign. This is why Jesus was so revolutionary when he announced, “Many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:11 ESV), and that’s why Simon Peter was so reluctant to sit down with the uncircumcised.
So why do our evangelical Lord’s Supper services so often look like the clinical communal rinse-and-spit of fluoride at an elementary school rather than like a loving family gathered around a feast table?
Often I’ll preach in churches about the Lord’s Supper and will call on congregations to go back to using a common loaf and a common cup. I’ll challenge the churches to recover the sign of bread being torn, not daintily picked up in pre-fabricated bits. I’ll call the congregations to drink the wine, together, passing along a common cup.
I’m not offended by people disagreeing me on this. I’m just stunned by the reason they most often give for dismissing this ancient Christian practice: germs.
The common cup is, well, gross to many Christians because they don’t like the idea of drinking after strangers. That’s just the point. You’re not drinking after strangers. You’re drinking after your own flesh-and blood, your family. And the offense is precisely the issue. You’re recognizing Christ Jesus, discerning his Body, in the “flesh” of his Body the church around you. If drinking after your brothers is “disgusting,” then how much more eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood. That was disgusting to an assembly a while back as well.
Now, I’m not calling on churches to pick up the common cup and the common loaf in the middle of a swine flu pandemic. That wouldn’t be prudent. But maybe now’s the time to start thinking about how our hyper-hygienic American culture might be leading us toward cleanliness and away from Christ.
I have often felt that the Lord’s Supper in our churches today is far from what it was meant to be. After all, it’s certainly not much of a supper to have a minute cracker and shotglass of grape juice. Of course I’m a bad Southern Baptist because it seems to me that wine would be more faithful to what Jesus actually did as well if we are really going for what was originally instituted. If it doesn’t matter what they drank and ate then why do we not have rootbeer and cheeto’s for the Lord’s Supper? Sure alcoholism is around and so we don’t want to cause someone to stumble, etc., but I think these are things worth talking about more.
I’m not sure I see the necessity of a common cup, but I certainly agree that the Lord’s supper should be a more family oriented full on meal where we celebrate the Lord’s sacrifice.
I’m intrigued and would like to know more. Can you post resources (perhaps audio sermons you’ve preached on this topic)?
@Bob Johnson, Bob, I wrote about the Lord’s Supper issue more fully in the book “Four Views on the Lord’s Supper” (Zondervan, edited by John Armstrong). I also preached on it here:
http://www.russellmoore.com/2007/09/05/disposable-communion-sets-and-other-signs-of-the-end-times-preaching-the-gospel-through-the-lords-supper/
and here:
http://www.russellmoore.com/2007/08/23/jesus-take-the-meal-why-were-afraid-of-the-lords-table/
and here:
http://www.russellmoore.com/2009/08/18/signs-of-the-kingdom-how-the-spirit-reigns-down-acts-242-47/
My church actually has both options available on the offering table, common cup & loaf, or the wee individual portions. I normally went with the commons, but this summer started going with the individual portions, specifically because of hygiene. There are a lot of emergent-y types at my church, and I’m not sure when the last time they had a shower, let alone washed their hands. (I may be indicting myself under Matt 15:2 right now.)
Anyway, I ended up getting the swine flu anyway, from an unexpected source: my boss at work. It was no fun, but now that I’ve had it and survived, I guess I can go back to the petri dish that is the common communion cup.
Related article from a few years ago paints this debate as nothing new. Apparently the question of shared sickness hearkens back to the 19th century.
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/01/local/me-beliefs1
Two pertinent quotes:
“The chances of getting sick are less than talking after the [service] with someone who has a cold.”
Loving, the microbiologist, said the risk of infection is reduced because the chalice is wiped after each sip, the alcohol in the wine can kill germs and, unlike ceramic cups, the silver and gold used in most chalices don’t harbor microbes.
So… I vote bring back the shared cup, the red wine, and the pretty chalice if necessary. I’ve visited Sojourn before, and they semi-solve this problem by having partakers dip their bread in the wine instead of everyone touching the wine cup and putting it to their lips.
Dr. Moore,
Thanks for your ministry and your powerful writing. I was shaped as a student under your teaching in seminary on the Lord’s Supper. I smiled when I read this latest blog.
We now live in a small village in West Africa that was 100% Muslim for the past 600 years and heavily involved in animism for countless generations before that.
Now, on Tuesday nights, a group of around 30 new believers gather at a house for church. Each week I am served, by one of these believers, the Lord’s Supper.
They hand me some reddish colored “water” out of an old jar along with a hunk of bread torn off with hands that have never met a bottle of sanitizer!
As they do this, the person handing out the elements explains in quite dramatic fashion the price Jesus paid and how this changes us.
We don’t have a swine flu problem yet but we do have yellow fever and about 4000 other diseases floating around (not to mention what’s in that “water”). Yet no one ever complains and it’s not just because they’re used to sharing more than we are. For them, this meal is about family. This is not something tagged on at the end of a sermon once a quarter, this is something important. This is a reminder that they are no longer walking in darkness, this is a reminder that though most of their families and friends have rejected them, they are a part of a new family. This is a reminder of a great banquet that is awaiting us at the marriage supper of the Lamb!
@Mark, This is one of the greatest things I’ve ever read in a long, long time. Makes me so glad to be in Christ. I love and appreciate y’all.
Ryan #4
What Sojourn do (dipping the bread in the wine) is known in the Anglican church as ‘intinction’, and we do the same thing (with graoe juice) in the Vineyard church I worship in. I have always seen that as a satisfactory workround.
I have lived in Germany, Austria and now Ukraine. It is common practice to use a common loaf of bread and cup in Baptist churches. Most churches even pass around a white cloth to wipe the edge of the cup for the germ conscience people. I wonder if the individual cup and bread reflects American individuality as much as the idea of catching germs. Just a thought.
Russell Woodbridge
I was reminded of this blog post today while reading Dr. Haykin’s edited collection of Jonathan Edwards’ letters in A Sweet Flame. Edwards provides commentary on Corinthians to the effect that Paul only commends the expulsion of the immoral man and the false teachers, but never the general church membership that was led astray by their antics. Instead, he commends to the whole church again a better practice of the Lord Supper, and he himself regards those who were even engaging in divisive factions as beloved brethren… he really highlights the charity extended at a common table over the breaking of bread.
Makes me wonder what sort of differences members in our churches might lay aside if they truly saw the meal as a time to actually break bread with one another. The quote:
“But as soon as they are brought off from following these false apostles any longer, he embraces them without further ado, with all the love and tenderness of a father; burying all their censoriousness, and schisms, and disorders, at the Lord’s Supper, as well as their ill treatment of him, the extraordinary messenger of Christ to them.”
(Anecdotally, even an unbelieving friend has recommended to me in the past that I work out differences with a competitor over the breaking of bread.)
(Also, thanks for the heads up, Ross!)
Dr. Moore,
You said, “I’ll call the congregations to drink the wine, together, passing along a common cup.”
1. You mentioned wine, do you use wine in your communion?
2. How does the one cup work out in your church? Do you have one cup that everyone drinks out of? Do you pass it down each row? Or do they come forward? How could John MacArthur’s church pass one cup?
3. How often do you have the Lord’s Supper?
Before my conversion to Baptist life, I grew up Episcopalian. I remember kneeling at the altar as an ancient woman with bright lipstick next to me drank. The minister barely wiped the cup with his cloth between sips. Talk about gross! Of course, it was also real wine and a rule required that it all be consumed. (When attendance was light, they called the men of the church to come back up and help drink it so the Rector would not get sloshed!) No thank you, Russ. Having been set free from the common cup, I’ll never go back to Egypt.
Here’s a novel idea…what if God is bigger than the pig flu? What if we just came to his table for all the right reasons, passed the cup and trusted that he could handle things from there? In the spirit of dying to my sanctimonious nature, I just took a hunk out of my tongue and will add nothing more
What a false issue! Are we less family when we gather at a common meal to share at Thanksgiving? Do we all pass around a turkey leg to share a bite? With the knowledge we currently have of infectious diseases, would anyone advise a gathering of people to share their germs with others just to demonstrate they love one another? The writer suggests that to do so during a swine-flu epidemic is not wise. So now we have someone who decides when a practice is wise and when it is not. Why not leave the matter to be decided by common sense and good science? I faced this issue on the mission field where a group insisted upon the common cup. I noticed that on Communion Sunday people broke their normal seating pattern to avoid sitting next to others with the common cold and having to drink after them. Were they being unloving, or were they simply using common sense? I have participated in the Lord’s Supper hundreds of times without ever feeling I was slighting my fellow Christians because I didn’t drink from the same cup. We should not focus on form but upon substance. Far more important is the issue of self-examination and the removal of hindrances to fellowship among believers before we partake. These are the issues that may result in some “sleeping” (dying) rather than not using a common cup.
We’ve landed somewhere in the middle at our church. We share the Lord’s Supper once a month, following the morning service, as part of a shared noon meal. After we eat together, the pastor will either read the 1 Corinthians passage or one of the crucifixion passages. The bread is passed around each table, and everyone tears off a piece. Then someone at each table pours and serves the juice for everyone seated at that table. While we don’t share the same cup, it is definitely a family experience. And we love it.
How would you advocate to your fellow pastors that one church with seven locations should pull this off?