Dr. John Opsata
Prelude to Prayer
Matthew 26:26-30
One wonders how we got from the narratives of the Gospels to our present Communion practice in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)? Matthew and Mark tell a simple a concise story:
Talk of betrayal
A meal
Bread is blessed, broken, shared and eaten
A cup is taken, thanks is offered, given and consumed
A few words were spoken:
Take, eat; this is my body.
Drink from it all of you…
And they sang a hymn and went out to pray.
Luke, of course, tells a more convoluted story:
Talk of desire
A cup is taken, thanks given, the wine dispersed
Bread is taken, thanks given, the bread broken,
shared and eaten with the admonition to remember
And then a second cup, after supper, poured out
with talk of betrayal
A quarrel breaks out over greatness
And Jesus uses the opportunity for some teaching
But no singing
John, of course, tells us something altogether different
Foot washing
Explanation of servant ministry
Talk of betrayal
Judas dispatched
Some teaching – a lot of teaching – four chapters of teaching
Some prayer – a lot or prayer – a whole chapter of prayer
But no meal – and No singing
So how did we get from there to here? And how did singing become such an integral part of our Eucharistic practice?
Those are good questions, very good questions, one’s I encourage you to look into, for I will not be answering them. The reality is that we have moved a long way from the Gospel narratives, whether Matthew and Mark’s simplicity or Luke and John’s complexity. So let’s just admit that we have not restored the “ancient order or things” – don’t even know for certain what that might have been, and focus our attention on how hymn singing, an important element in Matthew and Mark’s storyline, has played out in the church which we have come to love – the Stone Campbell Movement or specifically The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada.
When You Do This Remember Me 400
Alexander Campbell, in his book of theology, The Christian System, wrote:
Each Disciple, in handing the symbols to his fellow Disciple, says in effect, “you, my brother, once an alien, are now a citizen of heaven, once a stranger are now brought home to the family of God. You have owned my Lord as your Lord, my people as your people. Under Jesus the Messiah we are one. Mutually embraced in the Everlasting arms, I embrace you in mine; thy sorrows shall be my sorrows, and thy joys my joys. Joint debtors to the favor of God and the love of Jesus, we shall jointly suffer with him, that we may jointly reign with him. Let us then renew our strength, remembering our King, and hold fast our boasted hope unshaken to the end. (A. Campbell, The Christian System, 231-322)
Reared in the philosophy of John Locke and schooled in the college of hard knocks on the American Frontier, the Campbell’s and Stone dreamed of a unity movement where all followers of Jesus would live out the theme of Jesus’ Last Supper prayer as recorded in John: that all may be one. Although expressly disinterested in theological conformity, they were committed to Christian unity, which the Campbell’s more quickly than Stone found embedded in Table Fellowship. None of the big three - Barton Stone, Thomas and Alexander Campbell wrote extensively on their understanding of the Lord’s Supper. Primarily, if one is to judge on the basis of the content of their writing, they focused their energy and attention on three issue relating to the Lord’s Supper: frequency, presidency, and the fraction. As one might expect, father and son were pretty much in agreement on each; that communion should be observed weekly, that any baptized Christian could preside at the Table and that the act of breaking a single loaf was an integral symbolic gesture highlighting the essential unity of the church. Stone agreed on the later but was less inclined on the former two. Having a more traditional Reformed understanding of Communion, he continued to insist on clergy presiders and practiced less frequent observance. As we all know, over time, the Campbell’s positions held sway.
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross 195
When one sets out to reconstruct frontier Disciple worship, one is faced with a daunting task. There are, of course, no bulletins to peruse, no telecasts to review and very few descriptions to evaluate. Our best resource, then, as now, is probably the hymnal. Here, too, there are questions, for just as there are more unfamiliar hymns in a modern hymnal than familiar, so too, one would imagine, then. Alexander Campbell’s own hymn collection, the Christian Hymnal, contained 1324 hymns - 35 under the heading the Lord’s Supper, the first being “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” his personal favorite. When sung as preparation for Table fellowship, a penitential and passionate remembrance would have been fostered. Attention would have been focused on the broken, bleeding Savior and human depravity; God’s amazing love seen in suffering, pain and death. One can imagine that such frontier Disciple communion experiences would have powerfully connected with the day-to-day struggle of eking out a living in the wilds of the New World. Of the 35 communion hymns in the Christian Hymnal, five have made their way into today’s Chalice Hymnal: When I Survey, My Faith Looks Up to Thee, Be Known to us in Breaking Bread, A Parting Hymn We Sing and Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face.
My Faith Looks Up to Thee 576
By the time the second generation of Disciple leaders had come to the fore, the Civil War had been decided, the nation had expanded from “sea to shining sea, and Disciples had begun to move into the big cities. No longer strictly a rural movement, gentrified city-folk yearned to worship like their neighbors down the block and across the street: thus the beginning of the organ war. Theologically, however, Disciples were still not all that engaged in theological reflection on the Lord’s Supper, rather, they were still coming to grips with lay presidency and weekly frequency. And of, course, as with the founders – or perhaps even more so – they were concerned that all be done with “good order and decency!” Little writing can be found from this period on the meaning of Communion, but great attention was being given to its proper etiquette. Gloria in Excelsis was perhaps the primary Disciple hymnal of the day containing 31 hymns in the Lord’s Supper section. With the singing of “My Faith Looks Up to Thee” once again primarily an aura of penitential piety would prevail over the communion experience. However, less focused outwardly on the cross, the heart is drawn to introspection on personal guilt and the Lamb slain for our redemption. Here we find our most private thoughts dominating our communal remembrance. And foremost among them, a growing, if still unvoiced, notion that it is at the Table that we most profoundly encounter God’s love - broken and poured out.
Here at Thy Table, Lord 384
Prohibition, Women’s Suffrage, Two World Wars, a Great Depression, The League of Nations, The National Council of Churches and deepening divisions within the “Brotherhood” preceded the publishing of G. Edwin Osborn’s Christian Worship – A Service Book and its companion Christian Worship – A Hymnal. While the Civil War focused the nation’s attention within, the First and Second World Wars focused attention worldwide. Disciples, ever holding to the idea that “unity is our polar star” jumped into each and every ecumenical adventure launched in the first half of the twentieth century. Awakened to America’s role on the world’s stage, Disciples became engaged in theological dialog of an unprecedented breadth. Some of the family had already moved away – the small “c” churches of Christ – driven away in part by the sounds of the organ wafting from a growing number of stain glassed Stone-Campbell churches. Other kin, less inclined to the ecumenical impulse as a means to unity formed competing Mission Societies and while Reorganization was still years in the future, for all intents and purposes, the Restoration Movement begun under Stone and the Campbells had fragmented into three ever more distinct branches. More and more our edifices resembled banquet halls, rather than meeting houses and more and more Disciples’ understood that it was at the Communion Table that we encounter the Risen Christ breaking the bread and filling the cup. Less a place of penitential reflection, the Table was becoming a place of grace and peace in the midst of ever more complex and dangerous world.
Come, Share the Lord 408
For more than forty years Christian Worship – A Hymnal and its pared down younger sibling the Hymnbook for Christian Worship were the primary worship books of the church. They nurtured us through the Eisenhower Era, the Kennedy assassination, the Great Society designed by Disciples’ own Lyndon Johnson, the Civil Rights Movement, The Korean Conflict and the Viet Nam War and adoption of the Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada. While the traditional family evolved from a working father, a stay-at-home mother with four children – two girls and two boys to what we know today, Table celebration and theology too has evolved. We have already seen the movement from penitential piety, to a place of passionate love, to a center for peace and grace. Among Disciples today, the Table has become the place where the family gathers; where all are welcome; where strangers become friends, where the Risen One serves both as host – serving the meal and host – the meal itself. And, more than at any prior juncture, it has become the place where we celebrate the reign of God, here today and coming tomorrow. Surprisingly, at least to me, what I am observing among Disciples today resonates more closely with the thinking of Alexander Campbell so beautifully paraphrased by David Edwards: “You my friend, a stranger once, now belong to heaven. Once far away, you are brought home into God’s family. When you do this remember me.” The Chalice Hymnal, already 15 years old, is the resource which I believe, has both responded to where Disciples are going and has led us down that path. No longer a predominately homogeneous group, our singing celebrates the both the diversity of our people and the diversity in our faith.
Perhaps you have figured me out. I am of the belief that if you want to know what a person believes – to know what a church practices, - to know what a denomination stands for, all one needs do is listen to what they sing.
Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ 422
