Eucharist and Ministry in the Early Church
by
Fr.
Rich Hasselbach
They
recognized him in the breaking of the bread
Luke
24:31
Jesus
and the Eucharist
The Eucharist is
the defining gesture of Christianity: in and through the Eucharist,
Christians gather in love, share their faith in Jesus as the Risen
Lord, and discover his presence in their midst through the Spirit.
The Eucharistic meal links us with the Jesus of history –
whose own ministry was characterized by a table fellowship that was
expansive and welcoming. All found a place at his table: women as
well as men, tax collectors as well as Pharisees, the distraught
and downtrodden as well as the socially connected, sinners as well
as saints.
At table with Jesus they found a simple message, yet one that
summed up the whole Law, and the prophets as well: Love, selfless
love, in Greek ‘agape.’
First of all love of God, whose will Jesus followed even when he
wished that "the cup might pass" from him; and love of ones
neighbors, understood expansively as all in our world even, and
perhaps particularly, those inconvenient others – the ones
we’d prefer to hate and scapegoat. Jesus even taught, by word
and example, that his followers should love their enemies and do
good to those who persecute them - hard words to follow both in his
time and in our own.
The rag-tag
group of social nobodies who had gathered around Jesus table
scattered when he was crucified. They were frightened and
disillusioned – it wasn’t supposed to end that way! And
it didn’t. Something happened that changed this unimpressive
group into the nucleus of a movement that would endure for the next
two thousand years. They experienced the crucified one as somehow
alive, risen, and vindicated. Throughout the world and throughout
the age they began to proclaim his message of love and acceptance,
of obedience to the will of God, of salvation and redemption. Jesus
himself became their center, the source of their hope. Then, as
now, the essence of Christianity was neither rule nor ritual
– it was relationship
with
the risen Christ, and life in his spirit.
The
Church and the Eucharist
It was natural
for the disciples to continue to remember Jesus through table
fellowship. It was there, more than anywhere else, where they knew
that he was, indeed, alive, and where he remained with them through
the Spirit, just as he promised. They assembled (the Greek word for
assembly is ekklesia)
on Sundays, in Jewish Christian communities after having spent
Saturday in the synagogue, to break bread and remember Jesus, and
to proclaim him as Lord.
This is the
beginning of the Church. It is not, at its heart, a bureaucracy,
nor is it an ‘institution.’ Indeed, the etymology of
the word Church tells us a good deal of the story. The English word
comes from the German, Kierke,
which in turn has its root in kyrios,
the Greek word meaning “lord.” Simply put, the
‘church’ is that gathering of believers who proclaim
Jesus to be lord of their lives, and lord of
history.
Now entering the
third Christian millennia, the shortage of priests, and an even
greater shortage of qualified, pastorally astute priest, is
beginning to depriving many Catholic communities of the central
gesture of their faith, the Eucharist. As the institutional church
shows itself to be increasingly bureaucratic, rigidly legalistic,
and pastorally tone deaf to the needs of the faithful, the early
church has much to teach us about what is essential to
Christianity, and what is accidental, and how we may organize
ourselves anew to preserve the Eucharist.
For the first
three centuries of its existence, the church existed without
churches – buildings in which to gather. In the earliest
Jewish Christian communities in Jerusalem, Judea, and throughout
the Levant, Christians celebrated the Lord’s Supper in the
homes of members of the community. These home churches were small
in comparison to the large groups of worshipers that would gather
in the large church buildings, the basilicas, which were built in
Constantine’s time and thereafter. Home churches tended to be
smaller, more intimate gatherings of friends and believers, at
which all the brothers and sisters, of whatever social rank or
standing, were welcome.
The early church
was not hierarchic, though it was not without its structure. In
Paul’s church, and because of his letters his is the church
we know most about, ministry was not a function of office, but of
gift of the Spirit. Members of the community were called to
exercise different gifts through the spirit, as they were
given.
Paul recognized
many gifts – listed in Chapter 12 of his first letter to the
Corinthian community. There are many gifts, Paul writes, ‘but
the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same
Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces
all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of
the Spirit is given for some benefit. To one is given through the
Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another the expression of
knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the
same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit; to
another mighty deeds; to another prophecy; to another discernment
of spirits; to another varieties of tongues; to another
interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit produces all
of these, distributing them individually to each person as she
wishes. As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the
parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also
Christ.”
In Paul’s
church there was a radical equality of all in Christ, including an
equality of the sexes. There truly were no Jews or Greeks, no
slaves or free, no man or woman, but all were one in Christ.
Consequently the gifts of all were recognized and allowed to
flourish. There was no need for ordination – indeed there
was, as yet, no cultic priesthood. The brothers and sisters
gathered to share a meal, literally and ritually, and to remember
the Lord. The entire community celebrated, the entire community
prayed, and if there was a presider at all, that person was called
from the community to lead it in prayer.
Gradual
clericalization and emergence of the monarchic episcopacy
Gradually, especially after Paul’s death, a natural
leadership emerged in the communities Paul founded. In later
letters attributed to Paul there is mention of elders
(presbeteroi),
and leaders (episkopoi),
though no distinction is drawn between the two, and there is
certainly no claim of authority based on a call from the apostle
through ‘ordination.’ In fact, there is NO mention of
‘ordination’ in the New Testament. And during
Paul’s lifetime he never asserted an authority of coercion,
never attempted to impose uniformity or conformity, or centralized
authority (his or anyone else’s) on the communities he
founded. Paul was content to trust in the Spirit to guarantee
unity, precisely through the diverse gifts of the members of the
community, and in particular through the ‘greatest’ of
the gifts of the spirit – agapic (selfless)
love.
Women, it is
clear, played an important role in the early church – Paul
addresses women, as well as men, as his synergoi,
his "fellow workers." At the end of his letter to the Romans, Paul
acknowledges twenty-nine leading Christians in the Roman community
to whom he sends greetings – ten of them were women. He calls
Phoebe, a woman active in the Church in Cenchreae, a
diakonos,
indicating that she was the leader of a home church. He writes of
the woman Junia as being ‘distinguished among the
Apostles,’ suggesting that she was instrumental in spreading
the faith, and eminent in the Christian community – in every
respect Paul’s equal.
Women in the
early church were welcomed to share their gifts as the Spirit gave
them; many women were considered prophets, and teachers, both
considered higher gifts than the gift of leadership. Though
cultural biases against women would gradually take root, in the
earliest Christian communities women were accepted as the equals of
the likes of the Apostle Paul, their ministry welcomed and
unrestricted.
Over the course
of the first hundred and fifty years of Christianity the function
of presbyter and bishop slowly develop into a clerical caste of
professional ministers over and against the
“laity.”
Bishops, at
first merely the informal leaders among the many priests in a
community, took on increasing authority, especially after the
conversion of Constantine, when the monarchic episcopacy began to
develop, and bishops emerged as powerful authorities in both civil
and ecclesial society. More gradually still, the bishops of the
great cities of the Roman Empire, Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and
Constantinople, emerged as the Episcopal powerbrokers – and
Rome, claiming association with both Sts. Peter and Paul, claimed
central authority. What had been born as a gathering of people
proclaiming the Lordship of Christ had become the world’s
first fully functioning bureaucracy – the Institutional
Church.
What
the past can teach us: Back to the future
What is essential in the Church can be found in its origins, and
those origins also point the way, at least potentially, to the
church of the future.
There can be no
Christianity without the Eucharist – and that meal belongs to
the people of God as a gift from the Spirit. As Christians are
asked to go without the Eucharist because there are no priests to
preside at the Lord’s Table, it is important to remember that
long before there was a professional, hierarchical priesthood,
Christians gathered to remember the Lord and experienced his
presence in bread broken and shared.
The Eucharist
cannot and must not be held hostage by a moribund hierarchy. The
early church can show us a different, yet completely authentic, way
to be church. As early Christian communities allowed ministry to
emerge from within it – not as offices of authority, but as
ministries of loving service -- so small Christian communities
today, meeting in homes or other informal places, can call one of
their own to lead, to preside at the Lord’s Supper while
remaining completely faithful to the tradition. Both men and women
may receive the call when the gift of leadership is discerned
– a refreshing return to the fundamental equality of all the
sons and daughters of God in Christ. We do not need an ordained
priest for a “valid” Eucharist – we merely need a
community of faith calling one of its own to lead it in prayerful
celebration of the Lord’s meal.
In these
communities all should be welcome at the table – as all were
welcome at the Lord’s own table. We should particularly
welcome those shut out by the Institutional
church.
The apostles
were those believers in the Risen Lord who, inspired by the Spirit,
zealously worked to create a path of holiness for all God’s
beloved creation. Their mission was to extend the compassionate,
loving, hope filled message of Christ to the ends of the earth. We
are their successors NOT when a bishop with the proper
‘apostolic succession’ lays hands on us, but when we do
what the apostles did: when we bring good news, and build
communities of hope and healing through the power of the
Spirit.
This is radical
Christianity – a faithful return to the root of the
tradition.