‘Live Bread for the Starved Folk’: Some Perspectives on Holy Communion

Abstract

This essay argues that ecclesial existence involves learning to view the world and to move in it in ways informed by the Christian community’s sacramental practices. Of particular concern here is the practice of Holy Communion. This looking and moving is not about one thing; it is rather about many things. Frequently, such discussions are exhausted by fruitless debates about the metaphysics of the elements, or strangled by concerns to defend certain prescriptive practices or shibboleths. This essay is unconcerned with these matters. Instead, it brings together some observations about the practices of the Lord’s Supper with a range of themes representative of commitments shared by Christian communities broadly – people, God, stories, hospitality, power, catholicity, martyrdom, and hope – with the intention of provoking a thicker assessment of eucharistic modes of being in the world, and promoting practices marked by the kinds of imaginative freedom that the gospel instigates.