Eucharist Against the Pandemic
We began having weekly Eucharistic services outside several weeks ago in our congregation. It has been wonderful to gather around both the Body of Christ in the form of his people as well as the Body of Christ in the form of the bread, as well as the Blood of Christ in the form of wine.
But it's different. We practice physical distancing. We all wear masks. Hand sanitizer and masks are used by the priest in distribution of the elements. The bread itself comes in individually wrapped plastic. The wine is poured out from a flask which the individual families bring from their own homes.
Thus the central act of Christian worship, which is designed to bring us together, is necessarily being carried out with physical barriers of all kinds.
Though it grieves us, this of course is the right thing to do. The coronavirus (being a virus) does not care much for the reason we are eating and drinking. There is no promise attached to the eating and drinking of our Lord's body and blood that the laws of physics and biology will stop working while we do so. We can still catch the virus from sharing food and drink together in close proximity, and so we take precautions.
And yet our partaking in the Eucharist, after many months of fasting from it for the sake of the health of our neighbors, is now, as it always has been, a reassertion of the goodness of creation and our role as humans within it, even and especially in the midst of pandemic. The Creator-God brought order out of the watery chaos in the beginning (Genesis 1:2). He places humans in a garden paradise, tasking them to serve as priests over the creation-temple he had made, amplifying its fruitfulness, extending its flourishing over the whole earth, and gathering it all up in acts of worship back to God (Genesis 2). This will not be an easy job, as there are dark forces already in their midst (Genesis 3), and the relentless march of the increase of entropy, while a necessary feature of the world in which we live during the present age, is always working to return the order of creation back to the disorder from which it came. As we know, Adam and Eve decide to give the authority God had given them over to the forces of sin, darkness, disorder, and death, and the future of God's creation project appears imperiled.
Christians believe that God's answer to this predicament is Jesus. Jesus has come and succeeded where Adam failed (Romans 5:12-21). His works of healing (Matthew 8:14-16) and power over the forces of creation (Mark 4:35-41) demonstrated the wise rule over the world in which God had intended for humans to participate from the beginning. By his death, our sin and rebellion is forgiven and atoned for, and his resurrection guarantees our own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15) and the eventual healing of all creation (Romans 8:18-25, Revelation 21:1-5).
When we lift the bread and the cup in Jesus' name, when his presence is made known in the midst of creation, when we gather the fruits of creation and offer them back to God in a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," we are setting a marker that the forces of anti-creation, including the coronavirus, do not have the final say. Jesus has defeated death and that one day that victory will be spread throughout the whole world. And we then go out to anticipate this victory in the present by pushing back against the virus itself--by practicing good hygiene, wearing masks, keeping physical distance, and looking out especially for the most vulnerable. In other words, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Some of us, depending on our callings, will be pushing back in a more direct way, rushing into the places of most danger by taking care of the sick and the dying. Others are called to work on therapies and vaccines. Above all, we cover all this activity with prayer, invoking the Spirit's work over everything we do, and bearing witness to the Good News about Jesus the entire time.
So, even in the midst of masks and sanitizer, may this be our prayer as we join in the meal the Lord gave us:
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food
of the most precious Body and Blood
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ;
and for assuring us in these holy mysteries
that we are living members of the body of your Son,
and heirs of your eternal Kingdom.
And now, Father, send us out do to the work you have
given us to do,
to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.
To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.