On March 31, 2020, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry issued A
word to the Church regarding the theology of worship during the
COVID-19 pandemic. You can read here Bishop Curry's letter about the theological reflection below.
An Offering of Reflection by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry
On Our Theology of Worship: Questions in the Time of COVID-19
Across
The Episcopal Church the current Pandemic has given rise to many
questions about challenges to our liturgical life. Bishops are being
asked, "May we do this or that? Will you permit this or that way of
celebrating the Eucharist or delivering Holy Communion to the members
of our congregations?" Some years ago in an essay titled "Is There a
Christian Sexual Ethic?" Rowan Williams observed that in the then
current debates about marriage rites for same sex couples, this
"permissible/not permissible" way of conducting the conversation was a
dead end. The real (and much more productive) question for a sacramental
people, he said, was not simply whether a given practice was "right or
wrong," but rather "How much are we prepared for this or that
liturgical action to mean?" How much are we prepared for it to signify?
Sacraments effect by signifying.
Sacraments are
actions that give new meaning to things. The current questions about
the way we worship in a time of radical physical distancing invites the
question of what we are prepared for a given sacramental encounter to
mean. Sacraments are communal actions that depend on "stuff": bread and
wine, water and oil. They depend on gathering and giving thanks, on
proclaiming and receiving the stories of salvation, on bathing in
water, on eating and drinking together. These are physical and social
realities that are not duplicatable in the virtual world. Gazing at a
celebration of the Eucharist is one thing; participating in a physical
gathering and sharing the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist is another.
And, God, of course, can be present in both experiences.
And
that is surely the most important thing to remember. From the time of
Thomas Cranmer, mainstream Anglicanism has insisted that the Holy
Eucharist is to be celebrated in community, with no fewer than two
people. In contrast to some medieval practices, the Prayer Book
tradition was deeply concerned with reestablishing the essential
connection between the celebration of the Eucharist and the reception of
Holy Communion. Over time, of course, many factors contributed to a
general decline in the celebration of the Eucharist well into the late
19th and early 20th centuries, and Morning Prayer became the common
service of worship on the Lord's Day. And while it is good and right
that the situation has changed dramatically, that the Holy Eucharist has
again become the principal act of worship on Sunday across our church,
few would suggest that the experience of Morning Prayer somehow
limited God's presence and love to generations of Anglican Christians.
There are members of our church today who do not enjoy a regular
sustained celebration of the Eucharist for a variety of reasons other
than this Pandemic - they are no less members of Christ's Body because
of it.
Practices such as "drive by communion"
present public health concerns and further distort the essential link
between a communal celebration and the culmination of that celebration
in the reception of the Eucharistic Bread and Wine. This is not to say
that the presence of the Dying and Rising Christ cannot be received by
any of these means. It is to say that from a human perspective, the
full meaning of the Eucharist is not obviously signified by them. Our
theology is generous in its assurance of Christ's presence in all our
times of need. In a rubric in the service for Ministration to the Sick
(p. 457), The Book of Common Prayer clearly expresses the conviction
that even if a person is prevented from physically receiving the
Sacrament for reasons of extreme illness or disability, the desire for
Christ's presence alone is enough for all the benefits of the Sacrament
to be received.
Richard Hooker described the
corporate prayer of Christians as having a spiritual significance far
greater than the sum of the individual prayers of the individual
members of the body. Through corporate prayer, he said, Christians
participate in communion with Christ himself, "joined ... to that
visible, mystical body which is his Church." Hooker did not have in
mind just the Eucharist, which might have taken place only quarterly
or, at best, monthly in his day. He had very much in mind the assembly
of faithful Christians gathered for the Daily Office.
While
not exclusively the case, online worship may be better suited to ways
of praying represented by the forms of the Daily Office than by the
physical and material dimensions required by the Eucharist. And under
our present circumstances, in making greater use of the Office there
may be an opportunity to recover aspects of our tradition that point to
the sacramentality of the scriptures, the efficacy of prayer itself,
the holiness of the household as the "domestic church," and the
reassurance that the baptized are already and forever marked as Christ's
own. We are living limbs and members of the Body of Christ, wherever
and however we gather. The questions being posed to Bishops around these
matters are invitations to a deeper engagement with what we mean by
the word "sacrament" and how much we are prepared for the Church itself
- with or without our accustomed celebrations of the Eucharist - to
signify about the presence of God with us.
----------------------------------------
