A. Gooley,"Going to Church and Being Church."

FEBRUARY 2005 - ISSUE 4 - ISSN 1448 - 632

GOING TO CHURCH AND BEING CHURCH

ANTHONY GOOLEY

Abstract

The experience of worship can be enhanced by the development of a deeper understanding of the reality signified by the gathered community. An ecclesiological understanding is necessary in order to shift the mindset of worshipers from one of going to Church to one of being Church. Going to Church can be characterised as an emphasis on reception of a service or a personal faith experience. As long as Christians gathered for worship see being at Church on Sunday as an essentially private affair they will fail to experience the reality of the gathering. Being Church is characterised as awareness that the Church is a community instituted by Christ and called into being and sustained by the Holy Spirit. A communion ecclesiology permits that paradigm shift whereby the gathered community may recognise that they are called together in fellowship in the life of the Trinity and with each other.

The Lima Statement of the World Council of Churches Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM) gave encouragement to an ecclesial understanding of Sunday worship and linked that worship to the celebration of the Eucharist; “It is in the Eucharist that the community of God’s people is fully manifest.” Although all Churches have not maintained Eucharist as the focus of Sunday worship the ecclesiological principles that shed light on the significance of Sunday gathering for worship may still find application. This paper will consider the question of communion as reflected in BEM and also the Roman Catholic documents from the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Gathering for worship on Sunday has an ecclesial and Eucharistic context that is sometimes not fully understood, even in communities which have maintained Eucharist as the focus of Sunday worship. There is a certain tendency in much of “western” culture toward a kind of individualism which is shared by many Christians that obscures the ecclesiological dimension of the Sunday gathering. The experience of worship can be enhanced by the development of a deeper understanding of the reality signified by the gathered community. An ecclesiological understanding is necessary in order to shift the mindset of worshipers from one of going to Church to one of being Church. Such a shift has implications not only for the experience of worship but also for leading the congregation deeper into the mission of Christ in our world. The Church understood as communion opens the way to engaging in worship as a dynamic and present encounter with the mystery of the presence of God and the possibility of transformation of communities and our world.

In order to commence our discussion it is necessary to consider the framework of the paper. Three terms need to be considered, these are what we mean by going to Church, being church and communion ecclesiology. Going to Church can be characterised as an emphasis on reception of a service or a personal faith experience. As long as Christians gathered for worship see being at Church on Sunday as an essentially private affair they will fail to experience the reality of the gathering. Going to Church is a continuation of the cultural paradigm of individualism. Attendance at Sunday worship is perceived as a gathering of individuals, who as faith filled people, could just as well offer the same effective prayer alone as much as with a community. There is no doubt that the Spirit can move individuals to sincere and effective prayer but this is not the same objective experience as the Sunday gathering. The Lima Statement of the World Council of Churches gave encouragement to an ecclesial understanding of Sunday worship and linked that worship to the celebration of the Eucharist; “It is in the Eucharist that the community of God’s people is fully manifest.”[1] Although all Churches have not maintained Eucharist as the focus of Sunday worship the ecclesiological principles that shed light on the significance of Sunday gathering for worship may still find application.

Being Church is characterised as awareness that the Church is a community instituted by Christ and called into being and constituted by the Holy Spirit[2]. A communion ecclesiology permits that paradigm shift whereby the gathered community may recognise that they are called together in fellowship in the life of the Trinity and with each other. The fellowship of love transforms Christians and impels them to serve the world with which they feel a profound communion in the hopes and anxieties and struggles of all people, in fact nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts[3]. Gathering for Sunday worship, Eucharist, becomes the experience of the reality of this communion manifest in the assembly and the worship of the whole community. This understanding of gathering on Sunday is counter cultural. Without denying individual difference and giftedness, a sense of being Church, of koinonia/communion, and encounter with this mystery inaugurates a transformation of individuals into “a people, a kingdom and priests to serve our God” (Rev 5:10).

An ecclesiology of communion develops an understanding of Church which is profoundly Scriptural and attested to in the Great Tradition of the Church. Communion has vertical and horizontal dimensions. The Church is a mysterious vertical communion between God and believers and a horizontal communion among believers.[4] The communion among believers is not limited to the individual scale, it includes communion of communities of believers. The Church “is a communion, a fraternity of persons. This is why a personal principle and a principle of unity are united in the Church.”[5] The community of the Church has an existence prior to individual membership and it exists as a given for the context of faith and worship for individuals. The image of Church described in Acts (2:42-47), albeit idealised, attests to the communion that existed within the Jerusalem community. The community is united in a communion founded on sharing in common faith founded on apostolic witness, prayer and the breaking of bread. Concern for the material welfare of the members and the love they have for one another is a fruit and gift of the communion created by the Spirit among them.

New Testament and Eucharist

There is a growing consensus among Biblical scholars, representing a variety of Christian communities, that the context for the reading and reception of the New Testament writings is Sunday Eucharist.[6] Kereszty concludes that “the entire New Testament has a Eucharistic provenance and, therefore, must be interpreted in a more or less immediate Eucharistic context.”[7] The implications of this he notes are that we have a Biblical foundation for a theology of Eucharist which must necessarily combine elements of Christology, ecclesiology and eschatology rather than keep them separate from one another. If this view is accepted than we must also see that the church is not merely a faith community with a gathering of subjective states of mind and self expression, but a eucharistic community in which acts of faith refer to sacramental realities.[8] The Church is constituted as a eucharistic and ecclesial reality from its moment of institution unto the present.

Eucharist provides a context for the reception of the Word of God proclaimed in the Scriptures. The assembly of the faithful becomes the means by which the individual participates in the unfolding pattern of salvation. The community is nourished by word and sacrament. The individual is immersed into a sacramental reality of the community called Church; the Body of Christ. It seems that from the beginning this corporate identity shaped the life of the individual member and drew her/him closer into the mystery of Christ present among us. Imagining these first Christian communities gathering before dawn on the first day of the week to hear the writings of the New Testament should provide a way into interpreting the word in our day.

Christ and communion

An overly individualistic understanding of going to Church misses the significance of the meaning of being Church. Paul tells us in many places that the Church is the body of Christ (1 Cor:12:27), that he is the head of his body the Church (Col 1:18) and that all that we do should be done for the building up of the body of Christ (Eph 4:13) and he reminds us with directness and beauty that “…the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks is a participation in the blood of Christ…and the bread that we break is a participation in the body of Christ.(1 Cor 10:16). . We see here the interweaving of Christological, ecclesiological and eucharistic themes. The reality for which the community is assembled and which it encounters in the Holy Spirit is a communion with Christ in the eucharist and the eucharistic assembly. The eucharistic communion with Christ who nourishes the life of the Church is at the same time communion with the body of Christ which is the Church.[9] One cannot be in Christ without being a part of his body.

Evaluations of the Church which consider the Church as an institution only and perhaps a flawed one at that or as a purely human reality will miss the significance of the pnumatological nature of the Church; as a community made one in Christ through the Spirit. To have misunderstood the Church in such a way would create some obstacle to full and active participation in worship because the worshiper is not conscious that she/he encounters Christ present in the community assembled (the synaxis) nor is she/he seeking to engage with Christ through his Body the Church. If worship is reduced even further to a purely private encounter with the divine, an individual experience, then such worship cannot really contribute to the edification of the Church. The worship of the community is impoverished by an impoverished understanding of the nature of the Church and the assembly. This is not to say that individuals and communities will gain nothing from or contribute nothing to meaningful worship. According to Barclay Christian koinonia/communion is that bond which binds Christians to each other, to Christ and to God.[10] Without such a consciousness of koinonia there will be something lacking in the disposition of those who come to worship; they may not discern the Body of Christ in the assembly.

Eucharist and communion

It is in the eucharist that the community of God’s people is fully manifested.[11] The presidential prayer preserved in the Didache indicates how profoundly worship and community were linked in the ancient church; “As this broken bread once dispersed over the hills, was brought together and became one loaf, so may they Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom”[12]

Zizioulas suggests that there is an abundance of evidence from historical and liturgical fragments of the early centuries of Christianity to “allow us to know, the whole church dwelling in a certain city would come together mainly on a Sunday to break the bread. This synaxis would be the only one in that place, in the sense that it would include the whole Church.”[13] It may strike some as odd that we need to consider eucharist and communion because for many communion is regarded as a synonym for eucharist. It is, I would argue, necessary to engage with the many meanings of communion/koinonia in order to fully appreciate the communion that eucharist brings about.

Roman Catholic theology as expressed in Lumen Gentium regards the Church in Christ, is in the nature of a sacrament that is a communion with God and of the unity among people.[14] The Church is gathered by Christ as a visible sacrament of the saving unity brought about by the unique redemption and gift offered in Christ.[15] The Church is regarded as being a visible society and a spiritual community, having an earthly as well as a heavenly dimension; together these human and divine elements combine to form one complex reality. For this reason the Church may be compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word.[16] There is a mystical and sacramental dimension to the life of the Church which is the life of God in some mysterious way. The Faith and Order commission point to this reality, without defining it in such a way that identifies exclusively with the theological tradition and language of any particular community, in saying; “Belonging to the Church means living in communion with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.”[17]

Liturgy, which includes Sunday worship, is always seen as the work of “Christ the priest and of his body the Church”, according to Roman Catholic teaching in Sacrosanctum Concilium.[18] The ministerial priesthood and the common priesthood of the Body of Christ, the Church, are both a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.[19] Roman Catholic theology speaks of the real or true presence of Christ in the Church, especially the liturgy. He is regarded as being present in four ways.[20] He is present in the assembly, where ever two or three are gathered in his name (Matthew 18:20). He is present in the Scripture proclaimed, since it is he himself who speaks when the word is proclaimed. He is present in the person of the presider; it is the same Christ who offered himself on the Cross who is now offering through the ministry of the priest. He is present in the consecrated bread and wine, which is a participation in his body and blood (1 Cor 10:16). BEM expresses this last point; “The Church confesses Christ’s real, living and active presence in the eucharist.”[21] Without entering into any discussion of how that presence might be effected BEM is content to reflect that Christ’s mode of presence in the eucharist is unique.[22] Gathering for worship is not primarily the recreation of a historical drama of the Lord’s Supper, but a participation and encounter with Christ in the sacramental presence experienced in four modes within the synaxis.

Gathering together as a communion has present, past and future dimensions that suggest that the worshiping community is participating in a reality greater than individual devotion or personal faith experience. Worship points most clearly to the communitarian nature of salvation and the communitarian nature of the God from whom salvation comes and to whom all creation is drawn. Gathering for worship is to be brought into the experience of communion with God and the Body of Christ, the Church. This communion occurs in this present moment, with the communion of Christians of all times and ages and with the heavenly community, the New Jerusalem. Sunday worship must be situated in this larger context of communion in order to recover and experience the reality for which we have assembled.

The communion that exists in the Sunday community is not a communion limited to the present experiences of community or communion with Christ in his Body the Church; it is encounter and anticipation of eschatological realties. The earthly community is an epiphany of the heavenly mystery of the Church particularly in the celebration of the Eucharist.[23] Recalling the eucharistic provenance of the New Testament we can see the author of the Letter to the Hebrews speaking to the eucharistic assembly; “…what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival with the whole Church in which everyone is a first born son and citizen of heaven.” (Hebrews 12: 22-23) The baptised exist with a kind of dual citizenship, existing at the same time on earth as a pilgrim church and through having been baptised into Christ, within the heavenly community. (Col 2:20; 3:1-4; Phil 3:30) Our participation in the eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ’s transfiguration of our bodies…our bodies which partake of the eucharist are no longer corruptible but possess the hope of the resurrection.[24] The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church relates Eucharist to the coming of the Kingdom; “The Holy Spirit’s transforming power in the Eucharist hastens the coming of the Kingdom and the consummation of the mystery of salvation. While we wait in hope the Spirit causes us to anticipate the fullness of communion with the Trinity. Sent by the Father who hears the epiclesis of the Church, the Spirit gives life to those who accept him and is, even now, the guarantee of their inheritance.[25] The assembly is an experience of communion with the saints and the church that is to come as well as a living church gathered in the present.

Solidarity and communion with the body of Christ in the world is an aspect of eucharistic communion that is sometimes overlooked in an individualist understanding of the Sunday gathering. All kinds of kinds of injustice, racism, separation and lack of freedom are radically challenged when we share in the body and blood of Christ.[26] If eucharist makes us into the Body of Christ then we cannot ignore him in the poor, the refugee and the marginalised of this world. To the extent that we turn away from the least of these marginalised people we turn away from Christ and to the extent to which we encounter the marginalised we encounter the body of Christ (Matt 25:31-46). It was a truth which seemed so obvious to John Chrysostom “that he found it odd that people would provide precious vessels to hold the body and blood of Christ while neglecting the poor, who are the body and altar of Christ in the community.”[27] Meeting Christ in the assembly is to begin to participate in the transformation of the oppressive circumstances that cause poverty and injustice; the proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

The essence of the eucharist is that it is an act of communion, the creation of a community, by the power of the Spirit, which draws life from the body in order that it might become that body. There is a mutual interrelation of the eucharist and the church, an active principle, constantly forming the reality.[28] Referring to the work of de Lubac, Wang notes that the purpose of sacraments is to unite those on whom they act effectively into a union with one another and with Christ.[29]

Formation in communion

Sacrosanctum Concilium regards Roman Catholic pastors as having a duty to “ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite and enriched by it.”[30] It is a duty which pastors in other traditions might also feel is part of their responsibility. If we are to accept that the Sunday assembly is an experience of a profound communion which operates on a number of levels then some formation of congregations will be required. An appreciation of Sunday worship as communion does not come naturally in a culture which emphasise individuality and individualism in religion, as in so many other aspects of life. Eucharist is a primary symbol of Christian faith for most Churches. Leaders of communities need to undertake some formation of congregations so as to “enable people to enter into the primary symbols of Christian faith so that they may experience in liturgical worship a union between rite and faith which will illuminate their whole human existence.”[31]

An understanding of the assembly as koinonia/communion in the Body of Christ has significant consequences for ecumenism. If the Sunday assembly in a particular place is a participation in the Body of Christ, then it is a participation in the communion of all the assemblies scattered throughout the globe, since Christ is one. There is one Lord, one faith and one Baptism and one God the Father of all (Ephesians 4:4-6). The communion among assemblies remains an imperfect one because we do not yet share the one cup and the one bread. Returning to a sense of church, of Sunday assembly, as communion can be an important preparation for a foretaste of the full communion to which we are called in the Spirit. De Lubac calls this a return to an understanding of church as the great eucharistic “miracle”. The Church is the glorious fruit of the awesome transformation that happens in the sacrament, in which we are made into that which we partake: the Body of Christ.[32]

Communities might need to return to central texts of Scripture and to the witness of the Christian communities of the first millennia of the Christian era to ponder the nature of the assembly and to develop an ecclesiological understanding of the Sunday gathering which is an experience of koinonia/communion. Wiel comments on the lack of a symbolic sense in the imagination of American culture, it is an observation that might well apply in the Australian context too.[33] A task for pastors is to stimulate this symbolic sense, a kind of sacramental imagination, so that the individualist understanding can give way to a communitarian understanding of the nature of the Sunday assembly. So long as this imagination remains unstimulated congregations will be comprised of individuals who are going to church in a privatised manner and not as a synaxis conscious that the gathering is the experience, par excellence, of communion in Christ; a communion which impels them toward service of the world. There needs to be a consciousness of being Church and of Church as a way of being. In becoming more conscious of their dignity as the body of Christ the baptised who assemble on Sunday will enter more fully into the incarnate Word and into the world which God loved so much(John 3:16).

Anthony Gooley is working toward a PhD in theology. He has twenty years experience in religious education in Catholic secondary schools, tertiary and parish adult education. He is a sessional lecturer in the School of Theology at Australian Catholic University. He is a member of the Commission for Ecumenism and Inter-faith Relations of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane. He has published works on aspects of the theology of communion including journal articles on Collegiality in the Catholic Church and Eucharist and ecclesial communion. His research interests include aspects of ecumenism, authority in the Church, Catholic Social Teaching and Benedictine spirituality for lay Christians.

[1] World Council of Churches Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order, Paper 111, Geneva 1982; Eucharist 19, referred to as BEM hereafter.

[2] John Zizioulas; Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and Church. St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. New York. 1985. p132

[3] Gaudium et Spes n1 in Austin Flannery, Vatican II: Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Dominican Publications, Dublin 1981.

[4] Michael Lawler and Thomas Shanahan, Church: A Spirited Communion. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1995; p3

[5] Congar Y. I believe in the Holy Spirit, Volume II, p15. David Smith (trans) Complete Three Volume Work. Crossroad-Herder. New York. 1983

[6] Two excellent sources on the developing consensus are by Roch Kereszty (ed) Rediscovering the Eucharist: ecumenical conversations, Paulist Press New York 2003, and Horton Davies, Bread of Life and Cup of Joy: newer ecumenical perspectives on the Eucharist, Wm B Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1993

[7] Roch Kereszty, "The Eucharistic Provenance of New Testament Texts" in Kereszty (Ed), Rediscovering the Eucharist, p 44

[8] Kereszty, The Eucharistic provenance p 45

[10] William Barclay, A New Testament Word Book. SCM Press, London 1955. p72

[12] George, Every Basic Liturgy. The Faith Press, London 1961. p72

[13] John Zizioulas, Being as communion p150

[14] Lumen Gentium, n1. in Austin Flannery, Vatican II: Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Dominican Publications, Dublin 1981. Hereafter LG

[18] Sacrosanctum Concilium, n7. in Austin Flannery, Vatican II: Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Dominican Publications, Dublin 1981. Hereafter SC

[24] Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church (1992) n1000 hereafter CCC

[27] Patricia Zirkel, "The Body of Christ and the future of the Liturgy" Anglican Theological Review Summer, 1999. 81/3 p 467

[28] Lisa Wang, Sacramentum Unitatis Ecclesiasticae: The Eucharistic Theology of Henri de Lubac, Anglican Theological Review; Winter 2003; 85/1 p 154

[29] Wang, Sacramentum Unitatis p145

[31] Louis Weil, Community: the heart of worship, Anglican Theological Review; Winter 2000; 82/1; p 131

[32] Wang, Sacramentum Unitatis p153

[33] Weil, Community p131

Anthony Gooley delivered this paper at the Worship and Preaching Conference organised by the Australian Theological Forum in Brisbane, October 2004. Anthony has completed his Bachelor of Theology (Hons) degree through the Brisbane College of Theology / Griffith University where he is now beginning his doctoral research in ecclesiology. He also lectures part-time for the School of Theology at McAuley Campus, ACU.

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