July 11, 2023

Beloved in Christ:

Fair Warning – long but important letter ahead!

When the Bishop approved the re-opening of churches during the Covid pandemic, my first priority, in the midst of a strong desire to keep everyone as safe and healthy as possible, was to figure out how we could once again participate in the service of Holy Eucharist as a community.  For months I had taken communion alone in the video tapes of Sunday worship services, as you either prayed with one another or participated in your own version of sharing the body and blood of Christ at home.  We finally had the freedom to once again share in Christ’s body, but how could we safely and sensibly share in Christ’s blood, the wine?   While consulting with the medical professionals on our Covid Task Force, we experimented with a few ideas, finally settling on inviting the congregation to bring their own cups from home for the wine. Over a few weeks, we realized that people might forget their own cups, and that our guests would not know to bring their own cups, and we started providing the small compostable cups that we still use now.

Bishop Loya joined with the House of Bishops well over a year ago to call all Episcopal faith communities back to the historical practice of sharing the common cup for the wine at Eucharist. Intuitively I felt that the time was not right at Calvary to do that. I took some unofficial polls and consulted with the Liturgy and Music Team and the Vestry, and overwhelmingly people agreed with my gut feeling that it would be best for our congregation to stay with the small cups for the Eucharistic wine. Out of the approximately 40 people I talked with, two felt comfortable returning to the common cup, and one of those two confessed that while they felt that way, they agreed that we should stay with our current method. Calvary’s congregation did a beautiful and faithful job of adapting to the various ways we have experimented with participating in this most important liturgy of our common lives.

At this point, it is time to return to sharing the common cup. Covid is now a regular part of our lives, and just like the common cold, ‘flu, and other public health realities, we know much more about how Covid is spread, and in general, people are very aware of their own health and when to isolate at home instead of coming to church.   In the Diocese of Minnesota, Calvary is one of very few parishes that has not returned to the common cup. I believe we have had good reasons not to return to that practice, but again, now it is time. We are the people of the Book of Common Prayer, and the taking of the blood of Christ in the common cup. All people are equal in the eyes of God, and the partaking of the common cup is an outward and visible symbol of that equality, and of God’s justice.  We all drink from the same unending fountain of God’s  mercy and love; we all drink from the same cup that embodies the life and sacrifice of Christ for our salvation. It is part of the history, tradition and reason of the Episcopal Church – and part and parcel of the scripture stories of the last time Jesus shared supper with his friends, a time when the usual practice of sharing a common cup of wine as a blessing after a meal was transformed by Jesus into the way in which we remember him and his loving actions today.

This change might feel strange, even uncomfortable to many of us. We’ve gotten used to the little cups. Most of us even remember to bring them to the altar! So, it seems wise to offer a time of transition. Beginning on Sunday, August 6 and continuing through August and into mid-September, we will be offered a choice of sipping the wine from the common cup or continuing to use the compostable cups. There will be two stations to receive communion:  at the Altar, we will offer the bread and the common cup. At a station next to the chancel steps, you will be offered bread and a Eucharistic Minister will be there to pour the wine into your small cup. There will be rubrics in the Bulletin and an announcement will be made to explain this transition time. The one practice that I ask all of us to discontinue is the practice of intinction, or dipping the wafer into the common cup. Without question that is the “germiest” of all of the ways to take communion, as many people accidentally dip their fingers into the wine as well, thus depositing various germs into the wine for others to imbibe.

Please take some time to think and pray about your own feelings of how to take the Eucharistic wine. I hope that these weeks of transition will give you ample time to remember how you used to take the wine before the pandemic, and to really process what this means to you in your faith life. Please be in touch with me or the members of our Liturgy and Music Committee:  Barbara Toman, Dain Waters, Martha Mangan, Penny Duffy and Brian Hornberg, with any questions, concerns or ideas.

In faith, and in gratitude,

Beth+