Sword Tuesday, May 23, 2023

RETURN OF THE jedi mack king CHALICE

It has been a long time since we last talked about this, and I remember well how split the church was on this issue, and how passionately each side felt. I am of course talking about bringing the chalice back into our common worship. Check it out here:

https://www.stmichaelsbarrington.org/church-blog/1215-rectors-newsletter-article-common-cup-survey

I imagine that there remains a difference of opinion throughout the parish. Personally, I have returned to my pre-COVID way of life for the most part, trusting my immune system and the vaccines to keep me from becoming too ill. However, I also know that for others, there is no going back from our experience during COVID-tide, and that protection from all illness is a heightened priority.  

That is why on this Sunday, Pentecost Sunday May 28, 2023, we will bring back the chalice AND ALSO serve the little cups. For this next phase, you get to pick your preferred way of receiving the wine.

It is important to note: you are never required to take the wine, and should you ever not feel comfortable receiving the wine in either method or for any reason, receiving the bread alone is still 100% grace-filled Sacrament.

The logistics will work like this on Sunday: everyone receiving communion will come forward and receive the bread, as we have always done. If you want to also receive the chalice, you will stay at the altar rail and it will be brought to you. Please do not intinct, or dip, the bread into the wine, as it is much dirtier when the inevitable finger touches the liquid than anything else.

If you are not yet comfortable with the chalice, you may then leave the altar rail and head to one of the side communion stations to receive the wine in the cups. They will be setup near the icon and the Blessed Virgin Mary statue. You can pick up your cups there, and discard them there as well.

So why am I doing this, and why now? I think it is because the chalice has long been a symbol for me of the Holy Sacrament that I have received, blessed, and given. I remember the moment I was truly an Episcopalian… it was not at Confirmation, it was when I drank from that chalice instead of dipping the wafer. It has been a noticeable absence ever since March, 2020. I could not bear having no wine at all (as other churches did), and so we had the little “lunch-ables" for a time, and then the little cups- but these were just desperate measures within a pandemic to share the blood of Christ together. In addition, even compostable cups cause additional waste and pollution to our environment (albeit less than regular plastic), which I would like to reduce. And the emphasis on an individualistic communion experience, while it keeps us safely separate, keeps us unfortunately separate. Christians have drank from a common cup for literally more than a millennia, and the high alcohol content combined with the silver, and the “wipe and turn” technique used when serving the cup, makes this risk a low one in the absence of a pandemic, and one we all use to accept without much thought.

This month, the public health emergency expired for not only the United State, but also the World Health Organization (https://www.healthline.com/health-news/who-and-us-have-end-covid-19-emergency-declarations-what-happens-now). If we are to ever bring back this ancient symbol of our Holy Communion, I believe now is the time.

Be patient as we work out the new logistics and fine tune our approach over the summer, and I will give instructions during the announcements this week. God bless you, and see you at church!

Jesse+