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| A Common Household Apple Pie |
On Monday, my son made an apple pie.
That night when I got home from my church
meeting, the four of us sat down to have some pie, just like old times around
our kitchen table.
I reported on my
meeting.
Me: Guess what we talked about at my
meeting? Do you know what communion by
intinction is?
Husband: It’s when you inject the wine into the
congregation members.
Me: No.
Son: I thought a tincture was a mixture that
included alcohol.
Me: There is no wine in the Presbyterian church.
Husband: So is that why Jesus turned the wine into
water?
Me: What?!
Son: If you turn wine into water you would get
more molecules of water than of wine because of the molecular structure of the
ethanol. Since you have to maintain
mass, there would be more water.
Husband: The cup would be overflowing.
(Seeing that this was probably going to be a conversation I would
want to remember, I left the room to look for a piece of paper. By the time I came back, somehow the
discussion had moved on to latkes.)
Son: How can you use latkes for communion?
YD: WHAT IS COMMUNION BY INTINCTION?!
Husband: It’s when you dip the latkes in the wine.
Son: I thought you were supposed to dip things
at Passover.
Me: There are no latkes in communion.
YD: Latkes are for Hannukah, not Passover.
Me: Intinction is when you have one person
holding a loaf of bread and another person holding a large goblet filled with
grape juice. Those people stand at the
front of the church. You walk up, tear a
piece of bread off the loaf, and then dip it in the juice. And then you eat it.
Husband: No double dipping!
Me: Well,
yeah. That was what we talked about at
the meeting. The Presbyterian Book of
Order says that communion by intinction is a perfectly acceptable way to do
it. But some people don’t like it.
Husband: What is the Book of Order? Is that like the Presbyterian Talmud?
Me: One reason they object to it is they think
it will result in passing around germs.
Husband: Ebola!
Me: Some people
might be thinking that, but I think mostly they don’t want to catch a cold. Another reason they object is that they think
it is not properly Presbyterian, but the Book of Order says it’s fine.
Husband: I have a solution for the fear of germs:
just take everyone’s temperature as they enter the sanctuary. Like they are doing at some airports.
* * * * * * * *
Being me, I did some research online. I didn’t want to just dismiss out of hand the
concern about passing around germs during communion, or the issue of intinction
not being properly Presbyterianish. Here
are my conclusions.
- There is some risk to picking up an illness through communion by intinction,
but it is quite low.
- There might be even less risk if
we served the grape juice from a silver chalice rather than pottery. Silver apparently has germicidal properties.
- There might be even less risk if
we served wine instead of grape juice, because the alcohol content has some
germicidal properties. But 98% of
Presbyterian churches serve grape juice.
- I suspect that risk of illness from
intinction is less than the risk of illness you underwent when you put your
hand on the church doorknob to open the door to go into the sanctuary. Or, for that matter, the general risk to your
well-being when you got in your car and drove to church.
- The PC(USA) Book of Order, which is
indeed the Presbyterian Talmud, recognizes communion by intinction as valid. Note that the PCA (Presbyterian Church in
America) feels much differently.
- Intinction is likely the way it
was done at the time of The Johns (Calvin and Knox). You can’t get much more Presbyterian than
that.
- There are an awful lot of
opinions, both scientific and theological, on this topic.
- I believe that God is present, somehow, in those communion elements of grape juice and bread. It's a blessing for the congregation to join together, no matter by what method, to receive communion. Some people find one method more meaningful than another. I can participate in my less-preferred method because I know it has great meaning to someone else in the congregation, and hope that others would be able to do the same for me.
- Wash your hands, people.
- Quite possibly, the only good thing about this post was the pie.
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Part of a retreat prayer walk: a reminder of the sacrament.
That's the closest I could get to a photo of communion. |
The End
* * * * * * * *
Lengthy Appendix
This next part is just included here
mainly for my good friend who has memorized the Book of Order, and for my own
reference.
* * * * * * * *
Warning! Sciency
words and statistics ahead!
There are plenty of opinions out there on whether taking
communion puts one at risk for a communicable disease. There are even more opinions on what the
communion serving methods mean, theologically, with some people adamantly
opposed to one or another method.
The infectious disease aspect of communion has been pondered
for over 100 years, basically since knowledge of infectious diseases
developed. There are also a few actual
scientific studies. Most of them concern
everybody in the congregation drinking from the same cup. Some scientists
advocated shifting from a common communion chalice to communion by intinction
in order to avoid passing around nasty illnesses.
In 1995, Dr Anne LaGrange Loving, a microbiologist, carried
out a controlled scientific study in which a procedure similar to communion by
intinction was mimicked by 43 volunteers.
You can read the entire study here.
Here are some results from that study:
Seven individuals (16.3%) dipped
their fingertips into the wine during the intinction process. In every case
(100%), the following wine samples yielded no growth [of bacteria]. ….
The cultures of the entire amount
of wine remaining in the chalice at the end of the samplings yielded no growth
at all. ….
Overall, the intincted wafer
cultures yielded the same flora as the parishioners contained on their hands in
most instances, indicating no greater risk to an individual than placing one's
fingertips in one's mouth. ….
In 29 (67.4%) out of 43 cases, the
bacteria which grew from the wafer were the same as those found on the
individual's fingertips. Of those cases in which a different microorganism grew
on the wafer than was on the individual's fingertips, it was usually Bacillus
species. In two (4.7%) instances, a potential pathogen was found on the wafer
of a person whose fingertips did not contain it (S. aureus). In one instance it
might have been passed from the previous parishioner who was a carrier; in the
other there had been seven individuals without S. aureus immediately prior.
All (100%) of the wafer cultures
that were intincted by the minister yielded some growth, as opposed to 79.1% of
those that the parishioner dipped for himself or herself. In two (4.7%)
consecutive instances, a potential pathogen appeared on the wafers
(Enterobacter cloacae), and in both cases the minister as well as the
parishioner had touched their fingertips to the wine, and the minister had
touched the lips of both individuals.
And the study’s conclusion :
Although intinction does not
abolish all risk of infection to a parishioner, it does seem to reduce the risk
over that of sipping from a common communion cup. Fingertips may contain fecal
pathogens, but these do not always get transferred into the wine and thus to
subsequent parishioners. Intinction by the minister appears to be slightly more
risky. The cleanliness of the minister's hands seems to be a factor, as the
intinction-by-minister cultures yielded more growth overall.
No significant differences were
found in the rates of illness among Christians who receive Holy Communion,
Christians who attend church but do not receive the sacraments, and people who
do not attend Christian services. The
only significant health factor found in this study was the presence of young
children in the household, a commonly observed phenomenon. Replications in other seasons and in
different locales might be warranted to further test this question. However, these data suggest that receiving
Holy Communion as often as daily does not increase risk of infection.
On the appropriateness of communion by intinction in the
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
p 38-39
Going Forward to
Receive Communion. The earliest Reformed method for Communion was for the
people to approach the Lord’s Table to receive the bread and cup. “With Calvin,
the people came forward as they had always done . . . one by one, receiving the
bread from one Minister at one end of the table, and the Wine from another
Minister at the other end.”17 In the English congregation in Geneva,
John Knox had the people leave their places to sit at tables set up in the
church. This practice continued in both Scotland and the Netherlands. Under the
influence of the English Puritans, the Scottish church slowly and reluctantly
moved toward receiving Communion in the pews, beginning in the mid-seventeenth
century. Pew Communion provides an opportunity for Christians to serve one
another; it also tends to reinforce the individualism and passivity that
characterize many sacramental occasions.
At a minimum, congregations should try other serving methods
than their present one as a way to add to the richness of receiving the
Sacrament. As the Book of Common Worship indicates: “The people may gather
around the table . . . the people may go to persons serving the elements . . .
or the bread and wine may be served to the people where they are” (BCW 44).
