Virtual Communion or Eucharistic Abstinence?
Biblical worship involves at least three things that are hard to really pull off in a virtual capacity— worship is communal, embodied, and participatory. Under normal circumstances, we come to participate bodily in gathered worship, put ourselves under the authority of the Word preached, and receive the sacrament blessed, broken, and given. When we are not present together the Spirit can still work, but there is an embodied aspect to the life of the church that is discomforting in its absence.
We don’t want to normalize live-streaming worship as if it is equivalent to gathered worship. Virtual church is an emergency measure in extraordinary circumstances. Technology is a gift for us in this time in signifiant ways by continuing to connect us and by facilitating the worship of God’s people. But there should be a fundamental difference between the actual Sunday morning gathering versus our experience sitting on a couch staring at a screen.
We don’t want to settle into this as something that’s normal. It should feel different. One of the ways we can refuse to normalize live-stream worship is to not try to find a virtual substitute for the Lord’s Supper.
The most fundamental reason has to do with the nature of the sacrament itself. A sacrament is a symbolic action ordained by Jesus Christ to which he has attached the promise of his presence and blessing. The divinely ordained context of the Lord’s Supper is “when you come together” (1 Cor 11:33). While it is true that we share a mystical union with other brothers and sisters across the centuries and around the world as the body of Christ, the sacramental nature of the Supper is physical, local, and communal; celebrated by Christians as they gather.
As believers we deeply value the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace. It is a great loss to not be able to partake. But the proper response to this loss is not to attempt a technological fix, but to endure a season of fasting. Our inability to celebrate the Lord’s Supper for a season should be cause for sorrow and tears. But it should also be a time to cultivate hopeful longing for when we will eat and drink together again. This season of eucharistic fasting will make our feasting at the Lord’s table all the more joyous when the time of our fast comes to an end. And one day we will feast in the house of Zion!