Towards a Digital Sacrament: A Moment 40+ Years in the Praying
Over the last two decades, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) of the Episcopal Church has been scrutinized, supplemented, argued over, and now stands on the cusp of revision once again. As a technology of prayer a mere 40 years old, many have wondered whether its usefulness is over or whether the Episcopal Church must begin anew at replacing or supplementing its forms of prayer and practice.
In truth, history will show that the BCP (in its present and past forms) has deeply served its purpose to unite Episcopalians in common prayer and worship, and that much of this may be attributed to the technology, or social medium, which it has used quite effectively: the book. Through this ancient, once-and-future form, the BCP has provided a unified way (even if the content gets squabbled over and changed) for the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement to gather. Through careful adaptation, deep prayer and faithful adherence, the church of the 1979 BCP has survived schisms, been informed by scientific reason, and through the careful authorization of supplemental liturgies has been largely successful in holding the denomination together.
I do not believe that the technology nor common prayer and worship of the BCP is finished. No, even as working groups continue to discern what next steps are needed for the 1979 to become a better and deeper articulation of our shared faith in the present, it remains the most relevant and critical part of the Episcopal Church’s faith and discernment surrounding the broader Christian response to life in the age of COVID-19 and, most especially, Holy Eucharist in the Context of Online Worship.
Amplifying Our Common Prayer and Worship
As many of us pray about how to proceed (like our Lutheran sisters and brothers) with inviting our parishes to join us in the sacramental making and breaking of consecrated bread and the sharing of the consecrated cup from home through online worship (in realtime), I believe that the technological mediums of this digital moment are already amplifying our experience of faith, community and connection. I mean after all, we’ve ‘Amen’d’ our presiding Bishop at a Royal Wedding, joined our prayers with others online at the consecrations of bishops, weekly liturgies, weddings, and funerals, and streamed Revivals for people to experience the Jesus movement in new ways.
It is because we now have technologies that enable us to gather in realtime (as I have discussed here) and because we have unified and robust common prayer and worship some 40 years in the praying, that I believe that we must now move ahead with discernment regarding the celebration of Eucharist online. This gathering for worship and prayer should be understood not as an act of spiritual communion, nor agape feast, but as actual participation with the Holy Spirit in the making of sacrament just as we would on any other occasion when we gather as the church.
Clarifying Our Theology of the Table
Much in the way that our digital mediums have been amplifying our common prayer and worship (for well over a decade in many instances), I believe that they are newly clarifying our theology of the eucharistic table in ways that the 1979 BCP has aspired but never had the full occasion to experience. In a sense, the 1979 BCP has needed this kind of technologically-connected-yet-diaspora moment to truly ask and answer, ‘what do we actually believe is necessary for the sacraments to be made?’
One of the essential new features of the 1979 BCP is the way in which it seeks to embody the mutually constitutive relationship between the sacramental priesthood and the priesthood of all believers. In short, our liturgies, particularly those sacramental in nature, invite the whole congregation gathered to do their part in the “great amen-ing” of the rites with God.
In this regard, authorizing the practice of Holy Eucharist in the Context of Online Worship would not diminish either the vocation of the sacramental priesthood nor overstate the role of the priesthood of all believers in the liturgy; rather, I believe the digital mediums of our prayer will make plain for people of all vocations what it is that we actually believe about the mutuality of our participation with God’s Spirit when Episcopalians gather for eucharistic fellowship.
If there is a vocational challenge in this moment, which I believe will cause anxiety mostly to those of the order of the sacramental priesthood (of which I am a part), it is that at long last, the remnant of overt clericalism authorized in previous American prayerbooks — the very ones that the 1979 wanted to get away from — may at last be more clearly embodied as of a different era of common prayer entirely for the people with whom we pastor and serve. Indeed, as people gather with their bread and their wine from their homes, they will be able to pray into the reality of just how deeply essential their ongoing and weekly participation is to the sacramental liturgies which occur in our cathedrals, naves, and chapels.
Eyeing the Exigencies of Our Time
When the authors of the Preface to the 1784 Book of Common Prayer imagined the kind of occasions whereby the church would need to embrace different forms and enlargements of practice, the COVID-19 pandemic was a kind of ‘“exigency of times and occasions” that they imagined but could not know in full. The first paragraph reads:
“It is a most invaluable part of that blessed ‘liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free,’ that in his worship different forms and usages may
without offense be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept
entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to
belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline; and therefore, by
common consent and authority, may be altered, abridged, enlarged,
amended, or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient for the
edification of the people, ‘according to the various exigency of times and
occasions.’”
The exigencies of our time require us to take seriously the “liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” and to respond to the pastoral needs of our people gathered in the digital age. Some 40 years after the launch of the new prayerbook, the Episcopal Church is again being given an opportunity to embrace the depth of our scripture, tradition, and reason while being shaped by our common prayer and worship together with God’s Spirit. It is a moment that will enlarge our sense of God, give us the opportunity to gain a fresh view of ourselves and remind us how our theology of worship always lives in tension with the needs of our people in realtime.
A Time to Feed
In this time of great isolation and hunger for the comfort and connection found in the Eucharistic feast of Christ, it is time for The Episcopal Church equally moved by compassion, to consider doing what Jesus did on that hillside with those some 5000 people many years ago. We must consider how to gather the common materials of our holy tables (bread and wine), give thanks to God, invite God to bless what we have gathered, and trust that as the priesthoods of all believers gather on the hillsides of our digital parish, God will animate God’s Spirit to connect the bread and wine of all our tables for the edification of all who pray in common. In the days ahead, let us dare to discern that it is indeed meet and right for us to say to all who gather for worship online, “join us” and, to the God of our mothers and fathers, to God of the empty tomb, to the One made known in the breaking of the bread, “thank you, and bless this!”
