Communion in the Digital Age
Why I bake bread for Sunday gatherings
Most Sundays I bake bread for communion. I am admittedly not much of a baker. I use instant yeast and let the dough rise overnight. I’ve gotten better at shaping the dough before putting it into the oven, but most weeks the result is a lopsided loaf, slightly under- or over-cooked. Nevertheless, my house church seems grateful enough for it. Most Sundays, since communion marks the beginning of our gatherings, when I tear the bread open and move around the room offering the body of Christ to my church, the bread is still warm.
The reason I started baking was because in reading, research, and prayer I had become convinced about the paramount importance of communion for the church in a digital age. Communion as a sacrament in the US has become about as stale as the cheap wafers in the plastic communion cups served at almost every church on a typical Sunday morning. There is no reverence, expectancy, or urgency around the practice. Baking communion bread is one way I have found to consecrate the experience for my house church.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a conference hosted by the Rabbit Room called Hutchmoot. While I was there, I sat in on a lecture by Kevan Chandler and Doug McKelvey called “The Hospitality of Need.” Kevan is wheelchair bound, having been diagnosed when he was young with a rare neuromuscular disease called spinal muscular atrophy (type 2). He described how so much of his life has been characterized by need. He has learned, however, that when stewarded well these vulnerabilities can actually serve as the basis to deepen relationships.
In an article by the same title, Kevan writes, “True community isn’t found over a cup of coffee but in interdependence and is fostered through mutual vulnerability. And this can only happen when we step into others’ needs and invite them into our own.” I was deeply affected by what I learned from that lecture, by Kevan’s humility and example, and I think it speaks to the problem that lies at the heart of our loneliness epidemic and highlights the ways our technologies undermine our attempts at communal life.
In the digital age, we have almost succeeded at immersing ourselves completely in the illusion of self-reliance. We have devices that clean our dishes, devices that wash our clothes, devices that deliver food to our doorsteps, devices that tell us stories, play us music, stimulate us with entertainment. Our technologies meet almost every one of our basic needs—except, perhaps those that matter most.
While these devices have granted us a great deal of convenience and comfort, they have—inadvertently perhaps—stripped us of our mutual dependence by robbing us of the opportunity to need one another. Our mass-produced devices, while maintaining a degree of excellence, lack the creativity and particularity that is intrinsic to the same services offered by persons. They excel where efficiency is concerned but are notorious for desecrating otherwise sacred spaces, like the dinner table.
I bake bread because it is one way I have found of resisting the great digital illusion. Although my house church could probably buy better bread somewhere else, there is nowhere in the world that they can buy Michael’s clumsy, lump-loaf right out of the oven. There is something holy about the time it demands, the distinct qualities of every loaf, the warmth of each piece I tear off for all those who gather in my living room. I bake bread because I love my church and want to serve them something that is sacred to me, despite any inconvenience or cost. And I do it because I believe the moment is too beautiful to be wasted on a cheap plastic container of juice and a stiff wafer.
The Scriptures do not say who baked the bread that Jesus broke for his disciples on the night he was betrayed. It could have been Mary, or Martha, or perhaps the unnamed host that Jesus sent his disciples to find in preparation for the Passover. I like to put myself in that unnamed baker’s shoes sometimes as I am shaping the dough on a typical Sunday morning and I marvel, “Who am I that my bread should become the broken body of God?”
As I think about the young man I met in Kazakhstan so many years ago, your depth of thinking and sensitivity to spiritual matters is exactly who God created you to be. Thank you for sharing this new insight in to the broken body of Christ.
Very insightful. Jesus has a funny way of taking those lopsided things and making them holy... bread and people.
I think what you said about technology is also very poignant. As a culture, we've put down the idea of needing someone else. Yet, everyone always tells us "If you ever need anything, let me know." Yet, through out excessive individualism and humanism, we subconsciously avoid every allowing ourselves to need someone else until we are at a breaking point.
At our core, humans are relational beings. Not individuals. Sure, we are distinct persons, but to be a person is to have a relationship with another person. Personhood is defined by relationships. Look no further than the Trinity: 3 persons united as 1 through relationship and love. So too are we, the Body of Christ in the world, called to serve as persons united as one through relationship and love. We all are part of the Body of Christ, but we can't be if we're individuals. No, we're persons.
Excessive technology (and specifically, social media) promotes individuality. Our self-image becomes so dependent on numbers that we achieve by posting on social media (likes, shares, comments, etc.). We base our self perception on the perception of others. Yet, this is a twisted view of how we are to interact with one another, and I would argue that we're not interacting with one another by doing things like liking, commenting, or sharing. Because by posting and essentially asking for approval, our self-worth is dependent on whether we achieve that approval that we're asking for. However, we're not called to get approval from others as individuals. No, we're called to be persons. And as I said, persons are relational. As persons, we don't have approve one another. We have to be together. We must look past each others faults and perfections and simply be with them.
We are not individuals, but persons. And the only person we need approval from (in the way we seek it) is God. Individual gain is hollow, but personal gain is fulfilling. When we help other persons, we help ourselves. We must sacrifice our individuality and become persons.