Preliminary author’s note: from 2016 to 2021 I was a presbyter in a small Anglican denomination called the Free Church of England (FCE) which broke away from the Church of England in the mid-19th century over the latter’s perceived drift towards Romanism. The FCE’s Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is very largely based upon that of the C of E with some revisions to remove or modify “sacerdotal and Romanising” elements. The Orders of the FCE are recognised as valid by the C of E. The following article, originally written in 2018, derives from an earlier, longer paper entitled “The FCE and Holy Communion” that I submitted to the Bishop Primus of the FCE on 4th February 2016, prior to my being ordained as a Presbyter in the FCE.
An architecture of exclusion
It is still common practice in Anglican churches that communicants come from their seats in the nave towards the table at the east-end of the church, often up a series of steps and to a rail which bars off the table area and against which they kneel to receive the Lord’s Supper. Most rood screens, that screened off the chancel area from the nave, disappeared with the Reformation but the communion rail remains.
What Wheatly observed about the chancel in history now rings true for the table area behind the communion rail. Speaking of the historic oblong church building he wrote:
“It was always divided into two principal parts, viz. the nave or body of the church, and the sacrarium, since called chancel, from its being divided from the body of the church by neat rails, called in Latin cancelli. The nave was common to all the people, and represented the visible world; the chancel was peculiar to the priests and sacred persons, and typified heaven: for which reason they always stood at the east end of the church, towards which part of the world they paid a more than ordinary reverence in their worship…”[1]
The idea that only “priests and sacred persons” were allowed in the chancel very much remains today with respect to the area beyond the communion rail. The laity is not granted access.
As Anglicans celebrate the Eucharist the idea is perpetuated, for laypeople still find that their habitual journey of ascent ends, not in rest and complete acceptance at Jesus’ family meal table, but in a barrier at which a penitential posture must be adopted, and beyond which the lay person can never go. It is not hard to see how this can engender and reinforce a mindset that the table area is too holy for lay people. They are, quite literally, barred from entering. Indeed, the psychological feeling of servitude rather than sonship can only be reinforced by the niggardly administration of a crumb and a sip from behind the rail at the hand of the priest who towers over the communicant. Thus, the communion itself can, in the mind of the communicant, easily be turned from a glad and joyful feast of thanksgiving and receiving God’s grace into an act of devotion to be added to the balance of pious works.
This “degrees of holiness” idea is Old Covenant theology to which Christians are forbidden to return by Jesus’ propitiatory death and the epistle to the Hebrews.
Together with the “consecration” of the creatures of bread and wine (see later), before which the people are made to kneel, the whole action is a pedagogy leading the people to a potential violation of the second commandment. Indeed, which of us has not seen people in various Anglican places of worship bow towards the “altar” as they come and go before it, even when no service is being conducted? The second word of the Decalogue explicitly forbids the physical action of bowing to man-made objects and yet this is precisely what frequently occurs in Anglican churches which, at their founding, repudiated such “Romish” practices.
In the early history of the Free Church of England it seems[2] that most of the church buildings followed the “auditory plan” or “preaching box” style favoured by early Methodism with no chancel to speak of but, by the early twentieth century, chancels, or at least a railed-off table, in Free Church of England buildings were more common than not[3].
In contrast to this, it is noteworthy that James in Acts 15:16ff points to the Tabernacle of David (which appears to have been one, undivided space), rather than the Mosaic Tabernacle or either of the two Temples, as setting the pattern for New-Covenant worship.[4]
The following paragraph from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel (accessed in May 2018) provides a helpful summary…
After the Reformation Protestant churches generally moved the altar (now often called the communion table) forward, typically to the front of the chancel, and often used lay choirs who were placed in a gallery at the west end. The rear of deep chancels became little used in churches surviving from the Middle Ages, and new churches very often omitted one. With the emphasis on sermons, and their audibility, some churches simply converted their chancels to seat part of the congregation. In 19th-century England one of the battles of the Cambridge Camden Society, the architectural wing of the Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England, was to restore the chancel as a necessary part of a church. By pushing the altar back to its medieval position and having the choir used by a lay choir, they were largely successful in this, although the harder end of the High Church objected to allowing a large group of laity into the chancel. Different approaches to worship in the 20th century again tended to push altars in larger churches forward, to be closer to the congregation, and the chancel again risks being a less used area of the church.
An architecture of individualism
The second major problem I have with the communion rail is that it necessitates individual communion. When Jesus instituted the Supper, He gave thanks for the bread and they all ate the bread first. Then He gave thanks for the wine and they all drank the wine. This order, confirmed by the apostle Paul, ensures that we all become one loaf by eating one bread then, as that one loaf, we drink the blood of Christ, making us His one Body that was dead but now lives in the power of His endless life.
Rather than unifying the Church, the communion rail splinters it. For it requires that both bread and wine are given thanks for together and then that each communicant eats and drinks individually.
Giving thanks for the bread and wine as though they are united prior to being consumed by the people assisted, and now still leaves the way open for, the long-standing Western practice of communing the laity only in one kind.
Every Old Covenant sacrifice pointed to Christ’s sacrifice and always required the separation of the flesh and the blood. In order for the Supper rightly to memorialise the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, the loaf and the cup have to be kept separate and have to be consumed separately by the whole body.
Recognising the deviation from Scripture that this practice, of treating the bread and wine prior to consumption as one, perpetuates, Alan M. Stibbs (when Vice-Principal of Oak Hill Theological College) wrote:
“It is wrong to think of either the bread or the wine when it is consecrated as if it were the Lord Himself, or the sphere of His special incarnate or human presence. For the bread and the wine are made to represent Christ’s body and blood, not as they are now in His glorified humanity, but as they were in death ‘in the days of His flesh’. According to Christ’s own institution of the sacrament they ought to be significantly kept apart, and received separately, that they may thus forcibly speak to us of His earthly flesh and blood divided in death.”[5]
“…in order fully to follow the pattern of our Lord’s institution, and to preserve the vivid witness to His death which we thus dramatically remember, the bread and the wine ought deliberately to be kept apart and administered separately, first the bread to all, and later the cup to all. This again is a use already common in many non-Anglican congregations; and so, by becoming ourselves more scriptural in practice, we should make fellowship with others at the Lord’s table more easy to realize.
Such proper scriptural practice of administering the separated elements singly makes the association of the localized presence of the glorified humanity of Christ in or under either of them unthinkable…”[6]
Thus, apart from isolating us as individuals from the body ecclesial, we can infer from Stibbs that communion-rail administration bolsters heretical thinking regarding the bread and wine themselves…
“Consecrating” the bread and wine
Despite the “consecration” rubrics in the BCP[7] there is no act or prayer of consecration in the Biblical rite of the Supper. There is simply a giving of thanks followed immediately by partaking of the bread, and then another giving of thanks followed immediately by partaking of the wine.
Much confusion has arisen from misleading translations (“blessed it”) of Matthew 26:26 and because people fail to understand what is meant by the verb to bless. In Matthew 26:26 the word “it” is not present in the Greek and the verse should actually be translated: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke, and gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. Note there is no “it” after the word blessed.[8]
This literal translation eliminates the idea that Jesus blessed the bread for the purpose of infusing it with a special power.[9] What Jesus did was to bless God. To bless in the Bible means to give gifts, thanksgiving and praise. This is why God is said in the Bible to be blessed for ever. He was always blessed, even before the creation was brought into being, because each Person of the Trinity blesses the Others.
But we cannot give anything to God that He has not first given to us. Even our ability to transform grain and grape into bread and wine is all a gift. So for us to bless God means that we render to Him thanks and praise and a tithe of what He has given us. When God blesses us, He gives us gifts. The sacramental bread and wine are gifts that represent God’s greatest gift to us – His Son. From one point of view the tithe is a requirement. From the other point of view our tithes are an act of thanksgiving – giving a gift to God. So when we bless God we give thanks to Him, we praise Him expressing our dependence and our gratitude. Indeed, and centrally to our lives, we bring what we have been given and transformed and receive back again in our sacrifice of thanksgiving – a eucharistic sacrifice.
So what Jesus was doing in Matthew 26:26 was not “setting the bread aside from common use” (Westminster Confession of Faith XXIX, 3 and the FCE BCP) in the sense of permanently making it a holy substance to be revered or turning it into something else with magical powers. He was simply giving thanks to God for His gift (thereby sanctifying the bread/wine to be consumed, not revered). And that’s exactly what Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:24 indicate.
Blessing is not a magical concept, we don’t put a blessing on things in the R.C. sense, waving holy water over things and murmuring a holy abracadabra. Men cannot manipulate God, but they ought to walk in His footsteps. Therefore, if we, remaining within our calling, bless what He blesses, He will honour our blessing. So a parent can bless his children by praying over them and leaving an inheritance for them if they remain faithful – and God will honour that blessing. Similarly, a pastor pronounces God’s blessing upon the worshippers, knowing that God is blessing and wants to bless them. We bless persons, not things.
The Lord’s Supper therefore not only reminds God of the once-for-all sacrifice of His Son for us, it should also be our sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him for such a Gift. We are Christ’s Body – for God to “eat” and enjoy, just as He “ate” the Old Covenant sacrifices (consider why the Laodicean Church was in Jesus’ mouth – Revelation 3:16, 20).
This is why the early church called it a Eucharist – a feast of thanksgiving. We have to be reminded of this because it doesn’t come naturally to us, we need training. Would a child say “thank you” if not constantly reminded to do so in his early years? Think of the story of the 10 lepers in Luke 17. Only one turned back and gave thanks. Most people are unthankful. When people receive gifts, they have one of two responses: gratitude or an ingratitude that becomes resentment. People don’t like to be dependent on others and so, if they receive something, they’ll often invent some excuse as to why they were entitled to it, or they’ll foster a resentment against the giver in some other way. Only the regular and frequent practice of thanksgiving in the eucharistic Supper will retrain us to think aright and to live aright in thankful dependence upon our Creator and Redeemer all our days.
Various authors are right to point out how very lacking Cranmer’s Communion liturgy is in thanksgiving.[10] Even the BCP “Prayer of Consecration” itself has no explicit thanks, just the mention that Jesus gave thanks.
In opposition to the notion of elements holy in themselves Stibbs writes:
“…what makes the elements sacramental,…, are the words and actions of the movement of administration…
Such a Scriptural understanding of the true character and intended function of the sacrament can but make one painfully conscious that it is improper and seriously misleading to associate a special presence or coming of Christ with the static material elements, once the words of institution have been said over them.”[11]
Moreover, Stibbs,[12] quoting from page 73 of Bishop Stephen Neill’s Anglicanism, demonstrates that the historic Anglican liturgy formulated by Cranmer attempted to reduce the possibility of Romish perversions by insisting that the elements are served immediately after the words of institution. There is no separate moment for the consecration of the bread and wine in the sense of putting Jesus inside of them. And therefore, he concludes, there is no possibility of “reserving” the elements – keeping them afterwards as holy objects to be revered, or to be served later on to other people.
Stibbs subsequently quotes approvingly from Professor J.E.L. Oulton’s Holy Communion and Holy Spirit:[13]
When a prayer of consecration… leads the congregation to suppose that the elements are consecrated… apart from their use as… a spiritual gift to the communicants, something much more is at stake than a liturgical tradition, however valuable or even sacred that may be.
Stibbs also makes the following cogent suggestion for amendment of the BCP:[14]
…our Lord’s declaratory words, `This is My body given for you,’ `This is My blood shed for many,’ should be removed from the introductory consecration, and, in accordance with the pattern of our Lord’s institution, made an essential and simultaneous part of the actual administration. For what makes the elements used sacramental, whether in baptism or Holy Communion, are the words and action together of the movement of administration. To keep them separate stands condemned as a wrong putting asunder by man of what the Lord Himself joined together. The truth or principle which we here need to appreciate is that the sacrament exists only when and while the administration is taking place. It cannot, therefore, be reserved, or half-done beforehand to the elements for administration to recipients later.
An architecture for mis-timed penance
Communion-rail administration requires communicants to kneel (or, if they cannot do so, to stand). However, the Bible teaches that the Son of Man is now seated with the Father – and that we are seated with Him (Ephesians 2:6). On earth, whenever He invited people to eat, Jesus “commanded them to sit down” (Matthew 14:19; 15:35; Mark 6:39; 8:6; Luke 9:14-15; John 6:10). Meals with Jesus are always seated (Luke 12:37; 14:8, 10, 15; 22:29-30; Revelation 3:20-21).
When He instituted the Supper, all had adopted the normal posture for a meal. “Do this” said the Lord. What they absolutely were not doing was kneeling (or standing).
Sitting at table with God is a sign that our peace with Him is secure. Jesus has finished His work and sits with the Father. In union and communion with Him, we also sit.
If we do not sit, it not only demonstrates that we do not appreciate what Jesus has done, it is a subliminal lesson to all taking part that our salvation is in doubt and that we must still beg for crumbs at the hand of a priest.
Neither standing nor kneeling is a relaxed posture. Both are completely inappropriate for Holy Communion.
The lack of thanksgiving in the Communion liturgy of the FCE BCP has been mentioned before, but it is sad to note how uninviting the Lord’s Table is made to feel by this liturgy. The kneeling posture at Anglican communion as a penitential one is an idea unhappily reinforced by the BCP liturgy (see the quotation from Bouyer in footnote 7 above). It feels as though we are stumbling on our knees over broken glass to come only as far as the rail and take in penitence such a crumb and a sip[15] as the Presbyter may give.
For example:
(i) After the Lord’s Prayer and a Collect the service opens with a responsive reading of the Decalogue. Whatever the intention, the subliminal message of beginning with the Law seems to be that we must use the Law as a whip on Christ’s people to ensure sinners are afraid to come to His table.
In our view the proper place for the Law in worship is after absolution. The Decalogue was a wonderful and gracious gift from Yahweh (Deuteronomy 4:8; Psalm 19:7-11; 147:19-20). Consider Exodus 19:4-6. Yahweh didn’t say: “Obey Me and then I’ll make a covenant with you; do what I say and then I’ll save you”. No, He said: “Look how I delivered you from the Egyptians, look how I carried you on eagles’ wings to Myself. Now therefore guard My covenant (already made) that I’m about to bring into a new phase with you.” The context in which the Decalogue was given was not one of threat, or barrier, but of covenant blessing and as a means of greater blessing. Indeed, it opens in terms of the grace that Yahweh has already shown to His people:
And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…”
(Exodus 20:1-2)
The threats and barriers and the thundering of Mount Sinai were to show the people their need of a mediator (Exodus 19:9; 20:19-21). Notice in Exodus 20:20, there is a strange statement by Moses which we can loosely paraphrase as “Do not be afraid, for God has come to make you afraid…” What this means is that if we fear God rightly then there is no need to be afraid of Him, but that we shall fear to offend Him.
For forgiven people the Law is a great blessing in keeping of which they shall live. It is as forgiven people that we fear God aright, delighting to keep His law…
If you, O Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. (Psalm 130:3-4)
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)
(ii) After the Prayer for the Church Militant and the optional “warnings” there comes the Exhortation filled with warnings and injunctions to “miserable sinners” together with obligations of duty – there is even “ye must give most humble and hearty thanks” (emphasis mine). But there is no actual giving of thanks!
Immediately following that exhortation there is a second, offering comfort to those who draw near with faith and “make… humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees.” This exhortation begins: “YE that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins…” which, rather than welcoming Christ’s children to His Table, invites further introspection and doubt. Am I truly repentant? Am I earnestly repenting?
Then follows the General Confession and Absolution but surely the place for these is not here, well into the service and after the sermon and the offertory, but when we are first summoned to worship. Even the Old Covenant sacrificial system put the Sin Offering BEFORE the Ascension (Burnt) Offering with its Tribute, which itself came before the Peace Offering where the worshipper could eat with God. This is basic to the sequence of worship and mis-ordering worship in this way is bound to have adverse effects both psychologically and theologically.
(iii) As if all the above were not enough to drive the children from the table, after the Sursum Corda and Proper Preface comes the Prayer of Humble Access (offered in two forms in the FCE BCP and said by the Presbyter alone “in the name of all them that shall receive…”. “We do not presume…”, “We are not worthy…” Very true though all these sentiments are, this is both psychologically and theologically the wrong place to express them. After the Sursum Corda we are now seated in heaven with Christ and have the confident right of sons to be at the Table spread by our Father.
The first FCE-amended version of the prayer, ever distancing itself from any idea that the bread and wine in their very creatureliness might be unmediated gifts, needlessly and detachingly adds the word “spiritually” before “eat the flesh” and “to drink his blood”. The second version requests that we “so… commemorate in this breaking of bread the death of thy dear Son…”. This (and the whole service) completely ignores that fact that the Lord’s Supper is primarily a reminder to God[16] of what Jesus has done, and is therefore the foundation of all our prayers. The foundation of our comfort in the Supper is not our remembering (which we cannot do since we were not there) but that it is God Who remembers and is faithful to His covenant (compare Genesis 9:13-16).
Making use of the chancel
One question that arises from the above is – If a chancel is present in one’s church, should it simply be ignored or can good use be made of it during worship?
I think the chancel may be well used if the communion table is placed lengthways therein rather than up against the “east” wall[17]. The communicants may then sit around the table by occupying the chancel pews and any other necessary seating sympathetically placed in the nave or even behind the communion rail (assuming it cannot be removed).
The offertory and intercessory prayers should come after the sermon and the congregation, hitherto seated in the nave, may be invited to bring their offerings up into the chancel, placing them in collection plate/s (held by wardens at the chancel step or on the communion table itself) and then taking a seat in the chancel pews. This would also be a good place for the sursum corda since the communicants are ascending to an “upper room” meal with their Lord.
Thus, all the faithful laity (even little children) come into the table area to commune. It is not special or reserved to the clergy and this will obviate any notion that the chancel is holier space.
Moreover, such use of the chancel would yield convenient opportunity to make the unbaptised and unfaithful more fully aware of what they are missing and would give the faithful more intimate, upper-room, communion with the Saviour. In fact, it would graphically demonstrate that the unbaptised/unfaithful are, in the last analysis, isolated from Christ’s body in both its aspects, not just the sacramental but also the ecclesial. There are no gradations of holiness or nearness: one is either in Christ or out of Him, and the practice of allowing only the faithful baptised to come up and commune at His table would make that abundantly clear.
—000—
Arthur Kay, erstwhile Presbyter in the Free Church of England
[1] From “A Rational Illustration of The Book of Common Prayer” by the Revd Charles Wheatly (1686–1742) published by Henry G. Bohn, London, 1848) – at the bottom of page 85 and the top of page 86.
[2] This is now hard to establish other than anecdotally and from very small samples.
[3] Indeed, The church building in which the author ministered had a chancel extension added to its original preaching-box structure in the early years of the 20th century.
[4] In David’s tabernacle Levites ministered “before the ark of Yahweh” (e.g. 1 Chronicles 16:4) and David himself went in a sat before Yahweh (2 Samuel 7:18; 1 Chronicles 17:16 and see Psalm 27:5-6). We even find Gentiles serving at that tabernacle (e.g. 1 Chronicles 15:24). See PJ Leithart’s “From Silence to Song”.
[5] Page 76 of Sacrament, Sacrifice, and Eucharist (London: Tyndale Press, 1961) by A.M. Stibbs.
[6] Stibbs, op. cit., pages 84-85.
[7] The Rubric’s “consecration” language of the C of E BCP (“Prayer of Consecration” and “If the consecrated Bread or Wine be all spent…the Priest is to consecrate more”) has not been entirely eliminated from the FCE BCP. It is retained in the capitalisation of the words “bread” and “wine” and in the action for both bread and wine (“lay his hand upon”) and the action for the wine still reads “And here to lay his hand upon every vessel…in which there is any Wine to be consecrated”. Similarly, the 2011 FCE Northern Diocese Order for Holy Communion (for trial use) directs: “The Presbyter extends his hands over the Bread and Wine and says…”
[8] There are many Jewish “berakhot”. For example: “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
[9] 1 Timothy 4:4-5 implies that the act of thanksgiving itself sanctifies the bread and wine for the purpose of the meal.
[10] “Cranmer’s form of service is deficient in thanksgiving…” Stibbs, op. cit., page 84. See also page 9 of Louis Bouyer’s Eucharist (University of Notre Dame Press, 1968): “We have only to think of the 16th century Protestant reform of the eucharistic liturgy. Under the guise of a return to the Gospel eucharist, it merely achieved an artificial isolation of the words of institution into which medieval theology had already placed them in theory. From the tradition in which they had come to us, it kept only the late medieval tendency to substitute a psychological and sentimental recall of the Gospel events for the profoundly mysterious and real sacramental action of the New Testament and the Fathers. And it crowned everything by flooding the celebration with the penitential elements which in latter centuries had tended to overburden it. The end result is a eucharist in which there is no longer any eucharist at all properly speaking. If there is still in it some mention of a “thanksgiving” (which is not always the case), this now has merely the sense of an expression of gratitude for the gifts of grace received individually by the communicants: a late medieval sense, degraded beyond the point of recognition, given to a New Testament expression which has almost nothing left of its original sense.”
[11] Stibbs, op. cit., page 75
[12] Stibbs, op. cit., page 82
[13] Stibbs, op. cit., page 83
[14] Stibbs, op. cit., page 84
[15] The amounts given are often so niggardly that, instead of being a symbolic meal, the Supper is turned into a symbol of a meal. Admittedly a communicant might take a bigger drink but the overall impression given by the liturgy is that more than a sip would be frowned upon, with some (in my experience of assisting at such services) appearing only to touch the wine with their lips – and sometimes not even that.
[16] God’s covenant memorials are His memorials. They remind Him, e.g. Genesis 9:15; Exodus 30:16. We pray in the Name of Jesus because that is God’s reminder (compare Exodus 3:15; Psalm 72:17-19; 135:13; Hosea 12:5; Micah 4:5; John 14:13-14 etc.). It is precisely because the Lord’s Supper is a reminder to God that it is appropriate for the minster, when he takes the bread and the wine, to lift them up toward heaven, not for men to worship, but for God to see and be reminded.
[17] This was, in many Anglican churches, the positioning during and post-Cranmer and pre-Laud.
Preliminary author’s note: from 2016 to 2021 I was a presbyter in a small Anglican denomination called the Free Church of England (FCE) which broke away from the Church of England in the mid-19th century over the latter’s perceived drift towards Romanism. The FCE’s Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is very largely based upon that of the C of E with some revisions to remove or modify “sacerdotal and Romanising” elements. The Orders of the FCE are recognised as valid by the C of E. The following article, originally written in 2018, derives from an earlier, longer paper entitled “The FCE and Holy Communion” that I submitted to the Bishop Primus of the FCE on 4th February 2016, prior to my being ordained as a Presbyter in the FCE.
An architecture of exclusion
It is still common practice in Anglican churches that communicants come from their seats in the nave towards the table at the east-end of the church, often up a series of steps and to a rail which bars off the table area and against which they kneel to receive the Lord's Supper. Most rood screens, that screened off the chancel area from the nave, disappeared with the Reformation but the communion rail remains.
What Wheatly observed about the chancel in history now rings true for the table area behind the communion rail. Speaking of the historic oblong church building he wrote:
"It was always divided into two principal parts, viz. the nave or body of the church, and the sacrarium, since called chancel, from its being divided from the body of the church by neat rails, called in Latin cancelli. The nave was common to all the people, and represented the visible world; the chancel was peculiar to the priests and sacred persons, and typified heaven: for which reason they always stood at the east end of the church, towards which part of the world they paid a more than ordinary reverence in their worship..."[1]
The idea that only "priests and sacred persons" were allowed in the chancel very much remains today with respect to the area beyond the communion rail. The laity is not granted access.
As Anglicans celebrate the Eucharist the idea is perpetuated, for laypeople still find that their habitual journey of ascent ends, not in rest and complete acceptance at Jesus’ family meal table, but in a barrier at which a penitential posture must be adopted, and beyond which the lay person can never go. It is not hard to see how this can engender and reinforce a mindset that the table area is too holy for lay people. They are, quite literally, barred from entering. Indeed, the psychological feeling of servitude rather than sonship can only be reinforced by the niggardly administration of a crumb and a sip from behind the rail at the hand of the priest who towers over the communicant. Thus, the communion itself can, in the mind of the communicant, easily be turned from a glad and joyful feast of thanksgiving and receiving God’s grace into an act of devotion to be added to the balance of pious works.
This “degrees of holiness” idea is Old Covenant theology to which Christians are forbidden to return by Jesus’ propitiatory death and the epistle to the Hebrews.
Together with the “consecration” of the creatures of bread and wine (see later), before which the people are made to kneel, the whole action is a pedagogy leading the people to a potential violation of the second commandment. Indeed, which of us has not seen people in various Anglican places of worship bow towards the “altar” as they come and go before it, even when no service is being conducted? The second word of the Decalogue explicitly forbids the physical action of bowing to man-made objects and yet this is precisely what frequently occurs in Anglican churches which, at their founding, repudiated such “Romish” practices.
In the early history of the Free Church of England it seems[2] that most of the church buildings followed the “auditory plan” or “preaching box” style favoured by early Methodism with no chancel to speak of but, by the early twentieth century, chancels, or at least a railed-off table, in Free Church of England buildings were more common than not[3].
In contrast to this, it is noteworthy that James in Acts 15:16ff points to the Tabernacle of David (which appears to have been one, undivided space), rather than the Mosaic Tabernacle or either of the two Temples, as setting the pattern for New-Covenant worship.[4]
The following paragraph from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel (accessed in May 2018) provides a helpful summary…
After the Reformation Protestant churches generally moved the altar (now often called the communion table) forward, typically to the front of the chancel, and often used lay choirs who were placed in a gallery at the west end. The rear of deep chancels became little used in churches surviving from the Middle Ages, and new churches very often omitted one. With the emphasis on sermons, and their audibility, some churches simply converted their chancels to seat part of the congregation. In 19th-century England one of the battles of the Cambridge Camden Society, the architectural wing of the Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England, was to restore the chancel as a necessary part of a church. By pushing the altar back to its medieval position and having the choir used by a lay choir, they were largely successful in this, although the harder end of the High Church objected to allowing a large group of laity into the chancel. Different approaches to worship in the 20th century again tended to push altars in larger churches forward, to be closer to the congregation, and the chancel again risks being a less used area of the church.
An architecture of individualism
The second major problem I have with the communion rail is that it necessitates individual communion. When Jesus instituted the Supper, He gave thanks for the bread and they all ate the bread first. Then He gave thanks for the wine and they all drank the wine. This order, confirmed by the apostle Paul, ensures that we all become one loaf by eating one bread then, as that one loaf, we drink the blood of Christ, making us His one Body that was dead but now lives in the power of His endless life.
Rather than unifying the Church, the communion rail splinters it. For it requires that both bread and wine are given thanks for together and then that each communicant eats and drinks individually.
Giving thanks for the bread and wine as though they are united prior to being consumed by the people assisted, and now still leaves the way open for, the long-standing Western practice of communing the laity only in one kind.
Every Old Covenant sacrifice pointed to Christ’s sacrifice and always required the separation of the flesh and the blood. In order for the Supper rightly to memorialise the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, the loaf and the cup have to be kept separate and have to be consumed separately by the whole body.
Recognising the deviation from Scripture that this practice, of treating the bread and wine prior to consumption as one, perpetuates, Alan M. Stibbs (when Vice-Principal of Oak Hill Theological College) wrote:
“It is wrong to think of either the bread or the wine when it is consecrated as if it were the Lord Himself, or the sphere of His special incarnate or human presence. For the bread and the wine are made to represent Christ’s body and blood, not as they are now in His glorified humanity, but as they were in death ‘in the days of His flesh’. According to Christ’s own institution of the sacrament they ought to be significantly kept apart, and received separately, that they may thus forcibly speak to us of His earthly flesh and blood divided in death.”[5]
“…in order fully to follow the pattern of our Lord’s institution, and to preserve the vivid witness to His death which we thus dramatically remember, the bread and the wine ought deliberately to be kept apart and administered separately, first the bread to all, and later the cup to all. This again is a use already common in many non-Anglican congregations; and so, by becoming ourselves more scriptural in practice, we should make fellowship with others at the Lord’s table more easy to realize.
Such proper scriptural practice of administering the separated elements singly makes the association of the localized presence of the glorified humanity of Christ in or under either of them unthinkable…”[6]
Thus, apart from isolating us as individuals from the body ecclesial, we can infer from Stibbs that communion-rail administration bolsters heretical thinking regarding the bread and wine themselves…
“Consecrating” the bread and wine
Despite the “consecration” rubrics in the BCP[7] there is no act or prayer of consecration in the Biblical rite of the Supper. There is simply a giving of thanks followed immediately by partaking of the bread, and then another giving of thanks followed immediately by partaking of the wine.
Much confusion has arisen from misleading translations (“blessed it”) of Matthew 26:26 and because people fail to understand what is meant by the verb to bless. In Matthew 26:26 the word “it” is not present in the Greek and the verse should actually be translated: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke, and gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. Note there is no “it” after the word blessed.[8]
This literal translation eliminates the idea that Jesus blessed the bread for the purpose of infusing it with a special power.[9] What Jesus did was to bless God. To bless in the Bible means to give gifts, thanksgiving and praise. This is why God is said in the Bible to be blessed for ever. He was always blessed, even before the creation was brought into being, because each Person of the Trinity blesses the Others.
But we cannot give anything to God that He has not first given to us. Even our ability to transform grain and grape into bread and wine is all a gift. So for us to bless God means that we render to Him thanks and praise and a tithe of what He has given us. When God blesses us, He gives us gifts. The sacramental bread and wine are gifts that represent God's greatest gift to us - His Son. From one point of view the tithe is a requirement. From the other point of view our tithes are an act of thanksgiving - giving a gift to God. So when we bless God we give thanks to Him, we praise Him expressing our dependence and our gratitude. Indeed, and centrally to our lives, we bring what we have been given and transformed and receive back again in our sacrifice of thanksgiving – a eucharistic sacrifice.
So what Jesus was doing in Matthew 26:26 was not “setting the bread aside from common use” (Westminster Confession of Faith XXIX, 3 and the FCE BCP) in the sense of permanently making it a holy substance to be revered or turning it into something else with magical powers. He was simply giving thanks to God for His gift (thereby sanctifying the bread/wine to be consumed, not revered). And that's exactly what Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:24 indicate.
Blessing is not a magical concept, we don't put a blessing on things in the R.C. sense, waving holy water over things and murmuring a holy abracadabra. Men cannot manipulate God, but they ought to walk in His footsteps. Therefore, if we, remaining within our calling, bless what He blesses, He will honour our blessing. So a parent can bless his children by praying over them and leaving an inheritance for them if they remain faithful - and God will honour that blessing. Similarly, a pastor pronounces God's blessing upon the worshippers, knowing that God is blessing and wants to bless them. We bless persons, not things.
The Lord's Supper therefore not only reminds God of the once-for-all sacrifice of His Son for us, it should also be our sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him for such a Gift. We are Christ’s Body – for God to “eat” and enjoy, just as He “ate” the Old Covenant sacrifices (consider why the Laodicean Church was in Jesus’ mouth – Revelation 3:16, 20).
This is why the early church called it a Eucharist – a feast of thanksgiving. We have to be reminded of this because it doesn't come naturally to us, we need training. Would a child say "thank you" if not constantly reminded to do so in his early years? Think of the story of the 10 lepers in Luke 17. Only one turned back and gave thanks. Most people are unthankful. When people receive gifts, they have one of two responses: gratitude or an ingratitude that becomes resentment. People don't like to be dependent on others and so, if they receive something, they'll often invent some excuse as to why they were entitled to it, or they'll foster a resentment against the giver in some other way. Only the regular and frequent practice of thanksgiving in the eucharistic Supper will retrain us to think aright and to live aright in thankful dependence upon our Creator and Redeemer all our days.
Various authors are right to point out how very lacking Cranmer’s Communion liturgy is in thanksgiving.[10] Even the BCP “Prayer of Consecration” itself has no explicit thanks, just the mention that Jesus gave thanks.
In opposition to the notion of elements holy in themselves Stibbs writes:
“…what makes the elements sacramental,…, are the words and actions of the movement of administration…
Such a Scriptural understanding of the true character and intended function of the sacrament can but make one painfully conscious that it is improper and seriously misleading to associate a special presence or coming of Christ with the static material elements, once the words of institution have been said over them.”[11]
Moreover, Stibbs,[12] quoting from page 73 of Bishop Stephen Neill’s Anglicanism, demonstrates that the historic Anglican liturgy formulated by Cranmer attempted to reduce the possibility of Romish perversions by insisting that the elements are served immediately after the words of institution. There is no separate moment for the consecration of the bread and wine in the sense of putting Jesus inside of them. And therefore, he concludes, there is no possibility of “reserving” the elements - keeping them afterwards as holy objects to be revered, or to be served later on to other people.
Stibbs subsequently quotes approvingly from Professor J.E.L. Oulton’s Holy Communion and Holy Spirit:[13]
When a prayer of consecration… leads the congregation to suppose that the elements are consecrated… apart from their use as… a spiritual gift to the communicants, something much more is at stake than a liturgical tradition, however valuable or even sacred that may be.
Stibbs also makes the following cogent suggestion for amendment of the BCP:[14]
…our Lord’s declaratory words, `This is My body given for you,’ `This is My blood shed for many,’ should be removed from the introductory consecration, and, in accordance with the pattern of our Lord’s institution, made an essential and simultaneous part of the actual administration. For what makes the elements used sacramental, whether in baptism or Holy Communion, are the words and action together of the movement of administration. To keep them separate stands condemned as a wrong putting asunder by man of what the Lord Himself joined together. The truth or principle which we here need to appreciate is that the sacrament exists only when and while the administration is taking place. It cannot, therefore, be reserved, or half-done beforehand to the elements for administration to recipients later.
An architecture for mis-timed penance
Communion-rail administration requires communicants to kneel (or, if they cannot do so, to stand). However, the Bible teaches that the Son of Man is now seated with the Father – and that we are seated with Him (Ephesians 2:6). On earth, whenever He invited people to eat, Jesus “commanded them to sit down” (Matthew 14:19; 15:35; Mark 6:39; 8:6; Luke 9:14-15; John 6:10). Meals with Jesus are always seated (Luke 12:37; 14:8, 10, 15; 22:29-30; Revelation 3:20-21).
When He instituted the Supper, all had adopted the normal posture for a meal. “Do this” said the Lord. What they absolutely were not doing was kneeling (or standing).
Sitting at table with God is a sign that our peace with Him is secure. Jesus has finished His work and sits with the Father. In union and communion with Him, we also sit.
If we do not sit, it not only demonstrates that we do not appreciate what Jesus has done, it is a subliminal lesson to all taking part that our salvation is in doubt and that we must still beg for crumbs at the hand of a priest.
Neither standing nor kneeling is a relaxed posture. Both are completely inappropriate for Holy Communion.
The lack of thanksgiving in the Communion liturgy of the FCE BCP has been mentioned before, but it is sad to note how uninviting the Lord’s Table is made to feel by this liturgy. The kneeling posture at Anglican communion as a penitential one is an idea unhappily reinforced by the BCP liturgy (see the quotation from Bouyer in footnote 7 above). It feels as though we are stumbling on our knees over broken glass to come only as far as the rail and take in penitence such a crumb and a sip[15] as the Presbyter may give.
For example:
(i) After the Lord’s Prayer and a Collect the service opens with a responsive reading of the Decalogue. Whatever the intention, the subliminal message of beginning with the Law seems to be that we must use the Law as a whip on Christ’s people to ensure sinners are afraid to come to His table.
In our view the proper place for the Law in worship is after absolution. The Decalogue was a wonderful and gracious gift from Yahweh (Deuteronomy 4:8; Psalm 19:7-11; 147:19-20). Consider Exodus 19:4-6. Yahweh didn't say: "Obey Me and then I'll make a covenant with you; do what I say and then I'll save you". No, He said: "Look how I delivered you from the Egyptians, look how I carried you on eagles' wings to Myself. Now therefore guard My covenant (already made) that I'm about to bring into a new phase with you.” The context in which the Decalogue was given was not one of threat, or barrier, but of covenant blessing and as a means of greater blessing. Indeed, it opens in terms of the grace that Yahweh has already shown to His people:
And God spoke all these words, saying, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…”
(Exodus 20:1-2)
The threats and barriers and the thundering of Mount Sinai were to show the people their need of a mediator (Exodus 19:9; 20:19-21). Notice in Exodus 20:20, there is a strange statement by Moses which we can loosely paraphrase as "Do not be afraid, for God has come to make you afraid..." What this means is that if we fear God rightly then there is no need to be afraid of Him, but that we shall fear to offend Him.
For forgiven people the Law is a great blessing in keeping of which they shall live. It is as forgiven people that we fear God aright, delighting to keep His law…
If you, O Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. (Psalm 130:3-4)
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)
(ii) After the Prayer for the Church Militant and the optional “warnings” there comes the Exhortation filled with warnings and injunctions to “miserable sinners” together with obligations of duty – there is even “ye must give most humble and hearty thanks” (emphasis mine). But there is no actual giving of thanks!
Immediately following that exhortation there is a second, offering comfort to those who draw near with faith and “make… humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees.” This exhortation begins: “YE that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins…” which, rather than welcoming Christ’s children to His Table, invites further introspection and doubt. Am I truly repentant? Am I earnestly repenting?
Then follows the General Confession and Absolution but surely the place for these is not here, well into the service and after the sermon and the offertory, but when we are first summoned to worship. Even the Old Covenant sacrificial system put the Sin Offering BEFORE the Ascension (Burnt) Offering with its Tribute, which itself came before the Peace Offering where the worshipper could eat with God. This is basic to the sequence of worship and mis-ordering worship in this way is bound to have adverse effects both psychologically and theologically.
(iii) As if all the above were not enough to drive the children from the table, after the Sursum Corda and Proper Preface comes the Prayer of Humble Access (offered in two forms in the FCE BCP and said by the Presbyter alone “in the name of all them that shall receive…”. “We do not presume…”, “We are not worthy…” Very true though all these sentiments are, this is both psychologically and theologically the wrong place to express them. After the Sursum Corda we are now seated in heaven with Christ and have the confident right of sons to be at the Table spread by our Father.
The first FCE-amended version of the prayer, ever distancing itself from any idea that the bread and wine in their very creatureliness might be unmediated gifts, needlessly and detachingly adds the word “spiritually” before “eat the flesh” and “to drink his blood”. The second version requests that we “so… commemorate in this breaking of bread the death of thy dear Son…”. This (and the whole service) completely ignores that fact that the Lord’s Supper is primarily a reminder to God[16] of what Jesus has done, and is therefore the foundation of all our prayers. The foundation of our comfort in the Supper is not our remembering (which we cannot do since we were not there) but that it is God Who remembers and is faithful to His covenant (compare Genesis 9:13-16).
Making use of the chancel
One question that arises from the above is - If a chancel is present in one’s church, should it simply be ignored or can good use be made of it during worship?
I think the chancel may be well used if the communion table is placed lengthways therein rather than up against the “east” wall[17]. The communicants may then sit around the table by occupying the chancel pews and any other necessary seating sympathetically placed in the nave or even behind the communion rail (assuming it cannot be removed).
The offertory and intercessory prayers should come after the sermon and the congregation, hitherto seated in the nave, may be invited to bring their offerings up into the chancel, placing them in collection plate/s (held by wardens at the chancel step or on the communion table itself) and then taking a seat in the chancel pews. This would also be a good place for the sursum corda since the communicants are ascending to an “upper room” meal with their Lord.
Thus, all the faithful laity (even little children) come into the table area to commune. It is not special or reserved to the clergy and this will obviate any notion that the chancel is holier space.
Moreover, such use of the chancel would yield convenient opportunity to make the unbaptised and unfaithful more fully aware of what they are missing and would give the faithful more intimate, upper-room, communion with the Saviour. In fact, it would graphically demonstrate that the unbaptised/unfaithful are, in the last analysis, isolated from Christ's body in both its aspects, not just the sacramental but also the ecclesial. There are no gradations of holiness or nearness: one is either in Christ or out of Him, and the practice of allowing only the faithful baptised to come up and commune at His table would make that abundantly clear.
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Arthur Kay, erstwhile Presbyter in the Free Church of England
[1] From "A Rational Illustration of The Book of Common Prayer" by the Revd Charles Wheatly (1686–1742) published by Henry G. Bohn, London, 1848) - at the bottom of page 85 and the top of page 86.
[2] This is now hard to establish other than anecdotally and from very small samples.
[3] Indeed, The church building in which the author ministered had a chancel extension added to its original preaching-box structure in the early years of the 20th century.
[4] In David’s tabernacle Levites ministered “before the ark of Yahweh” (e.g. 1 Chronicles 16:4) and David himself went in a sat before Yahweh (2 Samuel 7:18; 1 Chronicles 17:16 and see Psalm 27:5-6). We even find Gentiles serving at that tabernacle (e.g. 1 Chronicles 15:24). See PJ Leithart’s “From Silence to Song”.
[5] Page 76 of Sacrament, Sacrifice, and Eucharist (London: Tyndale Press, 1961) by A.M. Stibbs.
[6] Stibbs, op. cit., pages 84-85.
[7] The Rubric’s “consecration” language of the C of E BCP (“Prayer of Consecration” and “If the consecrated Bread or Wine be all spent…the Priest is to consecrate more”) has not been entirely eliminated from the FCE BCP. It is retained in the capitalisation of the words “bread” and “wine” and in the action for both bread and wine (“lay his hand upon”) and the action for the wine still reads “And here to lay his hand upon every vessel…in which there is any Wine to be consecrated”. Similarly, the 2011 FCE Northern Diocese Order for Holy Communion (for trial use) directs: “The Presbyter extends his hands over the Bread and Wine and says…”
[8] There are many Jewish “berakhot”. For example: “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
[9] 1 Timothy 4:4-5 implies that the act of thanksgiving itself sanctifies the bread and wine for the purpose of the meal.
[10] “Cranmer’s form of service is deficient in thanksgiving…” Stibbs, op. cit., page 84. See also page 9 of Louis Bouyer’s Eucharist (University of Notre Dame Press, 1968): “We have only to think of the 16th century Protestant reform of the eucharistic liturgy. Under the guise of a return to the Gospel eucharist, it merely achieved an artificial isolation of the words of institution into which medieval theology had already placed them in theory. From the tradition in which they had come to us, it kept only the late medieval tendency to substitute a psychological and sentimental recall of the Gospel events for the profoundly mysterious and real sacramental action of the New Testament and the Fathers. And it crowned everything by flooding the celebration with the penitential elements which in latter centuries had tended to overburden it. The end result is a eucharist in which there is no longer any eucharist at all properly speaking. If there is still in it some mention of a "thanksgiving" (which is not always the case), this now has merely the sense of an expression of gratitude for the gifts of grace received individually by the communicants: a late medieval sense, degraded beyond the point of recognition, given to a New Testament expression which has almost nothing left of its original sense.”
[11] Stibbs, op. cit., page 75
[12] Stibbs, op. cit., page 82
[13] Stibbs, op. cit., page 83
[14] Stibbs, op. cit., page 84
[15] The amounts given are often so niggardly that, instead of being a symbolic meal, the Supper is turned into a symbol of a meal. Admittedly a communicant might take a bigger drink but the overall impression given by the liturgy is that more than a sip would be frowned upon, with some (in my experience of assisting at such services) appearing only to touch the wine with their lips – and sometimes not even that.
[16] God’s covenant memorials are His memorials. They remind Him, e.g. Genesis 9:15; Exodus 30:16. We pray in the Name of Jesus because that is God’s reminder (compare Exodus 3:15; Psalm 72:17-19; 135:13; Hosea 12:5; Micah 4:5; John 14:13-14 etc.). It is precisely because the Lord’s Supper is a reminder to God that it is appropriate for the minster, when he takes the bread and the wine, to lift them up toward heaven, not for men to worship, but for God to see and be reminded.
[17] This was, in many Anglican churches, the positioning during and post-Cranmer and pre-Laud.
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