In our physical participation in Christian worship, we are quite literally being formed in the faith.
Since the advent of Covid, clergy and congregants have been debating the merits of online/virtual/hybrid worship, even to the point where Episcopalian leadership questioned whether bread and cup taken/received in a person’s home could truly be the Eucharist. While I understand the necessity of online/virtual/hybrid worship, especially for those unable to attend in-person for a variety of reasons, I do think something is missed when Christians are not able to physically gather together.
Author David Taylor is more explicit, writing “the experience of exclusively digitally mediated worship could not satisfy the God-given need for embodied communal worship.”1 In his book, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of our Physical Bodies in Worship, Taylor argues that there is something for our physical bodies to do that decisively forms Christlikeness in us within the context of corporate worship. What we do with our postures, gestures, and movements in worship matters.2 Recently in a Sunday worship, I was reminded of that once again.
Over the last year or so, I’ve found myself enraptured when participating in communion, whether it be in the giving or the receiving. To me as a pastor, there is something incredibly profound about sharing the bread or the cup and getting to speak those holy words, “the body of Christ, broken for you.” And, “the blood of Christ, shed for you.” While different Christian traditions hold different theological understandings of the Lord’s Supper, more and more I’ve begun to understand it as a sacrament—or at least sacramental. Therefore, when giving the elements, I am in some way sharing the grace of God—quite a profound and privileged position.
Some months ago, I was visiting what might best be described as a non-denominational progressive church. For communion, they simply had the elements out on a table, and participants were welcome to come forward and essentially serve themselves. Practically speaking, I could understand why a church likely made up of Christians from various traditions might choose such an approach, but as a pastor, I was perturbed.
Of course, there are various ways of receiving the elements, and some traditions mandate clergy serve, whereas others allow the laity to do so, which is why this church likely chose the safest rout and have no one serve. And, I might add, choosing to have no one serve and participants receive on their own is also sending a theological message. Unsure what to make of it all, in this instance I refrained from receiving.
Recently, I attended a Sunday Christian worship service where communion was given. Congregants were invited forward to receive the elements, handed out by a clergyperson and communion server. As the rows in front of me were welcomed forward, I found myself with a sense of eagerness and emotion as I prepared myself to receive. Then, when my row was ushered forward, I walked up to the pastor, with open hands, and received the bread; “Loren, the body of Christ, broken for you,” he said. “Thanks be to God, I responded.” In that moment, I found myself nearly overwhelmed with the emotion of it all.
The act of walking forward, open handed, to receive the elements is a physical, emotional, and spiritual act. No wonder I felt the profundity of it all. In such a physical position, we are making ourselves vulnerable to another, we cannot control what we will receive, we are instead surrendering to what we will be given. Through our physical posture, we are signifying our need of receiving, that in ourselves we do not have enough, that we are in need; a physical posture, signifying a spiritual one.
In his book, Taylor goes on to write “in this sense…we might say that the Christian in corporate worship is informed in Christ, transformed by the Spirit, and reformed by embodied practices, whether of the spontaneous or prescriptive sort.”3 He also writes, “The act of passing the peace fundamentally signifies a gift offered and received: the objective peace that Christ wins for us on the cross and the subjective experience of peace that we sense in the exchange of words and physical contact.”4 Consider also these words from Jay Kim;
When we gather to sing, listen, and create together, we’re reminded that sometimes we’re the ones on the mat or in the wheelchair and sometimes we’re the ones carrying others up to the roof or above the crowd. We see and hear one another. We smile and we greet and we pause from the digital distractions of our lives to remember that we are the people of God, and to embody that reality together. This is why it matters that we gather, in real time and in real space and real people.5
This is why the Christian community physically gathered in corporate worship matters so much, this is why Andrew Root says, “Christian faith is impossible outside the church.”6 Christianity is not meant to be an isolated, individual, intellectual event. When we physically participate in worship, whether it be raising of hands during singing, shaking another’s hand while passing the peace, or kneeling at a prayer rail, we are forming ourselves, both physically and spiritually. We are quite literally practicing the faith.
Taylor O. W. David, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2023), 2.
From the book description on Amazon.
Taylor, A Body of Praise, 156.
Taylor, A Body of Praise, 135.
Kim, Jay, Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Palaces, and Things in the Digital Age (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2020), 77.
Root, Andrew, Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding to the Church's Obsession with Youthfulness (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017).