Communion and the Priesthood of All Believers

Maybe some of you have been in that awkward place with communion that I've known a few times. When I was in my local church internship during seminary, the pastor was going to be on vacation on a communion Sunday. I was ordained as a probationary elder at the time, but not appointed to that church. The pastor wanted me to serve communion, and just to be sure it was going to be right he blessed the elements the day before. I wish I remembered the details of our conversation now, after 15 years, but my brain doesn't work that way.

When I was a church camp counselor in college we learned all about Love Feasts since we couldn't have communion without a pastor there. I didn't question that rule then. Now that I am an elder in the United Methodist Church--ordained to Word, Order and Sacrament (the addition of Service was after 2001)--I wonder about the wall around the table. In reading some Roman Catholic church history dealing with the development of Eucharistic theology and practice, I began to see how our practice as United Methodists is not representing our theology. How we preside at the table, how we offer the bread and cup, who says what and where, communicates powerfully about what is taking place in the Lord's Supper, and these do so in ways we need to change. Our current dominant practice is enshrined in our Book of Worship, where the rubrics for communion repeat: "the pastor says," "the pastor takes," "the pastor says."

When I asked a United Methodist systematic theologian, and then a friend who wrote great ordination papers, whether we believed that the pastor saying the Great Thanksgiving, words of institution and epiklesis was necessary for efficacy, they both said no. Our job in ordering the life of the church and sacramental authority is exercised in presence and not in incantational power. Then why is the BOW written as it is? And what do people take away from the image and function as it stands? Wouldn't congregants assume a necessary link between the function of the pastor and the grace of the Eucharist?

If you would like a copy of the whole bit let me know. Please use this space for comments, ideas, questions. Thanks!