There’s a joke of a conversation between a husband and wife talking about where they want to go for their date night. The husband promises his wife, after telling her to get all gussied up that it will be an expensive place. And they go to a gas station.
Outside of a joke about the universal understanding that the price of gas is always too high, we also tacitly grasp the reality that a date at a gas station may have its issues. I am not saying that there are no situations in which a gas station date isn’t unique, necessary, or is something that makes a memorable time together when you think back on it. What I am saying is that beyond moving beyond initial objections you begin to realize that questionable sushi, slushies, corn dogs and dry pizza that all tastes of the overly processed ingredients in it is not what one thinks of when you talk about going on a date.
When it comes to the worship of the Church, especially surrounding the Sacraments, there has been a tendency, especially since COVID to hold up pragmatism and simplicity as the highest objective. This is demonstrated most profoundly and sadly in the Evangelical realm surrounding the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
I grew up being used to taking one of the little plastic cups from the tray, and a piece of broken matza bread whenever we celebrated communion (once a month at the church my dad pastored). But something has dramatically changed in the last five plus years. While the little prepackaged communion cups had already existed, COVID threw them to center stage as the best option for churches to celebrate communion with the lowest possible chance of passing on the plague.
While the momentary reasons for its use have passed, yet the use of these little cups has persisted. It’s easy to buy a box of 1000 of them, pass them out, or set them in a basket to do communion and then throw them out. No prep time, lower chance of spills, and the ease of them. But we never seem to ask what we lose when we go this route?
There are multiple things I am thinking of that are lost when we celebrate the memorial of our redemption in this way, but what I want to reflect on here is the fact of beauty. This reality of beauty is one of the last asked questions in the modern Evangelical space, and I am increasingly saddened by it. The church use to be known for reflecting the beauty of God in creation through our construction and ceremony. But in the last several generations especially that has been discarded.
When we replaced precious metal, wood or pottery chalices filled with the fruit of the vine and plates with hosts or bread to mini-disposable communion cups with highly processed elements, it visibly screams that matter doesn’t matter. There is something wonderful about a community gathering around a single table where the words of St. Paul are enacted when he wrote “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.” (1 Cor. 10:17) Rather, in our Modern Western ideal, we celebrate together but individually separated by our own, fast-food packaged elements.
Of course there is more that could be said about this, and I certainly did not contextualize everything to the extent some would want; but I think my point is clear. Individual, prepackaged communion cups are by no means sinful. But they do reflect a tendency in modern Evangelicalism to trend towards the disposable and easy at the loss of other things that the Church has valued since its founding.