What is in Kelvin's Head?

Every Eucharist is a Virtual Eucharist

05/08/2020

Every Eucharist is a virtual Eucharist. Of course it is.

We know this.

We experience this.

We forget this.

Christianity – at least the bits of Christianity that are worth taking seriously – takes time and space so seriously that it knows that the particular cannot ever express the ultimate. Indeed, time and space are playthings in the hands of the religiously inspired.

Over the last few months it hasn’t been possible for my congregation to celebrate the Eucharist together in one space. But when we used to do that, we were never entirely in one space anyway. The very building itself is designed to transport people from the knowledge that they are a few yards from a busy thoroughfare in the Second City of Empire. Taking a few steps inside we find that we are in another place altogether. And in another empire, where the Emperor is servant of all and love is the essense of the law. The conceit that going into church takes you into a divine, heavenly realm is not an idea exclusive to the East. Coming into St Mary’s you are supposed to feel that you are stepping into heaven. It has been built to make you feel that. It has been decorated to make you feel that. It does make people feel that.

Whenever I take people into church I almost always hear them express a sense of wonder. We have the wow factor. It has been created by human skill to make you feel that the reality that you experience as you stand in the street is not the only reality that you can experience. It is a space that conveys that love, joy and peace might be possible and it does that without words. It is done with beauty and it takes people a few steps up the stairway to heaven.

And it is the church playing with reality.

That experience of going into a holy space and feeling part of something bigger is something common to religions that are divided on all kinds of doctrinal matters. It points to things that are best expressed through virtual reality and religious people are so used to virtual reality that they sometimes forget that it is all around them.

When people come to the Eucharist in St Mary’s they are at once in Glasgow and simultaneously elsewhere. And elsewhere isn’t even singular either. At the Eucharist in Glasgow we are at one and the same time in an Upper Room in Jerusalem rather a long time ago and at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb at the ultimate consumation of all that is. The Last Supper and the Breakfast at the End of the Universe happen at the same table. At the same time.

And as we gather at our table, we gather at every table and eat in communion with those who share in the same meal. Our fellowship with them isn’t prevented by circumstance. Our Eucharistic fellowship has never been prevented by circumstance or lack of physical proximity.

We couldn’t keep the Triduum in Holy Week without virtual reality.

Without virtual reality it would just be a way of making feet smell less.

Without virtual reality it would just be a bonfire that would die.

Christ is the celebrant at every Eucharist no matter which particular celebrant is standing there. Virtual reality becomes interwoven with the reality of the lives that we bring to the table and we are formed and changed and made new. It is how God’s love is expressed.

This is virtual reality. Every Eucharist is a Virtual Eucharist. Cyberspace is one of the most powerful metaphors for prayer that human beings may ever develop.

Our bodies are bound by physics.

God’s love in this world isn’t.

This is why religious buildings are important. It is also why they are not important.

Every Eucharist is a Virtual Eucharist.

Every Eucharist always was a Virtual Eucharist.

Of course it was.

cyberspace, digital theology, eucharist, online communion, virtual reality

62 responses to “You condemn it, Archbishop”

Rosemary Hannah

06/04/2014

I think the point could be made like this. We know that the Taliban dislike women and girls getting education. One of the reasons they say it scares them is the way some women behave in the West. They blame behaviours they do not like, promiscuity, public drunkenness, on women being educated.

I don’t agree. I do not think an education encourages one to be legless on a Friday night. But the fact is, that is how the Taliban see it, and they harm young women going to school. In fact, among others, they shot Malala Yousafzai.

Do you think that young women in our country should refrain from getting an education, so that the Taliban can see there is no link between Western excesses, and women being educated?

And if you do not think this, somebody tell me what the difference is?

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Jimmy

07/04/2014

I’ve just listened to the radio phone in.
And I think what he said was an honest opinion that what the church in England does can have an effect on Christians around the world.
It is one of the reasons in his -no- box, but it is not a tenable reason.

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Fr Steve

07/04/2014

Well said Kelvin.
As for Peter Ould’s latter comment
“When you write stuff like this, all you’re arguing is that you don’t want to listen to other people’s experiences and stories.”
(please note that I am using quotation marks…and making this observation in parentheses!)
Then I think we have all seen who does and does not listen to ‘other people’s experiences and stories’. And it is not the Very Rev’d Dean of Glasgow!

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Richard

07/04/2014

Well said, Fr Steve. Following on the theme of not listening to others, JCF is absolutely right, of course.
It’s the absence of reason which leads to the not truly listening part of a discussion, however long the debate lasts. I sent a message over on Twitter yesterday to Mr O. asking him what he thought God thinks of bishops who wear mitres in church, covering the same point made by JCF. Still no reply.

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Kelvin Holdsworth

07/04/2014

Many thanks to all those commenting above.

No further comments about the nature of homosexuality and no further comments about the nature of Peter Ould, please. There are other, better places online for that.

And please, no further comments where one single bible verse is thrown about without context as though it proves a point. That applies to those lobbing them in any direction.

The topic is, what the Archbishop said on LBC and what the implications of that conversation are.

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Erika Baker

07/04/2014

If we’re talking about potential links I would also like to point out another possibility.
Lgbt people in Africa have told us that their churches have used the Archbishop’s stance in support for their own. “Look, even the Archbishop in a much more liberal church is not treating gay people as equals. He knows they’re morally inferior”.

Changing Attitude in Nigeria have begged the CoE for years to speak out clearly against homophobia and violence. They have been met with a deafening silence.

If my Nigerian friends are to be believed the terrible laws might not have been implemented if the CoE had been much firmer in condemning anti gay violence and legislation years and years ago, if it hadn’t tried to appease Archbishop Akinola by refusing to invite Gene Robinson to Lambeth etc. Instead, they have given him an air of respectability which he should never have had and which he used very cleverly at home to lay the foundations for the current situation.
Now it’s too late to do anything about it.

There is a very genuine possibility that appeasing violent behaviour will only ever result in more violence.

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Richard

07/04/2014

Absolutely, Erica. That’s what I was referring to earlier, about history having a tendency to repeats its errors. It will, however, be difficult to assess the extent of the negative impact of Justin Welby’s comments both here and abroad.

On the issue of ABC’s comments, in case you haven’t seen this, here is a link to a California bishop in which he draws out some of the negativity and errors of ABC’s comments as he sees parallels between colonialism in USA and UK.

http://t.co/FXUPB0CuX8

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Bernhard

07/04/2014

You are very generous with other people’s lives.

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1. Kelvin
  
  07/04/2014
  
  I stand against murder and violence. I stand against murder and violence meted our in places of conflict in Africa, in places where kids get killed for being gay, in places where people are killed for their faith. I encourage my congregation to pray for peace and work to eliminate violence.
  
  I also know what it is like to enter a church next to someone against whom recent credible death threats have been made.
  
  I value life very highly.
  
  Reply