By Janet Fife

The summer of 1972 stands out in my memory.  I’d finished my first year of college, during which my family moved from Florida to California where my father pastored a church. That summer I volunteered as work crew at a Christian wilderness camp on Catalina Island, nearly 30 miles off the southern California coast. The island is mountainous desert with feral goats, pigs, and bison; Campus by the Sea was sited in a private cove accessible only by boat. There was no electricity and very little running water. The main dining and lecture hall had open sides, and most of the cabins had only partial walls. We spent the whole halcyon summer out of doors or in the sea.

My job for the summer was to run the laundry. I had an ancient twin-tub machine powered by a lawnmower engine bolted to a frame. I had to make the most of the limited water supply, cope with the lawnmower engine, and train a series of short-term helpers to keep their fingers out of the wringer. It was hard work but I enjoyed it. Time off was spent hiking, swimming, snorkelling or, on rare occasions a trip into Avalon (the only real town) by boat when my day off coincided with a trip for supplies.

But perhaps the most special feature of that summer was that most of the work crew were in our teens or early twenties; and many of us had been swept up in the Jesus Movement, a genuine religious revival among young people. It’s impossible to recapture or to describe what it’s like to be part of such a revival. “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven.” In the worship part of our daily team meetings we almost seemed to be touching heaven at times.

There was something missing, though, and as the summer wore on we felt its lack more and more keenly:  we had no access to Holy Communion. None of the groups visiting the camp brought a minister with them and we couldn’t get to church in Avalon. Summer was near its end when, finally, a group arrived at camp with their pastor. By then I’d been without Communion for 3 months, and most of the others had too.  There was anticipation when we learned that this group planned to hold a Communion service on their last evening with us. We asked if we could join them – and were refused. It was a hurt and disconsolate group who gathered for our team meeting.

I don’t remember the details of our discussion, but I do remember the outcome. We decided to hold our own Communion service that evening, led by Rob ‘Otto’ Kroeger (son of theologian Catherine Clark Kroeger) and myself. We gathered in a crew cabin, huddled on bunk beds. One of the cooks brought bread and cooking wine from the kitchen. We read the Bible, prayed together, and aired some of the tensions which inevitably arise when a group of people live and work in close quarters (‘Bill thinks Christians should have all things in common, except his wetsuit and his 12-string guitar’…). We forgave each other. And then Otto and I celebrated Holy Communion, as I had seen my father do it.

It was one of the most moving and deeply meaningful Communion services I have ever experienced. When it had finished we didn’t want to separate, so we adjourned to an empty cabin with a small kitchen and had a love feast of abalone rolls.

Strangely, God didn’t seem to mind that neither Otto nor I was ordained; that I was a girl; or that I hadn’t yet even been baptized (my baptism was scheduled for the autumn). God’s presence was palpable, despite all these drawbacks. And it made a difference to the way we related to each other for the rest of the summer.

I have recalled this episode when reading some contributions to the ongoing debate about ‘virtual’ Holy Communion. Some tell us that if we take bread and wine while watching a live streamed Eucharist, we are not really taking Communion. Others would discourage us from taking bread and wine at all. This baffles me. The Communion brought to me at home, where I have not taken part in the service with others, and not heard or seen the consecrating prayer, is held to be the real thing. So when I have joined an online service, sung the hymns, prayed with others, followed the eucharistic prayer  – why would that not be a valid communion? Do we believe that the God who created multiple solar systems is limited by space and time?

I have felt the same bafflement when hearing people say that they are ‘not in communion with’ certain other Christians. A Roman Catholic nun colleague once said to me that, ‘When we take Holy Communion we’re in communion with the Pope and all the saints, and when you take communion you aren’t.’ There are Anglicans who don’t recognise the Communion services of other denominations as valid. Within the Church of England there are diocesan clergy conferences and Maundy Thursday Eucharists where there are separate celebrations for those who recognise female priests and those who don’t. But if I am in communion with Christ, and you are in communion with Christ, how can we not be in communion with each other? ‘Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.’ The bread is not the priest’s wafer but Christ, the bread of life. Every Christian is part of that body, even if their church has no eucharist at all. They share in Christ in other ways.

Each Christian denomination has the right to order itself in the ways it thinks best, and those who belong to it should submit to that discipline. That is right and proper, for ‘all things should be done decently and in order’. In exceptional circumstances, however, the usual order may need to be changed. And we should at all times recognise that the Holy Spirit is not bound by the rules of our particular Church.

The Bible gives us little reason to think that celebrations of the Eucharist ought to be limited to a priestly caste; the Passover is observed in Jewish homes. It’s likely that many of the restrictions which have long hedged round Anglican and Roman Catholic Eucharists arose from the Roman Empire’s need to control its people once Christianity became the empire’s recognised religion. In Yorkshire we have an expression that a particularly loving and generous person ‘has a heart as big as a dinner plate’. God’s heart is so big the whole cosmos cannot contain it. In these difficult times, the Eternal Love will not leave his people unfed and uncomforted.