Change of manna at Ridley

WE ARE fasting — within the hole hunger of Lent. We are waiting — within the entombed darkness of Saturday. We are watching — for the golden dawn of Easter, the turning of death to life. And then we hear it. With unbelief and ecstasy, trembling and joy —the shout of great gladness: “Alleluia! Christ is risen.”

Except that he isn’t. He’s flat and tasteless, tidy and pre-cut, sealed in his hygienic packaging. During the “kitchen wars” of the Great Schism of 1054, the introduction of unleavened bread outraged Byzantine theologians. Leo of Ohrid sent an inflammatory letter to Rome describing the wafer as “dead and never enlivening”. Cardinal Humbert retorted, “You reject the very thing Christ sanctified,” before placing a Bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia

The Orthodox Church still uses exclusively leavened bread within the eucharist, while the Roman Catholic Church insists on the unleavened wafer for its symbolic sinlessness and continuity with Passover.

I STUMBLED on the bread debate after my daughter asked me, “How are communion wafers made?” We watched a brief video clip, and saw a grim, strip-lit factory stamping out the body of Christ. The production line ended with the wafer passing under a pulsing red laser. My seven-year-old frowned on the screen. “Mummy, why does it go into hell?” she asked.

The next day, I discovered I used to be to act as deacon at our eucharist at Ridley Hall. I wondered whether I could persuade the powers-that-be to make use of a loaf as a substitute of wafers. As a lowly first-year ordinand, I would want to drag out all of the theological stops; so I started to construct a case for leavened bread — with the tremulous thrill of trespassing the margins of heresy.

I WAS startled to find that each eucharistic passage uses artos — the usual term for unusual, leavened bread. This deliberate alternative stands in contrast to azymos, the precise word for unleavened bread used elsewhere in scripture. Yet, in every eucharistic account, the Gospel-writers reject azymos and reach as a substitute for artos: the leavened bread of the table. St Paul confirms this distinction, stating that on the night Jesus was betrayed “he took bread (artos) and broke it.” This was the common artos used because the Early Church “broke bread of their homes” (Acts 2.46). Excitement grew as I realised that a loaf returns us to the practice of the disciples and the Church for the primary millennium.

Did the Reformers know this? It seems that they did. Nicholas Ridley (the school’s namesake) fought with fierce conviction to reclaim “common bread” for the English Church. Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer mandated bread “reminiscent of is common to be eaten on the table”. The Reformers wanted the sacrament to look and taste like real food — Christ, the bread of life who feeds and sustains us.

The wafer returned to Anglicanism only within the nineteenth century, reintroduced by Tractarian clergy wanting to shut the gap between Canterbury and Rome. I imagined Ridley and the opposite Reformers depicted within the stained glass of our chapel cheering me on from their windows.

JUST as I used to be proudly putting the ultimate touches to my heresy, I discovered — like G. K. Chesterton — that it was, in reality, orthodoxy. As Canon B17 states, the usage of leavened or unleavened bread is a matter of “indifference”. I shot off to the authorities at Ridley with my shocking recent orthodoxy: leavened bread is just not a contemporary innovation; it has deep scriptural warrant; it accords with canon law; and it faithfully follows the rationale of our reformed tradition.

“Yes, we all know,” they said kindly. “We sometimes use leavened bread at Ridley.”

“Well, then,” I said, determined to cause some provocation, “it shall be gluten-free, and we will say the words in Greek, and all be united by one loaf.”

“Great,” got here the patient reply.

IN THE weeks leading as much as the service, some advised me: “Make sure the loaf is large enough so we don’t run out,” and others: “It should be sufficiently small so we don’t have lots left over.” I nodded, reassuring each, feeling inwardly like an anxious Goldilocks — already in trouble, but with out a sense of what the “right” size may be.

“Oh, crumbs,” I believed as I browsed the Waitrose bakery aisle. And then one other problem landed: oh — crumbs! The wafer was designed precisely to eliminate particulae: those loose crumbs that risk desecrating the host. A friend cautioned me, “You know, a gluten-free loaf will produce much more crumbs.” I started to feel hot under my imaginary dog collar.

ON THE day of the service, I handed over a gluten-free sourdough loaf to the senior student preparing the chapel, promising that every one leftovers can be reverently consumed, and hoping that the crumbs can be minimal. I used to be struck by how nice it smelled: domestic and welcoming. Its plump roundness within the basket jogged my memory how baked bread literally outgrows its container, symbolic of God’s uncontainable love.

The service began, and I told the congregation: “Today, we gather around a single gluten-free loaf, an indication of unity. At this table, all may share and none are turned away.” An audible whoop got here from someone often disqualified by food intolerance.

Then the youngsters, beaming, processed the weather to the altar. The priest raised the loaf, and it broke with a mild sigh, not the standard snap of a dead twig. A fellow ordinand commented that this was how he imagined the Last Supper: bread that looks like bread, torn and shared. I believed of Malcolm Guite’s words: “Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.”

A big crumb fell, little question causing some unease; it was swiftly rescued by an observant congregant. I noticed that chewing actual bread takes longer than a wafer, which vanishes like a magic trick. I wondered if there was something priceless in taking time to eat the weather — to feed on him in our hearts (and our mouths). After worrying that I would want a bigger loaf, there have been significant leftovers. I offered the remaining bread at the tip of the service: it become a sort of post-communion picnic, stuffed with laughter and reverence.

WHILE most enjoyed the usage of bread (especially the inclusivity of a gluten-free loaf), some fearful that our communion was less sterile; and the crumbs remain a priority. But I’m wondering if God’s grace is commonly profligate and untidy, if it flows over and leaves crumbs. “We should not worthy to assemble up the crumbs from under thy table”: perhaps we should always leave them where they fall? Maybe the crumbs are a part of the symbolism.

Martin Luther insisted that even a mouse eating the host receives the body of Christ. I started to feel sorry for the mice in our modern churches, with our spectral host. Yet, nevertheless careful we’re — even with wafers — there’s at all times some Jesus that escapes: tiny particles that the microbes eat. I pondered our reverent obsession with containing Christ, and wondered if Jesus minds sharing his body with the mice and the microbes.

“IT WAS nice we actually did what we at all times say we’re going to do — you already know, break bread,” my daughter told me. “Normally, the priest just makes those little circles seem like a magician.”

While wafers are actually neater, the leavened loaf brings an incalculable excess and a more visible unity. It seems higher to represent Jesus, our living bread; Jesus, who offers us not the bread of affliction, however the bread of the brand new covenant.

There are actually times within the liturgical yr when unleavened bread carries its own apposite solemnity, but, at Easter, it seems fitting that our bread — like our Church, — should rise. For he’s risen. He is risen indeed.

Dr Josephine Gabelman is an ordinand at Ridley Hall and the creator of A Theology of Nonsense (Pickwick Publications, 2016). Her current research develops a “compostable theology” by exploring salvation through waste, sin, and filth.