It’s been a while since I’ve “nerded out” in this space. But today I want to reflect a bit on the Fraction Anthem—words that may be sung or said at the Eucharist, just after The Lord’s Prayer, as the Bread is broken.
I wonder if you’ve paid much attention to these words we sing (or sometimes say), inviting us to reflect on the meaning in the mystery of the sacred meal we are about to share.
Perhaps the most familiar anthem said at that moment is known by the Latin, Pascha nostrum (“our Passover”): “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.” For longtime Episcopalians, this may be an especially familiar and comforting sentence.
Another traditional and quite familiar option for the Fraction is the Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”), which is usually repeated three times: “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.”
I am grateful for the invitation embedded throughout our prayer book to rehearse the words of the old stories, prayers, and theological lenses that have brought about our shared experience of faith in this tradition and church. Lex orandi, lex credendi, as the saying goes – As we pray, so we come to believe.
I am also grateful for the places where the prayer book invites an evolving and expansive faith to be experienced, explored and embraced together.
Over the years, folks have shared with me when they find images of sacrifice or atonement difficult to hear and recite in our Scriptures and liturgy. Many times, this is because of past religious trauma where those concepts were employed to manipulate or control members of a church; or, because their own faith was coming into a more expansive understanding of the cross and resurrection of Jesus that felt limited or constricted by such old or “outdated” (sic.) notions. In conversations like these, I seek both to affirm very real and valid reactions to harmful theology AND point toward more broad understandings of our story.
Some of this work is to explore and reimagine the concepts of sin and sacrifice and our relationship to them. We also have the opportunity to rehearse words that invite us to new ways of entering into the mystery of Holy Eucharist. The church’s supplemental resources, called “Enriching Our Worship,” offer more words that may be said at the Fraction.
“We break this bread to share in the Body of Christ; we who are many are one body, for we all share the one Bread.” Here we speak of the mystery of our being brought together – or re-membered – as the Body of Christ in our sharing of Eucharist.
“This is the true bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world; Whoever eats this bread will live for ever.” These words speak to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a particularly Anglican approach, in which the real presence of Christ is found in the Bread and Wine when received by a communicant in faith, thus nourishing all who receive it to bring life to the world through our own living.
I wanted to highlight the Fraction Anthem for us today, because in different seasons we sing or say different words. And this is why. It is more than mere semantics or pickiness. These words inform and inspire the ways we pray together, which shapes how grow in faith and live out that faith in community.
This Sunday, when we speak and sing over the broken Bread of the Eucharist, may God inspire us to enter into the vast mystery of being fed by the Divine gift of life, for the life of the world.
I’ll be there with you.
Scott+
The Rev. R. Scott Painter, Rector
