THIS, according to St Matthew, was Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, when he took a cup of wine, and after giving thanks, gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Drink of this, all of you, for this is my blood’ (Matthew 26.27,28).
But, for many years now, we have not all been doing so. An increasing number of you, unhappy about drinking from the same chalice that others have just drunk from before you and others will after you, have instead dipped the Bread in the Wine.
I have tried to dissuade you from doing this. I have referred you to the scientific advice, that this practice is more, not less, likely to spread infection than drinking from the same cup as others. Hands are potent carriers of infection. That is why the first advice we received in this pandemic was to wash our hands frequently and thoroughly. And while there is disagreement about other measures – the effectiveness of masks, and whether and where to wear them; and what degree of social distancing should be maintained, and whether 2 metres or 1 or somewhere in between; and so on – washing or otherwise sanitising our hands continues to be consistently urged upon us.
I have also pointed out that I am always the last person to drink from the chalice, after everyone else – without any ill effects.
Despite all that, many of you remain unpersuaded, and have continued to dip the Bread in the Wine. But our Bishops have told us that this is forbidden. And, in any case, dunking is not drinking.
The Bishops have also said that in the present crisis, only the priest leading the Eucharist should drink from the chalice. But I do not think that this needs to mean that others present should be denied the Wine. That would fly in the face of consistent Anglican teaching and practice. Article 30 of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, appended to the Book of Common Prayer in 1562 and reaffirmed since, reads: ‘The Cup of the Lord is to be denied to the Lay-people: for both he parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.’
There may be circumstances in which that is not possible, but that is not really the case here.  Mindful of our Lord’s command, ‘Drink of this, all of you’, and the Church’s insistence on it, I have started to follow the Lutheran way of administering Communion. That is, the chalice is consecrated in the traditional way, and the Wine is then poured into individual glasses. In this way, we shall all be sharing one chalice, but without drinking from the same vessel as anyone else. There is, incidentally, Anglican precedent for this. I am told that in parts of Africa, this was the practice of churches there when AIDS was rife.
I hope everyone will be happy with this. After all, when we share a bottle of wine at home, we do not pass the bottle around for everyone to take a swig: we decant it into individual glasses. That is what I am doing. I think there is a valid distinction to be made between ‘drinking OF …’, which is, as I understand it, what St Matthew’s gospel says here in the original Greek, and ‘drinking FROM …’. In St Luke’s account of the Last Supper, he tells us that Jesus told his disciples, ‘Take this [cup] and divide it among yourselves.’ We are obeying that command, while combining strict attention to hygiene with reverence.
Paradoxically, sharing the Wine from a single chalice but drinking from individual glasses expresses our unity, whereas our recent previous practice seemed to deny it. When some drank from the chalice, others dipped, and some abstained altogether, the unity we profess was seen to be fractured at best. Now we are all doing the same thing.
I do not think we shall ever go back to the days of everyone drinking directly from the chalice. I believe that what we are doing now is the pattern for the future, not just a crisis measure in a pandemic. I anticipate it becoming general practice.