My Respect for Emerson Grows

With Emerson's sermon The Lord's Supper, my respect for him grows even more. Emerson delivered the sermon in 1832 before the Second Church in Boston of which he was pastor at the time. A few months earlier he had asked the Church for permission to discontinue administering communion because he did not believe it was Jesus' intention that "the last supper" be observed as a church ritual. This sermon lays out Emerson's arguments against the sacrament. He begins by acknowledging Christian controversy surrounding the rite, not all churches past and current, believed in practicing it in the same way and the Quakers had even given it up entirely. His point being that if it were something Christ wanted everyone to practice, he would have explicitly said so. Emerson finds no Biblical evidence for it, Luke being the only one of the "four Evangelists" to mention the words "Do this in remembrance of me." Luke wasn't even present. Emerson suggests that if it was something Jesus wanted to continue Matthew and John, who were present at the last supper, would have mentioned it. Emerson further builds on his argument by examining particular Biblical passages and explicating their meaning, all to support his argument that the church has no authority to enforce observance of the rite. Besides, Emerson wants to know, why should we perpetuate one symbolical act and neglect all others particularly the washing of feet? To Emerson this act has more textual argument for observance than the sacrament since Jesus specifically told his disciples that they ought to wash one another's feet. Emerson moves on to counter the argument that since the church administering the sacrament does no harm and sometimes even does good, why should they keep doing it? He objects to this line of reasoning on several counts. First that every time the church celebrates the rite it mistakenly gives the impression that Jesus said it should be done. Second, it produces "confusion in our views of the relation of the soul to God." In other words, the worship of God is confused with the commemoration of Christ and it is only made worse because the ritual is imposed by the church. Third, communion, however suitable it may have been back when Christianity was new, is no longer useful. As Emerson says, "to eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another." Fourth, and finally, Emerson argues, the importance ascribed to the sacrament "is not consistent with the spirit of Christianity." The importance given and the adherence to such a form even after it has been "outgrown" is "unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ." Emerson is not against rituals in general, but the ones the church performs should be useful, should provoke pure thoughts, inspire people to performs works like Jesus, create love and virtue. The object of church rites should be "simply to make men good and wise." Therefore, institutions "should be as flexible as the wants of men." Emerson insists that it is not the form of worship that matters. What matters is the actual worshipping. Emerson's sermon made me wonder what he would think of women becoming pastors and ministers and priests? What would he think about some of those people, both men and women, being gay? And what would he think about the raging controversy of same-sex marriage? I'd like to think he'd have no problem with it, would even support it since the old forms are no longer useful as a means of worship (because it is obvious they are still useful for other reasons). "Freedom is the essence of this faith," he writes. He insists that Jesus' intention was to "redeem us from a formal religion [the Judaism of Jesus' time], and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul." At the end of this sermon Emerson declares, "it is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart." He goes on to say that since the religious community of the church has decided they wish to keep the administration of the sacrament during church service (as opposed to a meeting conducted by lay persons as Emerson alternately proposed), he resigns his office "consoled by the hope that no time and no change can deprive me of the satisfaction of pursuing and exercising its highest functions." Wow. This man had integrity. Next week's Emerson: History