Thinking allowed

Modelling Liturgical Presidency

on Thursday, 5 February 2015 at 7.56 am by Simon Reynolds
categorised as liturgy, thinking liturgy

A Tale of Two Con­trast­ing Consecrations

The ‘Octave’ from the feast of the Con­ver­sion of Paul (25 Janu­ary) to Candlemas (2 Feb­ru­ary) was an event­ful one for the Church of Eng­land. York Min­ster was the ven­ue for the two epis­copal ordin­a­tions (or con­sec­ra­tions) which were the focus of this event­ful­ness. It provided the Min­ster with a won­der­ful oppor­tun­ity to demon­strate why Eng­lish cathed­rals have exper­i­enced such growth over the past dec­ade. The fusion of space, music, move­ment and col­our merged to provide that elu­sive and indefin­able, but tan­gible, exper­i­ence we often describe as ‘trans­form­at­ive’. The bal­ance, pace (and tim­ing) left you with the crav­ing to come back for more.

Peter Moger, the Min­ster­’s Pre­cent­or, deserves buck­ets of sym­pathy and admir­a­tion in equal meas­ure. It requires a cer­tain degree of insight and exper­i­ence to craft acts of wor­ship such as these, where the over­all impact is mem­or­able – as opposed to being over­loaded and exhaust­ing. In a pre­vi­ous life, I was respons­ible for arran­ging sev­er­al con­sec­ra­tions in the south­ern province. I know the com­plic­ated ter­rain intim­ately: the recip­roc­al horse-trad­ing; the end­less tele­phone calls; the missed dead­lines; proof-read­ing in the wee small hours; man­aging con­flict­ing expect­a­tions; not to men­tion the sleep­less nights. These are all ines­cap­able in the build-up to these occa­sions. Des­pite the fail-safe rehears­al plan, there is always the poten­tial for ‘some­thing’ to go awry on the day – object­ors notwithstanding!

My con­cern is with the strik­ingly dif­fer­ent man­ner in which litur­gic­al pres­id­ency was mod­elled at the two con­sec­ra­tions. The pre­text for this dif­fer­ence is well known and hardly needs rehears­ing here. How­ever, it was more than appar­ent that, behind all the agon­ised exeges­is of the Five Guid­ing Prin­ciples and the desire to mod­el gen­er­ous restraint, some­thing vital was lost in the second of the two con­sec­ra­tions. The cohes­ive shape and flow of the liturgy felt as if it was creak­ing under the weight of unreal­ist­ic expect­a­tion – pre­cisely because the pres­id­en­tial mod­el­ling seemed disorientated.

The first of the two con­sec­ra­tions (Libby Lane’s) was a mod­el of how to order an epis­copal ordin­a­tion. Reac­tions to the ser­mon have been mixed; but there is no doubt about the theo­lo­gic­al, eccle­si­olo­gic­al and litur­gic­al assump­tions which under­girded the rite. A sense of cohe­sion was self-evid­ent in the Arch­bish­op’s pres­id­ency, com­ple­men­ted by the appro­pri­ate litur­gic­al min­istry of oth­ers. As the intro­duct­ory note to the Euchar­ist in Com­mon Wor­ship acknowledges:

The unity of the liturgy is served by the min­istry of the pres­id­ent who, in presid­ing over the whole ser­vice, holds word and sac­ra­ment togeth­er [my ital­ics] and draws the con­greg­a­tion into a wor­ship­ping com­munity. The pres­id­ent … expresses this min­istry by say­ing the open­ing Greet­ing, the Abso­lu­tion, the Col­lect, the Peace and the Bless­ing. The pres­id­ent must say the Euchar­ist­ic Pray­er, break the con­sec­rated bread and receive the sac­ra­ment on every occasion.

The Arch­bish­op’s mod­el­ling of this ideal felt organ­ic, innate and con­trib­uted to a sense that, as the con­greg­a­tion was car­ried by the peaks and troughs of the liturgy, as dif­fer­ent voices spoke, silences emerged, pro­ces­sions moved and music intens­i­fied the pray­ers and hopes those present, the unam­bigu­ous centre of grav­ity was the Arch­bish­op as litur­gic­al president.

In the second con­sec­ra­tion (Philip North’s) it was far less clear how the unity of the liturgy was being served. Some will say, inev­it­ably, that the lack of pres­id­en­tial cohe­sion exper­i­enced on this occa­sion was an all-too-real reflec­tion of the uncharted eccle­si­al, litur­gic­al and theo­lo­gic­al ter­rit­ory being nego­ti­ated. But need it have been so?

Quite often, it felt as if the fun­da­ment­al ques­tion of how pres­id­ency of the whole liturgy would be expressed to give unity and cohe­sion to a great cel­eb­ra­tion, sank under the accu­mu­la­tion of so many oth­er com­pet­ing demands. The leg­al and canon­ic­al rights of the Met­ro­pol­it­an were well emphas­ised, as were ques­tions of who would, and would not, lay hands on the can­did­ate; not to men­tion the per­il­ous pro­spect of tread­ing a safe path through all the media dis­cus­sion about pur­ity and taint. The (doubt­less unin­ten­ded) out­come was that the Archbishop’s stated desire to mod­el ‘gra­cious restraint’ was under­mined by the appar­ently ran­dom man­ner in which he seemed to appro­pri­ate aspects of the pres­id­en­tial role.

Instead of there being a centre of grav­ity in the liturgy, there was an impres­sion of two bish­ops com­pet­ing for the same space in a litur­gic­al game of music­al chairs. The one who greeted the con­greg­a­tion, absolved them and then blessed them at the con­clu­sion of the liturgy, did not recite the Euchar­ist­ic Pray­er, break the con­sec­rated bread, or invite the con­greg­a­tion to receive com­mu­nion. The notion of the unity of word and sac­ra­ment being embod­ied in the pres­id­ent was frac­tured. The focus of litur­gic­al unity was obscured.

I am left ask­ing why the Bish­op of Chichester could not have been gran­ted the Arch­bish­op of York’s com­mis­sion to preside over the whole rite. The Arch­bish­op was always going to be a vis­ible par­ti­cipant, exer­cising his min­istry at key moments (as preach­er and as Ordin­ary who received the oaths of due obed­i­ence). Such a litur­gic­al ges­ture of gra­cious restraint, and respect for theo­lo­gic­al con­vic­tion, would not require him to cede his author­ity as Met­ro­pol­it­an in his cathed­ral. But it would have enabled him to allow the unity of the liturgy to be served by the pres­id­ent, where the hold­ing togeth­er of word and sac­ra­ment is embod­ied in one bish­op, who is the centre of grav­ity for the wor­ship of the whole people of God.

At a less the­or­et­ic­al level, it is largely assumed that cathed­rals exem­pli­fy good prac­tice. And they do – York Min­ster included. But I have this awful feel­ing in the pit of my stom­ach that quite a num­ber of clergy, lay read­ers and oth­ers from the Black­burn Dio­cese (and fur­ther afield) will have come away from York Min­ster on Candlemas day think­ing that the mod­el of ‘pres­id­ency’ they wit­nessed at Philip North’s con­sec­ra­tion is a good thing (even down to wear­ing cum­ber­some copes instead of the tra­di­tion­al Euchar­ist­ic vest­ments usu­ally worn for the Euchar­ist in the Min­ster). ‘Let’s give it a try next Sunday,’ they will be thinking!

Much par­ish wor­ship in the Church of Eng­land is less than the trans­form­at­ive exper­i­ence it should be at present, pre­cisely because there is a lack of theo­lo­gic­al insight; a paucity of spa­tial and artist­ic ima­gin­a­tion; but most of all, con­fu­sion about what con­sti­tutes good pres­id­ency – and how good pres­id­ency enables the whole people of God to fully cel­eb­rate the mys­ter­ies of faith in the sac­ra­ment of unity. If this can be under­stood – and mod­elled prop­erly – before the next con­sec­ra­tion of a tra­di­tion­al­ist bish­op, it will be for the bet­ter health of the mis­sion of the entire Church of England.

Simon Reyn­olds is the author of Table Man­ners: Litur­gic­al Lead­er­ship for the Mis­sion of the Church (SCM, 2014).

Photo by Clive Lawrence, copy­right Dio­cese of Blackburn

Additional Texts for Holy Baptism (GS 1958A)

on Thursday, 29 January 2015 at 5.19 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

The Agenda for the Feb­ru­ary ses­sions of the Gen­er­al Syn­od was pub­lished recently. On Thursday after­noon, the Altern­at­ive Bap­tism Texts return to the Syn­od after the revi­sion com­mit­tee stage:

The fol­low­ing items (full details of which are con­tained in Spe­cial Agenda II – see page 9) will be taken:

600 Altern­at­ive Bap­tism Texts (GS 1958A)
– Report of the Revi­sion Com­mit­tee (GS 1958Y)

and the note on page 9 says:

ALTERNATIVE BAPTISM TEXTS (GS 1958A)
Art­icle 7 Business
Con­sid­er­a­tion of a Report by the Revi­sion Com­mit­tee (GS 1958Y)
The Chair of the Revi­sion Com­mit­tee (the Bish­op of Truro) to move:
600 ‘That the Syn­od do take note of this Report.’

Notes:
1. Notice of motions for re-com­mit­tal under the pro­vi­sions of Stand­ing Order 77(a) must be giv­en in writ­ing to the Clerk to the Syn­od by not later than 5.30pm on Tues­day 10 Feb­ru­ary 2015 (Stand­ing Order 10©). Any such motions will appear on a Notice Paper.

2. If no such motion is car­ried, the litur­gic­al busi­ness will auto­mat­ic­ally stand com­mit­ted to the House of Bish­ops under Stand­ing Order 77(f).

The texts (GS 1958A) and the report of the Revi­sion Com­mit­tee (GS 1958Y) can be found with oth­er papers for this group of ses­sions here.

Liturgical dates for 2015

on Sunday, 4 January 2015 at 9.52 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgy

There is a tra­di­tion of announ­cing at this time of the year the prin­cip­al dates of the eccle­si­ast­ic­al calendar.

Greg Kandra at ‘Don’t for­get to chant the date of East­er this Sunday’ lists the dates and the usu­al formula.

Of course nowadays you can just use a prin­ted alman­ac – or even an online one such as mine.

Religious Architecture

on Sunday, 4 January 2015 at 5.54 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as architecture, liturgy

It is inten­ded to say quite a bit at Think­ing Liturgy on the sub­ject of church archi­tec­ture. Mean­while, here is an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of pic­tures of

PHOTOS: See the award win­ners for stun­ning reli­gious architecture

Take a visu­al jour­ney of sac­red spaces around the world through the win­ners of the 2014 Inter­na­tion­al Awards Pro­gram for Reli­gious Art & Archi­tec­ture, giv­en out by Faith & Form, the inter­faith journ­al on reli­gion, art and architecture.

A five-mem­ber jury of artists, archi­tects, litur­gic­al design­ers and clergy handed out 32 awards from 134 submissions.

From the press release:

“Jury mem­bers agreed that reli­gious art and archi­tec­ture are flour­ish­ing through­out the world, and that artists, archi­tects, litur­gic­al design­ers, stu­dents, and oth­ers are explor­ing ways to bal­ance tra­di­tion with new demands of reli­gious prac­tice. The land­scape of sac­red space is chan­ging, along with dra­mat­ic shifts in organ­ized religion.”

The designs will prob­ably not be wel­comed by all, and they include places oth­er than Chris­ti­an ones. They are also largely, but not exclus­ively, North American.

Advice to "traditional worshippers"

on Wednesday, 31 December 2014 at 5.13 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgy

In an art­icle Dear Tra­di­tion­al Wor­ship­pers blog­ger “Jonath­an” gets to grips with some of the issues between “tra­di­tion­al” and “con­tem­por­ary” wor­ship. Writ­ing from an Amer­ic­an Meth­od­ist per­spect­ive he lists some of the things that are lost by “con­tem­por­ary” worship,

It’s dev­ast­at­ing to see what’s happened to wor­ship in the church. You’re right. The blind­ness sur­round­ing the issue is astound­ing. The insist­ence that the com­mon trends of the day are most fit­ting for pub­lic wor­ship is wrong and short-sighted. It’s griev­ing that most churches now let Chris­ti­ans choose to not learn the his­tor­ic creeds, or the great tra­di­tion of hymns and songs, or the great priv­ilege of pray­ing togeth­er and read­ing Scrip­ture togeth­er. The com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of our sac­red time, well, it’s noth­ing short of tra­gic. Yeah, we’ve sac­ri­ficed so much of who we are.

I know you feel like it’s been stolen from you. I know the pain runs deep. I know you’ve lost jobs, friends, fam­ily, con­greg­a­tions. I know you’ve paid a dear price.

I hear you. I’m one of you. I get it.

But he continues

But here’s the deal. We’ve become part of the problem.

It’s not enough to say “we like it.” That does­n’t mat­ter. The worst thing that “con­tem­por­ary wor­ship” did was come on the scene, label itself as a viable choice, and then get away with labeling the liturgy as a choice, also. But we can learn from the brokenness.

It’s not enough to say, “That was my mom’s favor­ite hymn.” Or, “It’s my pref­er­ence.” Or, “Those were some of my best child­hood memor­ies.” It’s got to be deep­er than that, or we’re just guard­ing our rel­ics, our museum pieces.

It’s not about sen­ti­ment­al­ity. It’s not about taste or pref­er­ence. It’s about meaning.

The bot­tom line is this. We don’t keep tra­di­tion because it’s tra­di­tion, or because it’s old, or because it’s comfortable.

We keep tra­di­tion because it’s worth doing. Because it anchors us. Because it’s big­ger than us. Because it reminds us that we’re not alone. Because it keeps us hon­est. Because it helps us avoid think­ing that this wor­ship thing is all about us. Because it builds up the church. Because it lets us bet­ter engage our minds with our spir­it. Because it helps us respond as the vis­ible community.

So maybe we need to rethink our plan of action.

And he goes on to list a dozen point where action can be taken.

Def­in­itely worth a read.

More Canadian trial liturgy

on Wednesday, 3 December 2014 at 7.37 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

I noted earli­er the pub­lic­a­tion by the Anglic­an Church of Canada of tri­al Year A Col­lects ‘from Pente­cost to the Reign of Christ’.

The Cana­dian Church has added con­sid­er­ably more resources to that page in the inter­ven­ing peri­od. It now contains

• Morn­ing and Even­ing Pray­er: Advent, Christ­mas and Epiphany
• Tri­al Use Litur­gic­al Psalter
• Tri­al Use Col­lects and Sea­son­al Pray­ers over the Gifts and after Com­mu­nion from Advent to the Bap­tism of Christ — Year B
• Tri­al Use Col­lects and Sea­son­al Pray­ers over the Gifts and after Com­mu­nion from Advent to the Bap­tism of Christ — Year A
• Tri­al Use Col­lects from Pente­cost to the Reign of Christ — Year A

In the Cana­dian Church each dio­ces­an bish­op can author­ize the this mater­i­al for tri­al use in their dio­cese, and the task Force encour­ages feed­back on their use.

(Thanks to Rod Gil­lis for draw­ing my atten­tion to the new mater­i­al. As before, I wel­come read­ers send­ing sug­ges­tions of suit­able links either by email or as a com­ment on an exist­ing article.)

2014-15 Almanac

on Wednesday, 29 October 2014 at 11.19 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgy

Each year since 2002 I have pro­duced a down­load­able cal­en­dar for the forth­com­ing litur­gic­al year, accord­ing to the rules of the Church of England’s Com­mon Wor­ship Cal­en­dar and Lectionary.

The 2014–15 Alman­ac is now avail­able for Out­look, Apple desktop and iOS Cal­en­dar, Google Cal­en­dar, Android devices and oth­er formats, with your choice of Sunday, week­day, euchar­ist­ic, office, col­lects, Excit­ing Holi­ness lec­tions, for Com­mon Wor­ship and BCP.

Down­load is free, dona­tions are invited.

Liturgy and the 100 best Christian books

on Tuesday, 14 October 2014 at 10.03 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical news, liturgy

Is a story about some­thing which didn’t hap­pen news?

The Church Times has recently pub­lished its list of “100 best Chris­ti­an books”.

Amongst these 100 works there is not a single volume con­tain­ing or con­cern­ing liturgy. The closest is per­haps at num­ber 37 The Pray­ers and Med­it­a­tions of St Anselm.

This might be con­sidered a strange omis­sion in a list, par­tic­u­larly in an Anglic­an com­pil­a­tion, although the com­pilers delib­er­ately decided to exclude the Book of Com­mon Pray­er (mean­ing pre­sum­ably the 1662 edi­tion) and favour­ite hymn books. Even so, it is sur­pris­ing that there are no books about liturgy and litur­gic­al prac­tice included.

So I invite read­ers to make sug­ges­tions of books of or about liturgy that they think might have been included, and why.

worship or performance

on Monday, 22 September 2014 at 11.45 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgy

This week’s edit­or­i­al at Anglic­ans Online pon­ders the ques­tion When is a ser­vice wor­ship and when is it per­form­ance?.

Our friend enjoys the cleans­ing end-of-the-day, begin­ning-of-the-week feel to Com­pline on Sunday even­ings. She, like us, views the ser­vices of the Daily Office as wor­ship­ful expres­sions of our beliefs and faith. Ima­gine her sur­prise when she sat down with the pew sheet: The second word on the inside cov­er was ‘per­form­ance’.

Com­pline as per­form­ance? She brought us the pew sheet. We read it through. Unfor­tu­nately, this time the sung ser­vice of Com­pline seemed to be replaced with a con­cert based on Com­pline. Soloists were named, a long bio­graph­ic­al sketch of the con­duct­or was included. No men­tion was made of the his­tory or role of Com­pline in the wor­ship life of our tra­di­tion. No men­tion of wel­com­ing the con­greg­a­tion to a time of pray­er. Per­haps we are being too picky. Per­haps it is enough the ser­vice is being offered no mat­ter the circumstances.

We were left to pon­der: When is a ser­vice wor­ship and when is it per­form­ance? Does it mat­ter? Should it matter?

Liturgical presidency

on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 9.09 am by Tom Ambrose
categorised as liturgy, thinking liturgy

The term ‘pres­id­ent’ sig­ni­fies an import­ant shift in litur­gic­al think­ing. The words ‘priest’ and even ‘min­is­ter’, used in the 1662 Book of Com­mon Pray­er, appear to have a per­fectly clear and adequate mean­ing. But bib­lic­al under­stand­ings of priest­hood encom­passed ideas of a spe­cially-selec­ted per­son who might carry out func­tions on behalf of people from which they might even be excluded. The Holy of Hol­ies of the Temple was reserved for the priest­hood, who per­formed their func­tions largely in secret. 

A pres­id­ent acts in the midst of a gath­er­ing of the people of God. The most ancient Chris­ti­an churches are mod­elled on the spaces for civil gath­er­ings of the Roman Empire. This is our mod­el for the set­ting of the Eucharist.

Through­out Chris­ti­an his­tory, there has been a ten­sion between the roles of priest (min­is­ter­ing on behalf of the people in a holy place) and pres­id­ent. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, with the norm for the West­ern Mass being the daily duty of clergy, priest­hood was para­mount, and pres­id­ency could vir­tu­ally disappear.

• The priest might be alone, save for one server
• He had his back to the people
• Some of the pray­ers were silent, or even delib­er­ately secret
• Lat­in, a reli­gious lan­guage used to address God, was used in pref­er­ence to the ver­nacu­lar used to address the people
• The priest might be sep­ar­ated from the people by a screen, a choir formed of a reli­gious com­munity or both
• Women were kept away from the altar, and only men would serve

The Reform­a­tion began a reversal. In the BCP, Eng­lish is employed, and the priest must speak aud­ibly. But Cranmer’s idea of a gath­er­ing around the holy table set length­wise in the church with the pres­id­ent at the ‘north side’ soon lost its mean­ing when the tables were returned to the spaces formerly occu­pied by medi­ev­al stone altars.

For the Reformers there were few clear mod­els of pres­id­ency at hand, and this meant that the BCP does not provide adequate guid­ance. The BCP Euchar­ist begins, not with an act of litur­gic­al pres­id­ency, but with the private devo­tion of the priest. The priest alone says the Lord’s Pray­er, and the people are not even invited to respond with the ‘Amen’. They respond only after the Col­lect for Pur­ity. It seems as though the first task of the priest in this ser­vice is not pres­id­ency, but, once he has pur­i­fied him­self with his devo­tions, to admon­ish the people by remind­ing them of the Ten Com­mand­ments. Tra­di­tion­ally, the priest only turns to face the con­greg­a­tion at this point. What pic­ture must go through his mind as he turns from the vis­ion of saints in a sun­lit east win­dow to the people below in the nave? Is he Moses, com­ing down the moun­tain from his encounter with God to deliv­er the law to a dis­obedi­ent crowd of golden calf worshippers? 

Pres­id­ency is also not very evid­ent at the begin­ning of the BCP Order for the Buri­al of the Dead. The priest intones a series of bib­lic­al texts as the coffin is brought into church, start­ling the con­greg­a­tion with a boom­ing voice from the back declar­ing that ‘I am the resur­rec­tion and the life’. It isn’t a good pres­id­en­tial act. And Morn­ing Pray­er opens not with a greet­ing, but with the recol­lec­tion of ‘the wicked man’. That glor­i­ous address to the con­greg­a­tion, ‘dearly beloved brethren’, is lost in what appears like a great deal of fin­ger-wag­ging. The leg­acy of cen­tur­ies of inad­equate mod­els of pres­id­ency enshrined in the texts of the BCP has giv­en those called to min­is­ter a poor mod­el of how to lead wor­ship. What is more, the need to keep to a faith­ful adher­ence to the words of the Pray­er Book, without addi­tions, made it dif­fi­cult to assert a pres­id­en­tial role.

Today the pres­id­ent at the Euchar­ist is bid­den to address the people and greet them in the name of the Lord, invit­ing their response by estab­lish­ing the entire body as a gath­er­ing for wor­ship. This, crit­ic­ally, requires the use of mod­ern Eng­lish. The reten­tion of ‘King James Eng­lish’ at this point is dis­astrous because, whilst we might like to address our cre­at­or rev­er­en­tially as ‘Thou’, for the con­greg­a­tion to use the same expres­sion (and with thy spir­it) when respond­ing to the vicar sounds quite over the top. (The post Vat­ic­an 2 Span­ish trans­la­tion of the Lat­in Mass got it right when the people’s response was ‘Y con tu espir­itu’ rather than the respect­ful address in the third per­son used when speak­ing defer­en­tially to superiors.)

For­tu­nately Com­mon Wor­ship encour­ages flex­ib­il­ity in the open­ing greet­ing. The pres­id­ent may add oth­er words of greet­ing, and may then, after the greet­ing, give fur­ther words of intro­duc­tion in order to enable and enrich the par­ti­cip­a­tion of the entire gath­er­ing. The bap­tism party are acknow­ledged, and the can­did­ate is named. Returned former parish­ion­ers can be wel­comed, and sig­ni­fic­ant vis­it­ors are poin­ted out. The pres­id­ent may intro­duce him­self or her­self and name oth­ers who will take a sig­ni­fic­ant role in the ser­vice. The occa­sion for cel­eb­ra­tion is high­lighted. In short, the pres­id­ent ini­ti­ates ‘The Gath­er­ing’ of all who will share in wor­ship and sets out the journey.

With this begin­ning, the con­greg­a­tion will look to the pres­id­ent to keep them on course through­out the ser­vice. The days when the liturgy pro­ceeded without announce­ments, hymns were simply lis­ted on the board, and the reg­u­lar wor­ship­pers always knew what came next are over. That sep­ar­a­tion of ‘sheep’, who knew what would hap­pen next, and ‘goats’, who were com­pletely at sea, is unac­cept­able. The pres­id­ent real­ises the import­ance of includ­ing every­one so that they are able to par­ti­cip­ate; kneel­ing, sit­ting, stand­ing, speak­ing without embar­rass­ment. This has the advant­age of allow­ing flex­ib­il­ity into the ser­vice without giv­ing the impres­sion that some­how things have gone wrong when the usu­al order is varied.

Some may object that they do not want what can appear like an unne­ces­sary run­ning com­ment­ary on a famil­i­ar ser­vice. But the new­comers must be invited in. Indeed, this idea is para­mount in gos­pel stor­ies which provide mod­els for the Euchar­ist. At the feed­ing of the 5,000, when the dis­ciples want to send the people away, Jesus gath­ers the crowd to sit on the grass to be present for the break­ing of bread. 

The pres­id­en­tial role of Jesus at the Last Sup­per, as Pas­sov­er is cel­eb­rated, is clear in every depic­tion of the event. The ris­en Christ takes that role again, at Emmaus, and on the shores of Galilee when he invites the dis­ciples to ‘come and have break­fast’. Jesus presides at the break­ing of bread, and gives us the mod­el for the Chris­ti­an Euchar­ist. The mould, of the old priest­hood at the Temple, is broken, for the veil of the Temple has been torn apart. It is not the busi­ness of the Chris­ti­an priest­hood today to try to put it back.