Easter Communion

Effie and Elizabeth (May 2007)

 

Effie Macleod died in 2007, in her late nineties. She was a dearly loved member of Greyfriars Stratherrick Free Church in Inverness and widely regarded as a Christian woman of wise and modest spirituality, and progressive outlook. Latterly, a favourite topic of conversation was the old Free Church communions on the Isle of Lewis in the days of her youth.

Highland communions typically lasted over a period of five or more days. Informal fellowships and prayer meetings run by the elders might stretch this out to a week. Officially, however, the services began on Thursday, the ‘Fast Day’, when the whole community would stop work and attend services at which the emphasis was on introspection and self-humbling. Friday was the ‘Question Day,’ a unique form of fellowship when a minister would set a verse for spontaneous discussion by the men, who would attempt to relate it to their recent Christian experience. On Saturday, the accent was on anticipation and preparation for the communion service of the following day. On Sunday, or ‘Sabbath’, morning the Sacrament was dispensed. In the evening the emphasis of the sermon was evangelistic. Monday’s services concluded the communion season on a high note of praise and thanksgiving.

Open-air Highland Communion, c.1870

Effie loved these great sacramental gatherings at her Siabost home, in Lewis, when Christians would travel from near and far to be present. After the services they would gather in homes for fellowship, prayer, and psalm and hymn singing and questions of theology and Christian life would be discussed. At their best these fellowships were useful, but sometimes the ‘bodachs’ (old men) would forget themselves and lose everyone in bizarre flights of exegetical fancy or abstruse and speculative theology. The sessions would go on into the early hours, punctuated by rounds of tea and scones, with crowdie and jam. Exhausted, the company would disperse to sleep; sometimes four to a bed.

In South Africa this tradition, imported by the early Scottish missionaries, is alive and well. Called conventions, a similar Thursday to Sunday pattern is followed. At our recent Easter convention, people travelled from the Transkei in the north and from as far south as Cape Town. It was a great time for reunions, good food, and warm fellowship; as well as the more formal preaching. On Sunday, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated and it was moving to see over 500 people being served by elders, some wearing frock coats of a bygone age, whilst Psalm 116 was softly sung through twice. Silver and pewter plates, piled high with morsels of bread and eleven silver and pewter cups of wine, topped up from great ewers, were needed to serve the congregation. Some of these old communion vessels were inscribed with the names of Scottish congregations who had passed them on as surplus to requirements; perhaps a mute testimony to a dwindling Scottish but a growing South African spirituality.

Cooking stew for the post-communion dinner

One friend told us how she had not been able to get to sleep before two in the morning, so taken up had she been with fellowship and singing. Effie would have loved it all. From the big black cast iron pots in which the meat was cooked, to the banter in the kitchen and the meeting up with old friends from afar, to say nothing of the spiritual nourishment.

Our personal experience, in five continents, over thirty-five years of ministry, is that Christians share far more in common than the superficial linguistic or cultural differences might suggest.

Apartheid might have dispossessed the Xhosa people of their civil rights and privileges, shunting them from pillar to post at the whim of the Pretoria government, but it did not rob them of their dignity or spirituality. Like the communism it reviled, the hated apartheid has also perished in the dust. And as we joined the convoy of cars and minibuses jolting their way homewards along the gravel road, the great affirmative words of John Ellerton came to mind:

So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.

A photo album of pictures of the Easter Convention