ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 11, 1996 TAG: 9605130016
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MIAMI
SOURCE: JUDY PINO KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The communion of the Last Supper - Jesus instructing his disciples that he would live on through the bread and wine he was sharing with them - is now packaged and sold in two-layer, hermetically sealed cups, 210 to a case.
Juice fills the bottom half; the wafer's in the top, separated by a seal.
The Celebration Cup is being marketed to large churches as an alternative to preparing their own sacrament.
``It would take us more than an hour before to prepare the bread and pour the juice,'' says the Rev. James C. Wise, pastor of Southwest Dade, Fla.'s, Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church, which draws 200 to 500 for Sunday services. ``Now we just pass the cups down the pew.''
Wise, who is also director of the 850,000-member Florida General Baptist Convention, said his group and the 8.5 million-member National Baptist Convention USA endorsed the cups.
But some people are queasy. ``I don't condemn the use of the prepackaged cups, but we would never use it in the Catholic Church,'' says Michael Derrick, assistant director of Offices of Worship for the Archdiocese of Miami.
``It doesn't feel or seem right,'' says Rev. Riley Wiese, assistant pastor of First United Methodist Church of South Miami. "Something as basic as communion should be the last thing that should be changed."
``It is almost too commercialized. It seems like too much tampering with holy things,'' says Eric Larson, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University.
The Celebration Cup has been on the market for five months and is being used by 1,000 churches nationwide, says the maker, Chicago's Compak Corp. The cups, which wholesale to churches for 12 to 14 cents each, have a one-year shelf life. ``Churches can save money because they can store the cups that are not consumed,'' said Brian Cline of the Baptist Bookstore chain, one of the distributors.
Broadman and Holman, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist denomination and a branch of Compak, also packages and distributes the cups, selling them at Christian bookstores under the brand name Remembrance Cups. A box of six retails for $2.99.
``The portability makes it simpler for them to deliver communion to the homebound, hospital patients, travelers, prisoners, missionary groups ... and other nontraditional groups,'' says Libby Eaton, marketing manager for Broadman and Holman.
For centuries, Christians have observed Communion of the Lord's Last Supper - a sacred ceremony in which they receive the sacrament according to Christ's command: ``Do this in remembrance of me.'' Juice or wine, and bread or an unleavened wafer, represent the blood and body of Christ for both the Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths, but the significance of the communion elements differs. Most Protestants believe the elements are symbols made holy by God's spirit. Romans Catholics teach that the elements are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB