For Wilshire Baptist Church
Ever hear something for years and then find out that you’ve been hearing it wrong and then you feel so stupid? The fun examples are misheard song lyircs, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “there’s a bad moon on the rise,” which has been hilariously misheard by some as, “there’s a bathroom on the right.” But I was flat out embarrassed recently when we were talking about taking communion to homebound church members and I discovered that I’ve been hearing the word “intention” all these years when actually it is “intinction.”
Intinction, really? It sounds totally made up – like a word out of a Dr. Seuss book – but I looked it up and there it is: “in-tinc-tion (noun) the action of dipping the bread in the wine at a Eucharist so that a communicant receives both together.” The verb is “intinct,” and it has Latin roots, but my word processing dictionary underlines it in red and tries to insert “instinct” instead. I’m not the only one confused.
Here’s how I got it wrong for so long: I grew up in the Baptist church and never heard the words “intinction” or “intinct” because we never did communion that way. We sat in the pews and were served bread and then grape juice in two separate passings of the trays. And then I married a Catholic and they don’t use that word either because they don’t regularly intinct. They allow intinction in rare, special circumstances but it is not normative; I’ve never seen it in any Catholic setting. Then I came to Wilshire, and sometime during the past two or three decades I first heard that word when used to explain how we would take communion during a vespers or Maundy Thursday service. But actually, I didn’t hear that word; my ears and my brain heard “intention.”
In my mind, “intention” is the act of getting up out of the pew and walking to the chancel or altar to receive communion. It’s intentional because it requires you to get up off your bottom rather than sitting and waiting to be served, which is passive and doesn’t require much intention at all — unless you intentionally choose not to take the bread and the cup when the trays are passed. That is always a personal option, by the way, and some traditions actually advise that you shouldn’t take communion unless you are in the right frame of mind and in a right relationship with God. My personal belief is that you take communion precisely because you are broken and incomplete and are hungry for a relationship with God.
So, my intentions in my mishearing and misuse of the word were good, but when I finally heard the word “intinction” for the first time I was embarrassed. I was also miffed by all the times I’ve heard people say that word and slurred through the “c.” Shame on them for bad enunciation, I thought. But I’ve chilled out now and I’m no longer afraid to confess my error.
I’m also not afraid to say that I still believe there is some value in my concept of “intention.” Whether walking to the chancel to intinct, or sitting in the pews to receive, we should be intentional in our attitude about taking communion. We shouldn’t just grab the goods and pass the tray; we should take it as seriously as Christ himself did when he instituted that communal act. Whether we consider it a holy sacrament or a symbolic ordinance, whether we intinct or not, we should be intentional in our reverence, reflection and desire for relationship.
If you are new to Wilshire, you’ll be glad to know that some of us long timers are still learning the ropes. And now I need to check and see if that phrase “learning the ropes” means what I think it means.