I don’t remember the first time I
took communion. I vaguely remember something about classes—maybe I even learned
something, but if I did, it’s long flown away—but I suspect, when I first took
communion, I couldn’t actually have explained a single thing about what it was
that I was doing. I suspect this is the same with most who come forward to the
rail. What is communion? A mystery, we might say.
Whatever our theology, and Martin
Luther wrote volumes on this subject, all we really have from scripture is
Jesus saying, “Take, eat; this is my body… drink from it, all of you, this is
my blood…” Paul adds directions to that in his letters, but, really, they
aren’t much clearer. What we have is an open-ended sacrament.
I’ve gone to seminary and led my
share of first communion classes, so I can tell you now what Luther’s Small
Catechism says about communion—namely, that is gives forgiveness of sins, life,
and salvation—but those words telling us about what communion is pale in comparison
to the experience of what it does. This is not something to be understood with
your head; it’s something that should be felt deep inside of you. It’s meaning
is not in its logic but in its mysteriousness.
But practical matters get in the way
and eventually we have logical questions, like “Who gets to commune?” Is it members of the church? Is it members
of our denomination? Is it all Christians? Is it all people? “And what age?”
Is it from the first moment a baby can
eat solid food? Is it six? Eight? Ten? Twelve? Eighteen? If it’s only when
you understand it, then I suspect the answer is never, because what hope do any
of us have to put the experience into words? For that matter, “How often should
we commune?” Every day? Every Sunday?
Every other Sunday? Once or twice a year?
Jesus doesn’t answer these things. We can
intuit some sense of right practice and feel it deeply, but the open-endedness
of communion has made this extremely difficult to pin down, and I suspect that
many churches who do it very differently nevertheless do it very faithfully. For
me, the reason communion is hard to pin down is because it is a means of
grace—and means of grace are free, and unmerited, and don’t stand up to any of
the rules we construct around them. They defy our legalism.
So, we struggle together to find
common ground. I believe differently about it that many of you—probably most of
you. This is good and fine, because communion is deep and mysterious, and it is
one area of our lives where our thoughts and feelings should be open to moving
along with the Holy Spirit. The altar is a place where we should be moved.
When I interned out in Oregon, my
supervisor told me that he had a change of heart at one point in his ministry
when a child, three years old or so, reached out to him asking for the bread.
The child’s parent quickly grabbed their hands to hold them back. I’ve seen
this so many times in my ministry as well. It’s the most natural thing in the
world for the child to want to partake and parents to want their child to learn
proper etiquette and patience. But the thing my supervisor realized—that I also
believe to be true—is that since communion is a means of grace, it is one place
where nobody should be rejected, and that child knew what it meant to be left
out of the community of faith.
Now, I can certainly understand when we
talk about teaching children the virtue of waiting with patience for meaningful
things; it’s just that, to me, communion isn’t the thing we should be waiting
on. Confirmation, yes. Communion, perhaps not. The irony is that I tend to
think many kids get it better than we do anyway, even if they don’t get the
conventions right, and even if they are grumpy, or loud, or fail to show the
reverence we wish they would.
I don’t remember my first communion, so I
can’t tell you that story, but I do remember Natalie’s, and, today, I want to
share that with you, because for me it was an eye-opener on what it means to experience
grace.
We were at a friend’s wedding last year in
South Dakota. Natalie was being fussy—really, a terror—and I had removed her
from the sanctuary for most of the wedding. She was running around, not paying
any attention, and doing all the kid things that drive parents crazy. The
service had gone on for quite some time when I managed to get her back in the
sanctuary just before communion. She was sitting in my lap, a little fussy
still until the pastor started the communion liturgy. At that moment, something
shifted. She stared at the bread and the wine and I could tell she was thinking
about it. Ultimately, she turned to me, and scowled, and said, “Why can’t I
have that?”
I can tell you what I wanted to tell her.
I wanted to say, “Because you’re a little terrorist who only wants it because
you can’t have it!”
But I stopped, and I thought about what I
believed about it, and I asked, “Do you want to have it?”
She nodded. And in the following three
minutes we had the fastest first communion class in the history of church. But
the truth is that this had been ongoing since the first time she came to the
altar—from the first occasion where she put out her hands and I put nothing in
it, because I knew the rules of the space, and I respect those rules. But this
tension always hits me in the gut every time any kid—not just Natalie—comes
forward for communion and does this… [open hands] and not jokingly, as some do
it, but honestly, earnestly expecting something.
I think of Jesus, saying “Take eat; take
drink,” and it was for his disciples, I know, but didn’t he just get done
saying, “Let the children come to me.” And I don’t know the answer, but I do
know grace, because I’ve seen it and it looked like this.
It looked like Natalie nodding along as I
told her what communion was, as simply as I could explain it. This is Jesus’
body and blood, given for you. “It’s not really blood, is it?” she asked,
because of course she did. “Well, it is still grape juice, but it is also his
blood.” “How?” “I don’t know.”
And she nodded. And we got in line. She
stuck out her hands and got the bread, and she held out her hands for the grape
juice. And then we went back to our seats.
Since that day, every day we come to
church, even as we are getting ready for church, she always asks, “Do I get to
come forward today?” And I know what she means, and I’m sad when the answer is
no, because, frankly, she’s still often terrible in church. She doesn’t always
listen. She usually wants to do things that she shouldn’t be, or at least can’t
always be doing, but communion is the one place where she experiences Jesus
every single time—even when she’s grumpy, even when she doesn’t show the
reverence I wish she would show.
As I think this Maundy Thursday about
Jesus and that Last Supper, I’m astounded by the vastness of grace. Right
practice is just a thing we do to try to be in community together as a body of
Christ, but God’s grace is bigger than our practices. God’s grace is for us
every day, no matter the walls we put up to keep it in check, and it never gets
less special. Communion, at its heart, is the physical enactment of grace that
we need to be reminded of so desperately again and again. So, I’ve given away
my stance on all this, but at the end of the day, I don’t want my beliefs to
make communion about different rules. I like rules around most things, but I’m
careful about rules around this. This is Jesus’ gift for you, for me, for
Natalie, and for all of us.
It’s still a mystery and will be a mystery
for us always. It’s Christ’s body and blood, given and shed for us. It’s simply
ours. So, come.
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