Now, Christians – wise up. I want some answers. I’d like to return to this question about what it is that entitles someone to receive communion.
We had quite a chat about it when I asked whether one sacrament needed to come before another one.
Lots of people seem to think this really matters a very great deal indeed.
Consider, if you will, the following invitations and exclusions from the table of the Lord. All these are real and are quoted either from service sheets printed by congregations or noted from the spoken invitation to communion given by the person presiding. The first two are quite interesting because they each have a comment in both English and French and it is noteworthy that there is not a direct translation in either case.
- Le pain consacré et distibué au course de la messe a une haute signification pour les catholiques: c’est le Corps de Jésus-Christ leur Seigneur et Dieu. Si vous ne partagez pas notre foi en sa présence, nous vous demandons de ne pas vous joindre à la procession de communion.
The bread distributed during mass has a high significance for Christians: it is the body of Christ, their Lord and God. If you do not share our faith in the living presence of Christ in the eucharistic bread, we ask you not to join your neighbours at communion time. - L’hospitalité eucharistique est offerte à toute personne, quelle que soit sa confession ecclésiale.
All are welcome to share in the banquet of the Lord’s Supper. Please come to the altar at the direction of the ushers. It is customary to kneel at the rail (as you are able). Receive the bread (wafer) in the palm of your outstretched hands with the right over the left. Receive the wine, which follows, by drinking from the cup as it is extended to you. Ladies, please blot your lipstick. - Everyone who loves the Lord Jesus Christ as their own personal Saviour is welcome to receive the bread and wine in this church.
- All baptised Christians of trinitarian churches are welcome to receive communion in this church.
- Those who are in good standing in their own churches are welcome to join us in receiving the bread and wine at God’s table.
- This is the table not of the Church but of the Lord. It is to be made ready for those who love him, and who want to love him more. So, come, you who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often and you who have not been for a very long time, you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because it is I who invite you: it is our Lord.
It is his will that those who want him should meet him here. - Everyone is welcome to receive the bread and wine at communion in this church. If you do not wish to receive the bread and wine, please come forward with everyone else for a blessing, holding a service sheet in your hands.
Now, my brothers and sisters. What do we think about all this?
Isn’t it interesting how many churches believe that not everyone should be able to receive communion. And yet, isn’t it interesting how wide the discrepancies are in the terms of the deal, even in the seven churches quoted above. Some say that you are unworthy if you’ve not been baptised. Some that you are unworthy if you don’t believe the right thing about a point of doctrine, some that you are unworthy because you’ve not been initiated properly yet, some that you are not worthy if you are “not in good standing” with someone or other because of something or other.
Is it not incredibly interesting that 2000 years on from the first Last Supper, God’s people really have not managed to agree what the terms of the invitation are?
Now, what do you think?
No 2 is interesting! “ladies please blot your lipstick”! It should really read “Would anyone wearing lipstick please blot it!” But “quelle que soit sa confession ecclésiale.” Where was this sourced from? RC or Diocese of Gib and europe?. I rather agree with it.
Neither RC nor Diocese of Gibraltar. Not all Anglicans on the continent are C of E.
You specifically ask for answers, so here’s what I think:
Admission to communion is a spiritual blessing, and there is no great merit in the elements themselves, but only in the significance attached to them when they are consecrated. People who receive communion should have at least some understanding of this significance, otherwise you might as well be giving them sweets. This would preclude very young children from receiving communion, although I am sure God looks after them in His own way.
Of course there are many ways to gain this understanding, but an important one is by Confirmation Classes. I (personally) started my Christian life when I was confirmed, and I greatly regret to loss of this deeply significant custom.
While, Andrew, this symbolical understanding is a view of the Eucharistic elements, it is not the only view. Even the manifestly Protestant books of Common Prayer of the 17th century note that consecrated elements are not to be used for ‘common’ purposes but are to be consumed devoutly at the end or immediately after the service.
But to me I think we should beware assuming that God’s blessing is not objective, and is somehow dependent on what you and I make of it. The case of Baptism, particularly as you mention it, is a case in point. What is important is not what we receive, but what God gives.
I too deplore the demise of Confirmation, but I am eternally grateful that my parents chose to have me baptised when I was days old, and I believe the faithful God has been faithful to the promises. Promises which I was pleased to confirm when I was 11, but pleased to say I have always been a Christian.
I take the view that the priest is only the waiter at the banquet and not the chef. The chef didn’t mention anything about conditions when he cooked the meal. Therefore, we should view all gatekeeping as purely a human invention and not as having any theological base. Decisions to make the receiving of the sacrament conditional may be valid within the context of the group that imposes them, but, as they are not from God, they can be (and should be) changed if the context changes and makes them irrelevant and/or unhelpful to the mission of the group.
In the first example, “les catholiques” appears in the English version as “Christians”. Hmmm…. Interesting.
Indeed so, manageremeritus. That was one of the first things I noticed too.
And in the second, those reading in French were not advised to blot their lipstick.
This is something that I have experience of, sadly. I grew up in the C of S, and was about 12 or 13 when the whole “how old do you have to be to receive communion?” debate came up in the General Assembly. It was left up to the individual churches, and in my case it was left up to the individual elders. Which resulted in me, and my friends, actually being refused the bread as part of the communion celebration. Literally. It was taken from my hand by someone who didn’t think we should be partaking. Which I found heartbreaking, as someone who had (and does) believed in God my whole life, and grown up in the church. In fact, it was my commitment to the church which made it hard for me – everyone knew me. And yet as an adult, I could have walked into any church and taken communion without question.
My husband is an atheist, and when we had a discussion about it, I realised I believe that if you believe in Christ, and the reasons behind the Last Supper, then you are welcome to participate. I was welcomed to the Anglican Church in Wales with open arms, and no need for confirmation, a few years ago. They recognised I believed in the Eucharist. We don’t need ceremonies or certificates to decide whether people are worthy. Of course, for the Catholic church there is the transubstantiation issue. But in protestant churches, I don’t like the idea of people being turned away from the table. It’s Christ’s meal, and he welcomes everyone to the table who believes in him, we’re only His guests.
Andrew, do you favour a test of understanding then? What about the adults with Downs’ at my church, do we turn them away? No – because they, and the young children, know they are receiving something special, even though they cannot explain transubstantiation.
Before I became a priest I used to worship at a church in Nottingham. A young woman, in her late teens, with both mental and physical problems so extreme that she could not communicate or control her movements at all, came to church every Sunday with her mother. The priest insisted that she was confirmed even though nobody had any idea what she understood about anything. I was at her confirmation. After the bishop laid hands on her head and she was pushed back to where her wheelchair was always parked we looked at her. There were tears rolling down her cheeks. that had never happened before in church.
The following January, after attending an epiphany party at church, she died suddenly.
It was an Anglo-Catholic church and she was given a full requiem mass. Because of the humanity of that priest there was no hypocrisy at that requiem.
Along the lines of MadPriest, I am struck in these conversations at how little we as human beings (and especially those with the power who actually write the stuff down) want to take responsibility for our particular ‘fence’. Better to blame it on a theological system or better yet an analogy.
Somewhere inside me I seem to believe that the gifts of God are lavished most generously on those who least deserve them.
I’ve a feeling that is the gospel.
Just in the event that anyone cares to know, I always blot my lipstick.
If you asked a group of 10 properly baptized Christians what meaning they attached to the Eucharist, I wonder what the answers would be and how the responses would differ.
Do Americans wear more lippy than those on this side of the pond?
The men do. 😀
Yes, but men are not invited to blot.
Very strange.
I can see Statesonians reapplying their lippy as they prepare to go to communion. One must look one’s best, you know!
That Grandmère Mimi can get lippy. I know that from personal experience.
I’ve experienced the second last “invitation” used in a communion service and found it incredibly powerful. The church where I heard it regularly attracts folk to its small evening service that you might call “visiting seekers” and also people whose church connection has lapsed. The words seemed spot-on.