• Fencing the Table

  23/05/2012

  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?

  baptism, confirmation, invitations to communion, open table

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