churchy musings

[deird1]

My four year old son has started taking communion.

Most of you won’t get exactly why I’m mentioning this. But some of you might understand a bit more if I put it like this: my son, who has not yet been baptised, has started taking communion.

This is unusual.

Orthodox and Catholic churches baptise teeny babies – so when churchgoers take communion, one can pretty much assume they’ve been baptised. The Baptist church, where I was raised, doesn’t baptise people until they’re older – but it also operates on the assumption that you naturally won’t start taking communion until after you’ve been baptised.

I’m at an Anglican church. The middle road. The denomination where we try not to commit to believing something, just in case we leave people out. When someone asks “Does your church believe Theology A or Theology B?” the Anglican church will usually respond with “Yeah… one of those,” and leave all further details to the imagination.

As a rule, Anglican babies are baptised when they’re teeny. But not all of them. The church is quite willing to accommodate those of us who prefer our baptisms more “credo” and less “paedo” – so our two kidlets have both had an infant dedication, and won’t be baptised until they wish to be.

But… my church, being an Anglican church, also handles communion as vaguely as it handles just about every other theological point it’s asked for an opinion on. The Orthodox give communion to infants; the Catholics have an official First Communion at seven years old. The Anglicans opted for the middle ground of “Um… when you’re ready.”

And so my son, having decided he’s ready, is lining up for communion right next to me.

I’m somewhat uncertain about this. A lot of my brain keeps on glancing at me suspiciously and muttering “…but he hasn’t been baptised, Mez…” and I don’t really have an answer for it. I can’t entirely counter the no-communion-before-baptism argument, largely because I’m not sure where that particular theology is from. It’s tradition – but I don’t quite know why, theologically speaking.

On the other hand, there is a piece of theology I’m quite certain of: that Christ said “Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not”, and that if my son asked to encounter Jesus and I said he wasn’t ready, Jesus would kick my arse. (Or at least be extremely cross and pointedly sarcastic in my direction.)

So, I am putting the thing I’m uncertain about (whether un-baptised people are technically allowed to have communion) in second place to the thing I’m very clear about (Jesus wanting kids to be allowed to come to him, dammit). And if my boy wants to take communion, I’m cheering him on.

Comments

[tielan]

So, I apologise if you already know this and I’m just going through stuff that you’ve heard a bajillion times and your issue is something else entirely and I have your issue ENTIRELY WRONG.

(Also, sorry, it's REALLY LONG because I like this kind of stuff and have STRONG FEELINGS about it.)

The passages on which the practice of holy communion (the Lord’s Supper) rests are “the Last Supper” (Mt. 26:17–30, Mk. 14:12–26, Lk. 22:7–39 and Jn. 13:1–17:26) and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11: 17).

The description of the last supper is pretty much Jesus breaking bread and drinking wine and saying “this is my body, this is my blood, do this in remembrance of me”. It’s the origin of communion – the Lord’s Supper – and it was undertaken at a shared meal with Jesus and his closest followers.

In the early church (a small scattered group of believers generally meeting at people’s houses to discuss, argue, and debate each other, to reaffirm their reliance on God, and to encourage each other until they waited for Jesus to come again – which they anticipated in a matter of years, maybe a decade or two) this became part of what they did together – “breaking bread” or eating a meal with each other. They came from all walks of life, of different social strata and with different degrees of religious practice (maybe think of strict orthodox Jews eating with Jews who might keep kosher if they have to, but not otherwise worry about it), and later – once Paul and Peter confirmed that God had also called non-Jews to the Messiah – believers of different cultural backgrounds with different laws about hospitality, allowed foods, and who you could ‘be brethren with’.

But whatever they did, wherever they were from, they all ate bread and they all drank wine (in the world and time of the Roman empire; unless they were like John the Baptist, eating locusts and honey, and drinking only water (which…we’re not going there right now). So “the Lord’s Supper” was something they could do together, matching Jesus’ instruction to “do this in remembrance of me”.

Yay!

By the time Paul starts writing letters to the various little churches in cities all around the eastern Mediterranean, though, issues were cropping up. Paul’s letters tend to address these issues – sometimes directly “I had heard that you were doing X, but I think the best practice for you would be Y” – and sometimes only alluded to by a phrase or series of phrases that are kind of a setup/fliparound of common beliefs that went against helpful understanding of both the good news about God, the nature of the Messiah (Jesus), and a ‘best practice’ way of life for the believers as time went on and they realised, “hey, doesn’t look like Jesus is coming back this decade, I think we’re in for a longer haul”.

The issue that is generally agreed to be addressed here is that believers would meet at someone’s house to eat a meal and be in community with each other. Only problem was that people worked different jobs at different times, some were more prosperous than others and could afford better food, and some had kind of questionable attitudes (like someone who turns up to all the potlucks but never brings a dish, and they can actually afford to cook or prep or buy something).

So Paul tells the believers in Corinth:

1. Eat together. Break bread together. Drink wine together. Do it collectively, not individually – we are a community of Christ, not little individuals running around with common beliefs.
2. Do it meaningfully. This isn’t just any meal that you’re eating, it’s a conscious willingness to “take salt” with each other in spite of your differences and class issues and race/cultural differences. Those aren’t the key to who you are anymore: your common belief that God has come down in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is what’s important now: that He has made it possible for you and He to be in communion with each other, as well as for you and your fellow humanity to be in commmunion with each other. That matters. Behave like that.

In the modern church structure, holy communion has been made to fit these two points in very specific ways

1. We do “communion” in the setting of the church community which is where believers generally meet together. It’s very specifically ‘bread/wafer’ and ‘wine/grapejuice’ and has been made really formal which I have Feelings about (because, let’s be honest, the original reason for the Lord’s Supper to be practised was to engender community through food, which eating a teeny bit of bread-like thing and drinking a sip of wine/substitute doesn’t do at all), but that’s neither here nor there.

I suspect there’s an element of developed classism to it (which is ironic given the point of believers breaking bread together was to break down the classism of the classical world) – so both rich and poor could take communion as formally and simply as possible and the rich didn’t have poor ‘freeloaders’ at their table, trying to eat their roast beef in a shared meal…

2. We do it “meaningfully”, which, in the formal context of church means declaring one’s own personal faith and being baptised into the church community.

This is why churches ask for people to be baptised before they take holy communion. So that people take the gesture meaningfully and in full understanding of what it represents, and don’t just snatch at it as ‘food to be eaten – hurrah!’ Baptism is just a suitably formal ‘rite of passage’ (and, simultaneously a way for a church to encourage involvement in its community).

The matter of infant/child baptism and ages at which someone can ‘become’ a Christian is hotly debated in just about all circles that I know – at least when you bring it down to the individual’s capability for understanding what it means to be a Christian. (eg. an intellectually stunted person would probably struggle to understand what I’ve written above: but they don’t need to know all that above to have a right understanding of who Jesus is and what He’s done.)

But ultimately, this is why the church asks for baptism before communion.

The warnings against taking communion unbaptised are also based on the 1 Cor 11 passage, “whoever does this in a manner unworthy eats and drinks judgement upon himself” – but again, it’s not specifically to do with baptism but to do with the way in which you undertake the meal.

Baptism is an outwards sign of an inwards reality – like a wedding ring. Just wearing a wedding ring doesn’t make you married. Wearing a wedding ring when you don’t honour the marriage that the ring represents is a mockery of what a marriage should be. But wearing a wedding ring and honouring the marriage that the ring represents is both the right use of the ring and the right way to do marriage. (Conventional two-person marriage, anyway.)

This is not to cast aspersions on your ‘let the children come to me’ outlook; that’s a great perspective to take! And much simpler.

Just if you were wondering why, theologically speaking, the church has a ‘no communion before baptism’ rule.

[deird1]

Fascinating! (And thanks for the explanation!)

Being raised Baptist, my understanding of theological positions and where they're from is very dependent on Scripture, and thoroughly lacking in any mention of Tradition. I'm trying to remedy that, but in the meantime I usually get stuck on "But which verse is it based on???"

[tielan]

I'm still not entirely sure what I was raised in. My original church was 'interdenominational', although it counted itself part of the "Sydney Evangelical" group. My young adult church was 'Anglican' (part of the Sydney Anglicans/Sydney Evangelicals) and I've just kind of stuck with Anglican ever since.

But the last five to ten years have made me look at lot more at the historical contexts of scriptures. Context tells you a lot about not only what Paul is saying (which is important, yes) but also what he meant to say in a social context (which doesn't always come through when we don't know the social context).

Also, historical context makes such a big difference for things like "turn the other cheek" and "if someone asks you to carry a burden one mile, take it two". There's both an obvious meaning to us, but also a more contextual meaning that's very subversive.

...and I could go on about this all night. :)

[deird1]

...and I could go on about this all night. :)

I could probably join you for just as long. :)

[lirazel]

I'm trying to remedy that, but in the meantime I usually get stuck on "But which verse is it based on???"

I have the same problem and I'm beginning to think I will never entirely root out this way of thinking.