Ok, I have some things to say about communion.
I've been reading a ton of memoirs about spirituality for the past few years. I pay money to see a spiritual director. God is bigger and better and more within my grasp and beyond my understanding than ever. And the awesomeness of all that is making me increasingly pissed about all the boxes "Christianity" puts around this God thing.
Yesterday I baked the loaves of bread for our communion service. Today, when we stood in a circle around the sanctuary - in a service I had planned and executed (its my paying gig) - and passed the bread and the cup, I didn't partake. I haven't taken it for awhile because I'm miffed about my church's "stance" on communion. Mostly about who gets to take it.
The Mennonite Confession of Faith says a lot of great stuff - like that Jesus is a rockstar and we should do everything out of love and the Holy Spirit is a real gift and that community matters.
[It also (to my despair) says that marriage is blessed by God only when it is between a man and a woman. Don't get me started on that. Another day.]
It says too that communion is only for people who have been baptized.
I cannot abide.
God is too big for that, people! Way way way way way too big.
As I type this, my 8 year old is in her bedroom upstairs directly above me, and I can hear her singing from the Mennonite Hymnal. Yes, singing from the hymnal. She took that big blue book up to her room after lunch and led her barbie congregation in a hymn sing. But she couldn't take communion today.
My friend who hasn't been baptized and is volunteering her time to helping immigrants in Arizona stood in the circle. But she couldn't take communion today.
I just hate rules. Really hate them. Because they are mostly made to put things into preciously narrow categories of good and bad, right and wrong. Neat, tidy boxes. But life is not neat and tidy, and God specializes in being messy. Being true to ourselves makes things messy. Loving without condition is messy.
To me, the bread and the cup symbolize that God put on skin. That community is good. That Love is as real as blood. And more than anything, that
if you want to name God,
share God,
eat God,
drink God,
notice God,
acknowledge God,
and for today just plain say there is a God,
then by all means, COME ON IN! Take this and eat it. It is FOR YOU!
Communion does not and should not symbolize that you are in a category of baptized or not baptized, sinner or saint, good or bad, right or wrong, broad or narrow, blessed or cursed, saved or damned. Ever.
The Anabaptist faith (of which Mennonite is a part) stresses the importance of "choosing God." I own that and I like it. But the whole choosing thing is another conversation, and just doesn't apply here. Communion isn't about us choosing to come to the table "worthy". Its about God choosing us, loving us, wrapping us up in a community of each other - to be real people in a real search.
I find communion often in daily experiences. See here. And here. It doesn't have to be bread and wine. It doesn't have to be in a church. The best communion is when God shows up in serendipitous light and I partake of something that symbolizes it and am made new. All by surprise. But there's something to be said for breaking and sharing bread with your faith community in a worship service too.
The Mennonite church we attended when Eva was a baby, had an "open table" and we fed her the bread and cup before she could walk. I can't describe how it warmed me from within every time I gave her this symbol of love and community.
But today I stood in the sanctuary where I was baptized, married, and dedicated my children, where I lead and plan worship, in a circle with the big community I adore, and rolled around thoughts about how here communion is exclusive. And it so does not have to be this way. Let there be change, and let it begin with me.