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Responses to Provocateur column on open Communion
From Charlie Nichols of Portsmouth, New Hampshire
An adult friend of mine, new to the Episcopal Church and previously unbaptized, attends one of these churches that offer "cheap hospitality" by inviting all to the table. After attending for a while, and being nourished and transformed by word and sacrament, she had a conversation with the clergy about baptism, was subsequently baptized at the Easter Vigil and was confirmed four weeks later. The fact she was told she had a place at God's table was the total opposite of "a great unkindness;" rather, I believe, it was life-changing grace at work and anything but "mere trickery."
Yes, offering Communion to the unbaptized is canonically improper, but the canons are one of many human constructs that can impede the flow of grace. Laura Peckham writes that the unknowing need to enter "through the front door of the church through baptism."
In the second chapter of Mark's Gospel, we read of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof to get to Jesus to receive forgiveness. Perhaps we should not insist the only way to Jesus is through the front door. And if some come through the roof, let's make sure they get to Jesus as well.
From Bishop Richard Grein, retired, Bronx, New York
The eucharistic practice of our church has been that it is necessary for a person to show that he or she is in communion with the church through a public profession of baptismal faith before receiving Communion. Thus, being and receiving are two inseparable aspects of the same reality.
My objection to open Communion is not so much a concern that an unbaptized person will receive the sacrament, as we have always communicated those who present themselves at the altar, with few exceptions. Rather, my concern is that in practicing open Communion, we are saying publicly that we do not require any commitment from anyone before inviting [him or her] into the most sacred act of intimacy with God.
This raises the question of our identity as a church. Faith communities that have shown a clear understanding of who they are become the communities that attract people to membership. A clear self-understanding means that a community has boundaries -- defined not as barriers to keep people out, but as markers and thresholds that help people understand who they are in relation to the group and to God.
A person cannot really join a church that has no boundaries. A person cannot identify with something that has no clear identity. So, in practicing open Communion, we are not being responsible to the very people we seek to attract. In inviting people to receive Holy Communion without any preparation or commitment, we deprive them of the opportunity to understand and experience the holiness and depth of the act and of what it signifies.
From the Rev. Jeff Batkin of Saluda, North Carolina
As a convert from Judaism, I must share that the journey and the decision and the costs of becoming Christian were hard. The day that decision became clear happened on a Sunday morning at the church I had been attending, when everyone else had been to the rail. I suddenly got up and went down to receive, knowing that it was not acceptable without baptism.
I knelt, and the priest knowingly gave me Communion. In that brief moment, all my Judaic history came together, and the fact that the gospel of love had transcended church law convinced me that I wanted to belong to Jesus. The very next Sunday I was baptized.
Open Communion has two sides. It can be abused or it can be a tool of love. I would rather err on the side of love, as it happened for me.
And are we not told that we are to come to Communion with the right spirit, hungry for God's love? Those who do not, only leave empty.
From the Rev. Edward Franks of Boston
I agree entirely with Laura Peckham that the Eucharist should not be offered to the unbaptized. Only those who are in Christ as members of his body, the baptized, and share in his priesthood can offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in union with him and receive the benefits thereof. To invite the unbaptized is a nonsense and nullifies the meaning of membership and the rights and obligations that come with baptism.
A few years ago, I was taken to task by someone for not inviting everyone to receive. I said, "I cannot refuse without good reason, but I cannot invite." It still made no difference to the complainer.
Instead of being so lazy and namby-pamby, how about teaching and explaining the meaning of the Eucharist? Maybe people will take us seriously. "You mean you actually believe in something? Wow!"
I can deliver a coherent explanation of the Holy Eucharist to adults in 20 minutes and have been praised many times by newcomers and long-time members for it! I'll never forget what one woman parishioner in Brooklyn told me after I gave an instructed Eucharist as sermon: "I've been coming here for four years, and in 20 minutes you've told me what I'm doing here." Amen!
From Stephen Weissman of Asheville, North Carolina
We do not give Communion to the unbaptized for the same reason as we do not ordain them: Nothing happens.
Were we to dress in shiny vestments and play solemn music and have a bishop in the historic episcopate invoke the Spirit and lay hands on someone unbaptized, that person would not be ordained. The sacrament is designed to operate within the community of faith, not outside it.
The same is true of the Eucharist. Like ordination, Communion is designed to work in community. That is what the words mean. A person becomes a member of the Christian community by being baptized. Giving Communion to someone outside the community has no result, other than that person's swallowing the physical elements.
This does not mean that God does not give the unbaptized actual grace. Obviously God does: How else would conversion take place and converts come to baptism?
The Rev. Theodore Kanellakis of Camden, Maine
Ms. Peckham's citing of church history and Scripture relating to the administration of Holy Communion lacks the context of time and history. We no longer live in a time and place where to be a Christian is in itself dangerous. We need not protect our religious affiliations, nor do we need to keep our places of worship secret until we can trust the catechumens, through long and rigorous testing, to prove their allegiance and thus protect a threatened church.
In our society and time, most people can read, and many have ideas about religion if not a more intimate knowledge of teachings and practices. Our doors are open to the visitor. No one I know questions if anyone entering is worthy or in other ways eligible to participate fully in the worship.
The worship itself is designed to give information, in readings from Holy Scripture, sermon and within the canons of the eucharistic prayers to bring listeners to feeling the sacredness of the time and space. There can be no mistake that God's Holy Spirit is filling word, host, wine and us all with holy presence.
While I appreciate the need for the church to be loyal to the traditions of sacred worship, I am unable to disinvite anyone from the Lord's table. If we were so stuck in maintaining rules and regulations as they have been handed down to us, even Ms. Peckham's acknowledged call to serve her church and God as a priest would not be possible.
I hope she, too, will come to an understanding of the unconditional love of God proclaimed and offered to all in word, deed and sacrament.
From Henrietta L. Wiley, assistant professor of religious studies at College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Baltimore
Many of the subtleties of systematic theology are lost on me, but I must say that Ms. Peckham's argument against an open eucharistic table strikes me as naïve and even perverse in light of this past Sunday's Gospel lesson (Luke 14:1, 7-14).
If we are to draw people to Christ, we must "tell [them] the old, old story," but we must do more than talk at them. By sharing a taste of the experience of Communion with Christ and our fellows in Christ, we make a far better argument for membership in the church than by expounding upon theological complexities. Diatribes on sin and grace can not compare with the experiences of desolation and consolation.
The best way to bring people into the church is simply to invite them to church. It is not only inhospitable but insulting to invite someone to church and then tell her she can't participate: "Recite the confessional prayer, but don't approach the altar!"
This kind of half-baked welcome is no welcome at all. "The Episcopal Church welcomes you! ... (sort of)."
When we communicate our baptized children, do we believe they understand the nuances of eucharistic theology? No, we do not. Does infant baptism then cheapen baptism? I don't think so, but Ms. Peckham's argument raises the question.
We are indebted to the early church for preserving our faith through years of oppression, but we are not bound to preserve all its practices. Indeed, Ms. Peckham could not be in the ordination process if we were.
From the Rev. Jerry Ness, rector of Episcopal Church of the Mediator, Chicago
I wholeheartedly agree with everything Laura Peckham said about open Communion, and I have a few thoughts of my own.
I've read a lot about this question in our church, but what I've never seen addressed is the question of the slippery slope we create when we practice open Communion. What will be the response of our priests and bishops who advocate and practice open Communion when one of these unbaptized good people approaches them and asks for the sacrament of ordination? Will they then say, "You need to be baptized"? Because if I were told that, my response would be, "Why? I don't need to be baptized to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. Why do I need to be baptized to receive any of the other sacraments?"
If someone can give me a thoughtful, logical, solidly theological response to this hypothetical situation, I'd appreciate it.
From Ken Hine of Austin, Texas
At a time when we already have so much disagreement among us, why pursue yet another source for rancor?
I agree with the editorial. We are hospitable when we enter into acts of ecumenism and when we open our doors to strangers and the like. While the eucharistic feast is "hospitable," it is not primarily about hospitality. It does have everything to do with faith and faithful living (which will include hospitality, but in its proper place and form).
I will opine that, if the Eucharist is essentially the same as dining with the stranger, our corporate faith may have backslid to the point of nonrecognition.
From William Kamman of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Laura Peckham certainly has a point!
The thought of defying the Constitution and Canons of the church is almost too much to bear. The idea that Jesus welcomes all is preposterous. For those so rich in the Spirit as our writer, better no hospitality than cheap hospitality. Yes, check the labels in the topcoats and throw the bums out!
In fact, we can't really be sure that every "Christian" baptism is even enough to qualify. Sprinkling hardly seems to symbolize death in Christ! Shouldn't we hold 'em under 'til they start to choke at least?
Laura asks, "Have we sufficiently considered what ‘open Communion' will mean to our ecumenical relationships, our relationships within the Anglican Communion and with our brothers and sisters within our own church?" If that's the standard, there may be a few other questions we should ask as well, e.g., "Are you now or have you ever been …?" And we certainly should look for the concurrence of African bishops before we do anything.
From the Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco
Receiving Christ in bread and wine opens peoples' hearts. I saw it again and again through 27 years starting and growing a new church in San Francisco, one of America's most secular cities. Strangers who heard us declare that "Jesus welcomes everyone to his table" put out their hands to receive him in bread and wine and found healing, reconciliation and conversion.
Over a quarter century, we saw what deep, lifelong changes could come from that first welcome. Of course that's not what happens every time, but Jesus' welcome is so powerful that I'm grateful we chose to follow him, feeding each hungry Matthew, Mary Magdalene or Zacchaeus who wandered in the church door.
My long experience of open Communion teaches me that our welcome matters a whole lot less than God's welcome. Jesus struggled with the religious establishment of his day because he lived God's welcome. He risked offending all by keeping the traditional teacher's feast with the worst sinners.
Let's look unflinchingly at what Jesus did. It cost him everything. Are we willing to let go of our old understandings of religion and sacraments to follow him?
From Adrienne Southgate of Providence, Rhode Island
Laura Peckham's polemic ("radical hospitality smacks more of cheap hospitality") may accurately depict the evolution of the Eucharist from its institution at the Last Supper through several hundred years of the early church, but I'm not sure it is sound, either in theology or practice, some 2,000 years along.
My family of origin vacillated between Unitarian and Jewish practice. As almost the only non-Roman Catholics in our neighborhood, my brother and I were hotly sought commodities during a papacy (and a robust network of local parochial schools) that rewarded youthful Catholics for converting pagans.
I succumbed to the bells and smells, the holy cards and the mystery, at a very early age, but I was prohibited from entering any place where God, in the form of his Son, was part of worship. Once I went to prep school, I was able to indulge my penchant for liturgy in required chapel services. During my sophomore year, the school hired an Episcopal chaplain, and I discovered that I was really more Anglo- than Catholic. I took Confirmation classes, but of course I was unable to be confirmed because I never had been baptized, and parental consent would not have been forthcoming.
I had to wait until I attained my majority before I could become a member of the church. I went on to seminary, then law school … I cannot believe that there is any persuasive rationale for ignoring Jesus' manifest presence in my life during the decade before baptism was an option and denying to me the comfort and empowerment of participating in the Eucharist.
From Cindy and Jim Stangl of University Place, Washington
We say "Amen!" to Laura Peckham's article. We're in complete agreement with her and have asked the same question about open Communion ever since an experience we had in a church in our diocese.
We attended our niece's baptism on Pentecost this year. She is an infant, and her 3-year-old brother is our godson. The priest invited "all people" to take Communion. When we took our godson to the altar, he extended his little hand to receive Communion but was rejected as being "too young."
How is it that a baptized 3-year-old who is a child of God and inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, and is being taught prayers and the story of Jesus, is rejected from partaking in the body of Christ when someone off the street with no inkling of who Jesus is can be accepted to take the body of Christ? One may argue that a 3-year-old doesn't understand the Eucharist; but how is he different from someone who hasn't heard the gospel? Our godson has heard some of the gospel, yet as a little child is being rejected from a sacrament intended for all believers. We suspect this is not the only church in which this practice happens!
Let's get back to what Christ really calls us to: not inclusion for the sake of inclusion, but inclusion in a life-giving, redemptive relationship with him.
From Charles Roden of Fincastle, Virginia
I agree fully with Laura Peckham's opinion. The Baptists, the Roman Catholics and the Jehovah's Witnesses all practice closed Communion; why can't we do the same?
From the Rev. James Edwards of Reno, Nevada
Laura Peckham was indeed a provocateur in her comments on "open Communion." It is a question that has come before us on more than one occasion here in Reno.
Offering "open Communion" leaves in doubt, for me, the theology of Eucharist. In my understanding, through the eucharistic liturgy God is literally present, acting. That acting makes present the supper when Jesus shared bread and wine with those at table with him on the night before he died.
This is not a reenactment. Right here in this place and right now at this specific time when we happen to be gathered, we are sitting at table at that one and only, that unique, Last Supper.
Open Communion appears to me to deny a basic fact of our Christian life. By baptism, God literally shares with us divine life. In the mystery of the Eucharist, God reinforces that life that we might daily better live and show forth Jesus' values.
We need to welcome all those who choose to be present with us at liturgy. Denigrating what we are doing -- and what God is doing with us and for us -- at liturgy doesn't accomplish that welcoming at all properly.
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