Back in the fifties, I mean the fourteen-fifties, there was a Czech citizen named John who hailed from Goosetown. He became a Catholic priest, a student of the Englishman John Wycliffe, and a resident of the city of Prague: John Goose, or Jan Hus in our best approximation of the Czech version of his name.
At that time it had become the custom when serving communion to share only the bread with the people. The wine was reserved for the priests. Priests were special compared to ordinary people, the priests said of themselves. But John Goose would have none of that. The supper of our Lord Jesus is a gift to all of Christ's people. Jan Hus did not hold with the specialness of priests and bishops and popes, or of dukes and emperors, either.
After nearly 600 years, this truth which Jan Hus preached has won out throughout the church so completely that it is hard for us to imagine sharing only half of the communion meal.
That's a start.
Back in the seventies, and now I mean the most recent ones, the 1970s, in the night before a week of church camp under the direction of Skip Meracle, I heard another story about serving communion. This was told as a true story, but it is second hand and that was long ago and I was half asleep when I heard it, so I do not vouch for its facticity.
The story I remember is about a ministerial student who was serving a small congregation as their minister. As a student, he had the support of a fully ordained minister in another town. When communion Sunday came around, the student minister called the more senior minister and asked, "As a student minister, am I able to consecrate the elements? If I say the words of consecration, will this be a true communion?"
The cooperating minister realized that he didn't know the answer. He asked, "Do you have the elements there with you?" The student didn't, but he said that he did. So the senior minister consecrated the absent bread and grape juice long distance over the phone, just to sure that they really would be consecrated when used the next morning.
Now you can see that this was wrong thinking. The student minister was certainly wrong to lie about the presence of the elements. The senior minister was wrong to try to consecrate them remotely. Most importantly, they were both wrong to become fixated on the formula of consecration, as if saying a verse out of Corinthians is some kind of a magic spell.
This isn't magic. This is Christ's family meal.
Years ago, a long time by the standards of children and young people but far more recent than the 1400s, I visited St. Matthew Orthodox church. (This was when they were our near neighbors, just a few blocks away.) They ate the Lord's meal among themselves while I was there. It seems it was the custom among the Orthodox to have extra bread at the meal which is left "unconsecrated". I was not invited to the meal itself, but afterward several members of the congregation made a point of bringing me pieces of the "extra" bread and welcoming me as a guest in their house.
I was fairly stuffed with unconsecrated bread and warmed by the attentions of the people. Yet I was both welcome and unwelcome; I was welcomed as a stranger but not as a member of the family of Christ.
In our tradition, we've taken another step (or at least half a step). We say all are welcome to join in the meal, although we are sometimes a bit opaque about the range of that word "all".
The Episcopalians of Holy Cross church in Lake Delton used this statement when I visited there in 1981.
All baptised persons who have been admitted to Communion in their own churches, who recognize the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, whose conscience permits, and who are duly prepared to make their Communion, are invited to receive Communion in this Church.
I pondered for several minutes whether that invitation welcomed me; I concluded that it did, but several others in the same group with me felt excluded by it.
The Methodists of the 1700s into the 1900s, using the majestic if sometimes ponderous language of the times, tried to be explicit:
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort ...
As a young person I loved those stirring words of invitation. Anyone, even me, who was eager to lead a new and better life was welcome to come and would not be turned away. They were welcoming and affirming words, and yet even here there is a checklist of exclusion: Do you repent, is your repentence true and earnest? Do you love all your neighbors, even the one who throws his yard trash over the line onto your property?
The words were meant, I think, as a challenge for us to be as worthy as we can be to eat with Jesus. Yet none of us would be worthy to eat at Jesus' table, except that God counts our desire to be worthy as if that were enough. God declares us worthy, and that is the only way we could presume to come and eat with him.
What was the meal which Jesus ate with his disciples "on the night when he was betrayed"? It was the passover meal, the family meal of the whole family of Israel. The central ceremony of the Hebrew nation was the one which Jesus wanted to share with the disciples before he had to leave them. It is celebrated family by family, and it includes every person among the people. Fathers and mothers and children were all a part of the meal. (The Jewish Passover tradition has developed specific roles in the drama of the meal for everyone in the family.)
In the absence of a traditional family, a virtual household could be gathered; this is what Jesus and his disciples did when they ate the last Passover meal together.
The only exclusion was a restriction to members of the nation. Exodus 12 [TEV] says, "No foreigner shall eat the Passover meal." But Exodus also says, "If a foreigner has settled among you and wants to celebrate the Passover to honor the Lord, you must first circumcise all the males of his household." In Christian terms, that would be the equivalent of saying you must be baptized first, before eating the Lord's Supper.
Even in this, however, we ought to be careful. We have cautionary admonitions from the past, such as Leviticus 19 ("When strangers settle in your land, you shall treat them as native-born citizens, because you were strangers in Egypt") and John 10 ("There are other sheep which belong to me that are not in this sheep pen").
But the Lord's meal is not only a memory of the past; it is also a foretaste of Christ's victory meal, which will be shared with the whole of the church. Ephesians 1 promises that the the church in its fullness is all of creation coming together in Christ. Is there any part of creation which is not in Christ's family, and which ought therefore to be excluded from the meal? And who are we to close the door?
We are not so exclusive in our secular celebrations as we sometimes are with the meal Christ gives. We ourselves invented the traditional Thanksgiving meal, and so we have the right to invite whomever we choose. Do we exclude the children and say, "No! You can watch us as we eat, but you aren't old enough to have turkey and cranberries"? Or if we have guests in the house, do we say, "Thanksgiving dinner is only for the family. This would be a good time for you to find a nice restaurant by yourselves"? Of course not; everyone is invited. The same holds for the Independence Day fireworks and the Labor Day parade and picnic.
I love the old Methodist invitation that I grew up with, but I want to be more inclusive and more humble. I want to say,
This table is Jesus' table and the invitation to come and eat is Jesus' invitation. If Jesus has invited you, do not hesitate to eat. You would dishonor his invitation if you refuse. None of us is worthy of judging you. It is the Lord's table; come and eat.