I grew up taking communion from an old wooden pew.
Quarterly, the ushers passed around the heavy golden trays full of little plastic cups of grape juice and small wafers. I asked my mother why we drank grape juice and not wine.
“Because that’s what Jesus did, honey.”
“But the Bible says wine—”
“They didn’t mean the kind of wine we have now,” she assured me. “They didn’t drink alcoholic wine. Just fermented grapes.”
I gave up and drank the grape juice without further question. And I took it seriously. That was something else my mother told me: that we took communion seriously. That it was only for believers in Christ, and only those who could come to God with a right and willing heart. To take communion lightly was to sin.
I understood communion to be an obedience to what Christ commanded in the Bible; I understood it, at the time, to be primarily symbolic. That I thought it was symbolic did not alter the importance or significance of it for me: to remember Christ’s sacrifice mattered and, I felt, changed me in some way.
Still, I found myself bewildered when the Methodist church I took communion at in later years treated it as a more casual affair. The table was “open,” they said—something I had not heard of before—but people in the pews talked through the proceedings, tossing back their little grape juice cups with casual disregard. I found it disconcerting. The approach felt somehow irreverent.
Contrast this with the intense reverence I encountered in the local Catholic adoration chapel. Seeing the Eucharist there—realizing that this was treated, well and truly, as a sacrament—I + began to read about and fully understand the depth and breadth of theological approaches to communion across denominations.
At the church I now attend, communion is new to me yet again.
Theologically, this church believes that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist (a doctrine often referred to as the Real Presence, though understood differently by different traditions). Because of this, the elements are treated with care both before and after the service. The liturgy prior to communion reminds us that we join in with the company of heaven in the great feast. We take communion every single week.
It is an open communion; our congregation is theologically and denominationally mingled. This means that each week I get to watch all the varied members of our congregation line up to take communion together. Last week, a mother had to drink her cup with a baby on her hip and one on her arms. Some of our members drink from the cup and eat the bread and go on. Some make the sign of the cross after. Some hold the hands in the traditional posture to receive.
The church offers both grape juice and wine. I went for the wine the first time we attended, but my fingers seized and I picked the grape juice in spite of myself. To this day, the kingdom of God tastes like Welch’s to me. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
When our pastor hands me the bread, he meets my eyes and smiles. There’s a welcome there. There is an elderly gentleman who sits two rows in front of us, at the end of the row. After I receive communion at the front of the church from the pastor and I walk back and pass him, he beams at me every time. This is a welcome, too. After a time, communion has started to feel like family.
And my point here is, I suppose, to simply say that in a matter as complex with this— surrounded by much doctrinal debate and very strong feelings—I simply feel grateful for all the “communions” I’ve taken, in different churches and in different ways, for what those experiences taught me about how to honor God and how to draw near to the entire kingdom of believers who came with open hands and open heart. I have preferences, and I have understandings now that have evolved since that old wooden pew, but I value that old wooden pew no less for all that.
On my last visit to my mother’s house, when she was dying, I had to leave on a Sunday. We didn’t attend church that week; she couldn’t attend church that week, and we knew she would not attend it on earth again. Another small grief in the middle of all the others. I knew that the next time I saw my childhood church she would not be there. And it wouldn’t feel all the way like my childhood church any more. It would be different, changed.
After the service, her pastor packed up his car with communion and drove over to visit before we left. Mom sat up in spite of all our protests. She hadn’t kept food or water down in weeks. I think none of us wanted her to take it for fear she’d get sick doing it, and that would be too much to bear.
But there they came, those little plastic cups with grape juice, and the wafers. We somehow all took communion together. The pastor couldn’t drink his without crying. I was shaking so much I was afraid I’d drop mine. Miraculously, Mom kept everything down.
It was the last thing she ever ate or drank.
It was in so many ways unceremonious, all of us perched in hard wooden chairs around Mom on the couch, the process grief-soaked and sorrowful. It was also the most meaningful communion I have had; I think of it every time, now, I receive the sacrament.
We are at the feast, together, even when not together. All the saints, together, even when not together. All only because of Christ, to whom the feast belongs.
And what a joyful day it will be when we experience it in fullness, together—however we approached it here.
Samaritan's Song 