Of Communion: Open and Otherwise
Coming around the bend seems to be a discussion of “Open Communion” perhaps better called “Communion without Baptism” in the Episcopal Church.
I thought it might be interesting to spend some time with this topic and think about some of its implications, especially for our baptismal identity and ecclesiology. I went back this evening to take a look at the Book of Common Prayer’s Catechism to see what the prayer book offers by way of insight into the nature of Communion.
I am planning on taking a look at other sources as well in the coming weeks – particularly Scripture, the Church Fathers and Mothers, ecumenical documents, and spiritual writings. None of these entries on any given item will be particularly academic or even erudite! They are just musings on what is.
There are several commendable impulses at work in the move toward communion without baptism. A desire to include those often excluded, a genuine view that the “table is always open,” and a real desire for the liturgy to have an evangelical function all are part of the various arguments I have heard very fine Christians make for “opening the table.”
Yet, what are we being included in? What are we offering to the guest in our churches? What is being opened?
Of the Sacrament: Commanded by Christ
What happens in the Sacraments? Do we believe something happens?
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer, a prayer book which emphasizes time and again the baptismal identity of the Church and her people, says of the Eucharist, “The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again.”
I suppose this is where I would begin as well in thinking about the relationship between Baptism and the Eucharist. It is “commanded by Christ.” When the Christian participates in the Mass, they do so, in part, because we are called to do so by our Lord. It is not a simple meal we drop in on – there are other ways to spend a Sunday morning – we do this in remembrance of the death and resurrection of the Christ who calls us to the altar to be reformed in his image.
We do this in remembrance. We do not come without a sense that we are participating in something of profound significance. To “open the table” to all who are visiting the church fundamentally alters the first reason given in the Prayer Book – that Christ commands it. It also upends the understanding of why we are commanded to do so – in remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again. Christ commands us to the altar in remembrance – not simply for hospitality.
The way we begin to participate in that life, death, and resurrection is through the Sacrament of Baptism. To invite a non-believer to participate in that because we do not want to be unwelcoming is a profoundly unwelcoming gesture. It is something of well-intentioned trickery as we draw them into a mystery they do not yet acknowledge exists, in thanksgiving for a salvation they do not realize they need, anticipating a Kingdom they have heard little of, in remembrance of one whom they have not declared to be the Lamb of God.
Of the Sacrament: the Church’s Sacrifice
According to the Prayer Book, the Eucharist, “the Church’s sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, is the way by which the sacrifice of Christ is made present, and in which he unites us to his one offering of himself.”
Participating in Communion is not simply an issue of hospitality or lack thereof. Receiving Communion is the way by which we come to participate in the Sacrifice offered for us. We join our offerings, simple as they may be, to the one great Sacrifice of Christ seeking to dwell with him as we ask him to dwell in us.
Why would we ask a non-believer to come to the altar for this? Why would we bring someone to that altar without offering them some understanding of (or some real chance to affirm their belief in) the salvific action they are being joined to in this Sacrifice?
We are not the Church of altar calls (driven by a mix of peer pressure, shame, and guilt). The altar is the site of our deepest encounter with the holy – the point at which the sacrifice of Christ is made present for the believer. Our altar call is one that deeply and powerfully demands something of the Communicant.
“He unites us to his one offering of himself” is one part of our participation in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. All we are meant to be is offered on the altar for we are meant to be one with Christ. This is a life-changing encounter that cannot be offered lightly or received without preparation, care, and intention.
Of the Sacrament: the Benefits we Receive
Why come to Communion?
For the believer, the answer lies in the Prayer Book’s formulation, which says we receive “the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our union with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life.”
The move toward Communion without Baptism leans heavily on the second half of the second benefit listed – the strengthening of our union with one another. Yet the first benefit is the forgiveness of our sins and the second is the strengthening of our union with Christ. Communion without baptism moves our relationship with one another ahead of our relationship with Christ.
The Sacrament’s chief benefit is to draw us into closer relationship with Jesus Christ. There are manifold ways in which we can show our love for and care for the many people outside the Church that desperately need it. Communion is the primary means given for us, within the Church, to be joined to Jesus Christ. The forgiveness of our sins and our Communion with Christ give us a foretaste, a hint, of that Kingdom we hope for.
The non-believer receives none of these benefits – for they have not come seeking them. They have not come seeking forgiveness of sins. They do not seek a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ (as I have seen both Muslims and Jews offered Communion within Episcopal churches). They do not share our hopes for a Kingdom consummated in the reconciling love of Jesus Christ.
Life Consecrated
The liturgy provides a means of divine revelation of multiple orders of unity. Unity of action, intent, purpose, fulfillment, longing, apprehension, joy, offering, remembrance, and more are all manifested at various points in the Eucharistic action.
The liturgy of the Church provides a place where memory of people, place, and time interact with our search for pattern and meaning. That search becomes one line in a complex pattern of the entire creation’s search for meaning and depth in the midst of need. The Eucharistic action transforms us at the altar. As we are drawn into the life and death of Christ we are given new meaning and hope.
Welcoming the other, the non-believer, or the non-baptized into this holy relationship with Jesus Christ is absolutely commanded of us.
Yet, the Eucharist is that place where our lives become consecrated for God’s use – where we offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies to be wholly God’s to use. It is an act of intimate exchange with the holy. We prepare future communicants that they may grow to see and know Jesus as the model and means of life.
There are so many ways by which we can welcome friends, neighbors, and loved ones to church or show them that we care deeply for them. However, the Eucharist is that place where our identity as Christians, as recipients of Christ’s grace, is made real. The true welcome, the true hospitality, is offered at the font so that these guests of ours may become more than guests – that they may become the Body of Christ.
A Desert Father 
I love MP w/o communion. I love to listen to baseball on the radio but do not understand the infield fly rule. I know I am a Christian, and I know I care if the Yankees win.
To me the Great Commission transcends all iconic, symbolic, totem…ic or ritualistic realities in religion. The act of communion is a human symbol of a central act of Faith. But it is a symbol.
We have no bumper stickers of any kind on our cars not because we are ashamed of various family Alma Maters or political opinions or social/cultural investments.
My bumper purity simply reflects that I believe that my relationships with the things I care about are best expressed directly to that focus of care. I do not feel that anyone, including me, are incomplete or missing the message of Grace without the public expression of communion as a litmus test. I know how personally important it is for most Episcopaleans to participate in communion, and I am happy to partake, but it is for me a human expression, not belief itself, not prayer, not an end in itself – a mirror, for some a method of connection beyond expression, but it is a human ritual.
I believe almost all my secular friends find the trappings of religion are more inside baseball than a personal expression of love for the message and messenger.
The more you know, the more completely express your devotion for anything. I would have more joy and sorrow listening to baseball if I knew what is really going on – as I do with football.
Despite over a decade of coaching and playing football, I do not think those who love it are missing it’s essential beauty and power because they do not know the difference between blocking below the waist and clipping.
Rituals enrich – they are not essential, but reflective of the essential. That’s why an open menu feeds everyone who is hungry. There’s too much hunger to require or exclude any spice.
I think you have some great points here Duo. Morning Prayer is a perfect service for bringing new folks into the life of the Church – it definitely was for Karrie and me! Moreover, it has an educative quality that is essential to its history and character so folks get formed in faith.
I think you and I are articulating that great debate that has been going on since a little after the Reformation – are Sacraments symbolic or do the impart their own grace. I tend to have the latter view.
I think that one could come to a ball game and appreciate it without quite knowing how to play yet. And throwing someone into the game without talking about the flow of the game, the structure, the timing, the plays, the rules, the expectations for being part of a team, and so much more would not be sporting, fair, or hospitable.
There is a huge difference between Sacrament and ritual. The rituals we have are part of the way we engage the mystery of the Sacraments. They (rituals) can be profoundly simple or beautifully complex in their execution but the Sacrament never changes but the presence is always offered – for it is the way we connect to the One who never changes.
I am perplexed by Duo’s comments: Robert is talking about the issue of Open Communion, while Duo seems to be asking whether Communion is necessary at all. Symbols are indeed important, Duo, but when you say “just a Symbol,” you seem to be implying that it is somehow unimportant, or even lacks the power to be effective. The Prayer Book, along with centuries of Church teaching, have been clear about what Baptism is, and what the Sacrament of the Eucharist is. No, we don’t go to extreme pains to define how it happens, like the Roman church, but we’re pretty clear about what happens. And yes, these are human rituals, Duo, but I’m not sure what else they would be – we are humans, and we have rituals. The physical person of Jesus Christ is no longer with us, so it is up to humans to continue what Christ himself commanded and ordained: “DO this, for the remembrance of me.” The ongoing Divine action in us is made possible by the Incarnation, and the giving of the Holy Spirit. What I take your comment to mean, and please correct me if I’ve misunderstood, is that the Divine action of God is absent in them; and if that’s what you’re implying, then I’m very sorry. We are a material people, who rely on materials to convey information, so God uses material Symbols – water, bread, wine – to convey and signify outwardly the inward and spiritual grace given to us. Christ is very much active in the Sacraments of both Baptism and the Eucharist, having ordained them himself. And the Eucharist is the most intimate, most holy way of encountering Christ that a Christian can hope for – they can rarely explain it, but it’s a feeling that is almost tangible. But to understand why, and to receive the Body of Christ, of which they are a part, they must have become and entered into the Body of Christ, which is done and enacted in Baptism. I’ve always said that in practical usage this often does not happen, and I myself would never ask to see someone’s Baptism card before administering Communion; but Eucharist (the Sacrament of our Lord’s Body) being administered to only the baptized Body must be upheld as the normative ideal. Not because somehow it is injurious to Christ, but because it does that unbaptized person a great disservice, as Robert wisely pointed out. If my words have seemed at all harsh, I apologize. It only comes out of a place of sincere wonderment that the issue of Open Communion could be an issue at all, and my frustration at what appears to me to be a lack of understanding on many people’s parts.
its pretty simple for me: there are no “wrong” ways to get to Christ. If icons or symbols connect: great, but if they do not: great too. Open communion reflects that attitude – the essential truth that in a world that has every reason to neglect much outside our Iphones, restricting any access to any aspect of contact with Jesus is, for me, mind boggling. Orthodoxy is necessary to prevent child abuse, ponzi schemes, and and other human failings, but not beancounting.
Allowing anyone who wants to get closer to God to take a bit’o’bread and a sip’o’wine seems to break no canons I can find, and to announce its unacceptability just makes reason #768 why people just tune out religion.
The joy of our home church, Trinity on the Green in New Haven is the open-ended acceptance of what exists right now in the Prayer Book. The whole Prayer Book. There are many paths, rooms, and any other open-ended metaphor you wish.
The depth of meaning in any ritual is really in the heart of the participant, and my guess is that heart is not for us to judge as being “ready” or “not” to experience anything the Prayer Book has to offer…
I don’t mean to sound dogmatic or unappreciative of seeking a full fellowship with hurt brothers and sisters in humanity who come to the church to find solace….but I suppose I will. I cannot see how the Prayer Book can be used to justify Open Communion. Holy Communion is not the Church’s “Open” Sacrament, Holy Baptism is. The bread and the wine are not tokens of a joyous, egalitarian, camaraderie. It’s not a hospitable friendship meal. The Consecration Prayers explain what the Eucharist is, and if we agree to partake, when we reach an “age of reason” we are reasonably expected to accede to what those prayers say. To my way of thinking, inviting someone to Communion who doesn’t share as full a sense as possible of what Christ’s Death and Resurrection mean is to devalue the experience, to deprive the Consecration Prayers of their meaning, to devalue the respect and esteem in which we hold the Sacrament, and to fail to grant equal respect to those not yet baptized. The Church is offered one way by Jesus and his Disciples to show a potential convert or full convert or “fellow traveler” the respect required to make him or her a partaker of the Eucharist. Since the time of the Apostles this act of pastoral care and inclusion has never been “The Body of Christ, given for thee.” It has been: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ Is it too demanding or difficult to get the “seeker” to the Sacrament of Baptism without “embarrassing” or overly burdening him or her? Moreover, the argument for “Open Communion” goes a very far way to destroy the meaning and power of Baptism which the Episcopal Church fought so hard for a full century or more to reclaim from the Early Church in the development of the 79 Prayer Book. And, it is this advanced understanding of the Baptismal Covenant on which the full inclusion and support of women’s roles in the Church, the full acceptance of LGBTQ Christians, and all other new found principles of egalitarianism are based. This is far beyond issues of being “politically correct” or “welcoming.” It’s about integrity. It’s as if we don’t mean what we say—-who would want to be included in a milquetoast community like that?