YOU HAVE TO READ THIS

Steve Scott is a regular blogger. He's a good one. He has one of the best posts regarding present day communion with a humorous bent I have read in a long time.

JESUS KEEPS GETTING STUCK IN MY TEETH

READ IT HERE.

UPDATE:
My Friend and a man I love dearly Harold makes a comment below. Take a peek at it. I respect him and find his comments and writing always scholarly and well thought out. Our mutual Friend Barry says that in years past Harold wrote some brilliant and extraordinary Works presented to his peers. So, I take what he says very seriously. I read it and don't consider for a moment he doesn't mean what he says nor that it's not well founded. I certainly didn't for a moment mean that disagreeing with Steves post was snarky. I just was on the rebound from snarkyness otherwise. Overrun the runway a tad.

BUT
I say all that and still in rereading Steve's posting and reconsidering I think the present day church DOESN'T GET communion. Oh I think they get the traditional and historical traditions as came from middle ages Catholicism. But not the Communion as described in 1 Corinthians or exemplified by the last supper.

I am MORE traditional than most Lutherans in the theology of actual presence in the elements. I am far more convinced of the efficacy for the miraculous in the communion action. Communion is touching JESUS.

I just think we don't get it. We think somehow in the sacred act of blessing that the nature of the elements physically must be in some predetermined form. A sip from a cup, a wafer or bit of bread. Scripturally that can't be and can't have been what that meal was.

It was first of all a MEAL. Jesus says so. .. as often as you do THIS. This What? Have this meal. Meal of what? A wafer, a sip? Not really a meal is it. And the Corinthians who brought food including the bread and wine were overdoing it. Contrary to what Harold says, they didn't show up drunk. Read the text, what does it say. They BECAME drunk and way selfish. They didn't share. They didn't commune.

I don't object to the wafer and sip as Steve did but it's not actually scriptural. What would be would be a group gathered around a communion table, eating FOOD, chicken, Red beets, Mashed Potatoes. Then, somewhere during the end of the meal, the wine is brought out, cups filled, blessed, Bread broken, Blessed. Consideration of the depth of what is about to happen. People offering each other the communion elements. Discerning the Body of Christ scripturally. The body as is each other, the body as is represented in the elements. And reaching out to the Father in Thanksgiving for his provision (that's what Eucharist means anyway, thanksgiving) with expectation and anticipation of his further provision in healing, forgiveness, joy, soundness, whatever you lack he provides in the communion act.

Then with great joy and thanksgiving they sing hymns of worship together. That's what the Bible says the disciples did afterwards. In fact in the early church for the first 300 years after Jesus this is exactly what happened. They met house to house broke bread and worshipped and prayed. What does the text say.

They didn't do the sip and the wafer.

If we were to do Communion as the early church did, and do it scripturally, we would make our communion a pot luck, have it around a big table, all contributing, we eat and then we pass each other the elements, we eat and drink of them sometime with the words of institution and sometimes without. Always understanding what is happening.

I'm afraid we have drifted very very far from the scriptural communion table. Tradition again crushes true Christianity.

Oh, I'll go again, I'll take communion. I'll do so with joy. But, I'll wish for more.

There are many groups of people who meet in homes in the Geneva and St. Charles area who do communion in exactly the way I have just described. They wanted more. We have done it in our own home with just our family. Offering my sons the Cup of blessing and a torn of broken piece of bread with the words of Jesus and blessing them is among the most holy things that ever happens in our home.

I hope it might be true for any reader of this. There's so much more. So much. Take off the bondage of tradition. See him in all His beauty.