WHY I DIDN’T TAKE COMMUNION

A sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Thomas D. Wintle at The First Parish Church in Weston, Massachusetts.
The lessons were: I Corinthians 11:23-26 and Luke 22:14-20.

“And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’”  (Luke 22:15-16)

I

I remember the first communion service I attended.  I had gone to a Roman Catholic church with a friend.  I was in high school at the time and was searching for a religious identity.  This was in the days when the Mass was still in Latin.  The service was mysterious, ponderous, and heavy – not the down-to-earth Presbyterian service to which I was accustomed.  People standing and kneeling and sitting, and speaking words I did not understand, all according to some pattern they knew by heart but which was totally foreign to me.

All was going along smoothly, and to me mysteriously, when suddenly people started standing up and going, row by row, to the front of the church.  As the movement of the rows worked its way ominously toward my row. I was faced with a quandary:  do I go along, walk up forward?  Or do I stay in my seat all alone?  Feeling very much an outsider, and seized with panic, when my row stood up, I stood, walked with them to the center aisle, they turned left, walking toward the altar and I turned right and headed out the door!
I did not take communion that day.

Another story.  I was in college, serving a pre-seminary ministerial internship in the local Unitarian Church.  One of my jobs was to conduct chapel services for the Sunday School.  I decided to try again, on my own turf.  I put together a simple communion liturgy, bought some bread and wine, and put the kids through this Unitarian Mass.  It was a large Sunday School, and while the kids were lined up to sip the wine, I sensed that something was wrong – eventually I discovered that some of the boys were taking their sip of wine and then going back around into the line again, for a second, a third, and even a fourth sip!  Only later did I discover that some of them had become sick after drinking so much wine.

I didn’t take communion myself that day.

One more story.  I was in seminary, and was attending the denominational General Assembly in Minneapolis.  Carl Scovel asked me to assist in a communion service.  Finally, I thought, a communion service where I would be comfortable.  I had studied and worked out my own theological understanding of the rite, and I knew that Unitarian Universalist Christians would offer the right balance between traditional belief and “modern thought.”  I agreed to participate.  Then strange things began happening.  The service was to be held in an Episcopal church!?  I arrived and the six leaders of the service were to put on white albs, white robes with a rope around the waist.  That was difficult enough, but when we went out into the sanctuary, at the beginning of the service, each of the other five knelt down for prayer.  I mean – they were kneeling!  Unitarians!  My mouth fell open and almost hit the floor.

Now, I wanted to kneel.  I desperately wanted to kneel.  I looked down at the kneeler in front of my chair.  It was only about twelve inches from my knees.  I could have slipped down with a slight bend of the knee.  But I could not – my Protestant knees would not bend.

Fortunately, my breech of etiquette was ignored.  The service proceeded.  Finally it came time for communion.  All the congregation, including the participants, moved to the rail; some knelt, some stood.  As I stood there, with all my theological deliberations and the history of my awkward and hesitating advance to the Lord’s Table flashing through my mind, I said to myself: “what are you really waiting for?”  I dropped to my knees, and received the bread of communion.

Something happened in that moment.  The years of wavering and waffling came to an end.  The intellectual reservations suddenly were no longer so important.  And the bread was sweet, oh so sweet.  It was bread, to be sure, it had not been miraculously transformed, transubstantiated . . . but I was transformed.  Call it self-surrender, a victory of the spirit over the flesh, a conversion.  I had discovered what it was for which I was really waiting:  there comes a time, the right time, to make a decision. to say “yes” – not no or maybe, but yes – yes to God, to being part of the Christian community.  The kneeling itself was not important; it was only a token, a symbol.  The important thing was that I decided to stop fighting, to accept the blessing.  At that moment, in my own mind, I became a part of the Universal Church, the Church of Christ.  Oh, of course, there were still many unsettled questions – and I expect to be wrestling with what it means to be a Christian the rest of my life – but from that point on I was dealing with those questions from “inside” the Church.  I was no longer on the outside, looking in on Christian doctrine, symbolism, and rituals, from the vestibule.  I had now become part of Christ’s Church – telling his story and singing his song.  The communion service is a symbol of that belonging, and I renew that commitment every time I eat that small piece of bread.

I wonder how many other Unitarian Universalists have similar stories – standing outside the Church, looking in with longing, but yet holding back.  We reject some things about historical Christianity, yet we don’t leave it completely.  We’re just standing nearby.  And the vestibule is lovely.

Those three stories, however, may be a model of the process, and the pitfalls, of Unitarian Universalists becoming Christians.

In that Roman Catholic church, I approached the mystery in ignorance and fear.  I fled.

In that Sunday School chapel, I tried to capture the mystery by putting the service in my own terms, reworking, rewording, eliminating this and that.  I fumbled.

Finally, at the General Assembly, I surrendered to the mystery and accepted its grace.  I had fought, and the gift came when I stopped fighting.

Perhaps we need to flee and fumble before we are fed.

II

In the twelfth century hymn “O sacred head, now wounded,” the question is asked “what language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend?”  Enlarge the question a bit.  What language shall Jesus, on the night before he was to die, use to tell the disciples that what they had known in those years with him would not be gone?  He took bread and wine, and said “do this in remembrance of me.”  What language should we use to express the fullness of the gospel that heals broken lives, and what language shall we borrow to express our own need to have our spirits fed and nourished if we are going to live as Christ inspired us?  We take bread and wine, and feed one another.

The Communion Service, you see, is a language – a way of saying something that words alone cannot adequately convey.  It is an enacted parable, a statement by doing, a symbol of the mysterious grace by which God nourishes God’s people.

That grace may not always be readily apparent.  We may fight it, our knees may not bend, and our heads may not bow.  Jesus, too, seemed to hesitate – in Gethsemane, for a moment – and there are those strange words at the Last Supper:  I shall not eat (this meal again) until the kingdom comes.  Perhaps we too should not eat this meal until we are sure, until all questions are answered, all hesitancies gone, all doubts dismissed?  And yet Jesus did eat again, soon after Easter, when two disciples on the road to Emmaus sat and ate with one they did not immediately recognize.  When they ate the meal that he had taught them, as they told stories of what life with him had been like, their eyes were opened and they saw that he was present again.  And their hearts burned within them.

That, finally, is the grace of communion and the reason we are here:  when we share his meal, when we accept his blessing and become a part of his life and work, we, – not the bread and wine – are transformed:  we become the body of Christ, the Church.  His blood flows in our veins, his breath fills our lungs and forms the words he spoke, he lives in us and we in him.  Then, we have a taste of the Kingdom.  Then we are called and empowered to feed one another.

And that, my friends, is why I do take communion.

Let us pray:
            Bread of the world, in mercy broken,
            Wine of the soul, in mercy shed,
            By whom the words of life were spoken,
            And in whose death our sins are dead,
            Look on the heart by sorrow broken,
            Look on the tears by sinners shed,
            And be thy feast to us the token
            That by thy grace our souls are fed.
            (Hymn by Reginald Heber, 1827)