Derek,

I share completely your concern about the individualistic skew of our culture, and I think 'personal preparation,' or 'personal readiness' is the 1st century version of it, perhaps an early seed, and what Jesus overturns in his prophetic sign of enacting Isaiah's feast for all people. What makes the sign clear is the presence of unprepared, scandalous sinners. What makes it spiritually compelling and transforming is that it's US we see in those unprepared, scandalous sinners. Bonhoeffer notwithstanding, the work of God (beginning with the breath of each moment) is a tidal wide of grace and I don't see God waiting to check our response. What I hear in all the protests against acknowledging that tidal wave sweeps us all up is individualistic thinking - like the planned protest of the Prodigal Son who wants to penitentially control his place in the father's household. 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.' The speech is controlling and ego-protective. The father steps him mid-sentence, embraces him and clothes him in festal robe, ring, and sandals. I see the same thing in emblematic story of Zacchaeus whose repentance/conversion comes after an unreserved request from Jesus for an invitation to feast at Zacchaeus house. I think it's what Paul writes about when he says, 'for our sake God made the sinless one into sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' Measuring appropriate repentance, appropriate commitment, appropriate stability before WE accept God's embrace may be missing a central theme of Jesus' teaching.

Donald, we have to approach the meal practice of Jesus and its direct application to the Eucharist carefully. Just to note a few reasons for that: 1) the meals with unrepentant sinners are still meals for those within the covenant community. They were already within the Jewish people. Given the controversies around the inclusion of the gentiles, had there been traditions of Jesus eating with gentiles no doubt Luke and Paul would have used them. 2) Western Eucharistic practice locates itself primarily around the Last Supper. As Karen noted in the previous thread, the inclusion of Judas was understood as prophecy fulfillment ala Ps 41. (Too, I believe there are some gymnastics between the four gospels on when Judas leaves but I see I've left my parallels at the church...)

As always, I'm grateful for your expansive vision of the flood of grace and that's not something I'd wish to deny or extinguish. Isn't God's mission reconciliation? And as much as I like the image of the flood of grace doesn't that leave the work of reconciliation unfinished? I still find this view individualistic if the grace doesn't erode the hardness of our hearts and pattern us according to the Mind of Christ so that we can approach both God and our neighbors with love and charity.

Derek,

I'm with you on this:

"I still find this view individualistic if the grace doesn't erode the hardness of our hearts and pattern us according to the Mind of Christ so that we can approach both God and our neighbors with love and charity."

And it's where I gather the stories of how grace does and has and continues to erode the hardness of our hearts and repattern us to the mind of Christ.

There were some comments on the previous thread around the ambiguity of Anglican Eucharistic theology. Perhaps it would be good to review two of the indisputable ways that our Prayer Book teaches us about the Eucharist, the Prayers Before and After Receiving Communion on page 834:

Be present, be present, O Jesus, our great High Priest, as you were present with your disciples, and be know to us in the breaking of bread; who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who in a wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy passion: Grant us, we beseech thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The latter is one of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book and, for me, the last part of the petition with its emphasis on perceiving within ourselves the *fruit* of Christ's redemption is the call to internal conversion and transformation that marks the life of discipleship. Discipleship, communal transformation into the Mind of Christ and love of God, is the fundamental pattern in the sacramental economy.

Derek,

I too agree with your appeal to a communion (versus individualistic) identity in Christian community. However, it strikes me we are talking about how to navigate the interface between Christian community and a free and open society with a premium on individual identity, rather than a highly ordered society based on dyadic identity (which dominates scriptural and Christian history.)

Again, I agree baptism prior to communion is most defensible given our theological legacy, but I don't think it necessarily a sell-out to individualistic culture to allow more than one path to enter Christian community in our varied contexts for ministry.

The Benedictine model is helpful until I remember it generally assumes approaching aspirants are already baptized -- that is a common identity is already present, and religious life is about living more deeply into that baptismal identity. Put another way, I'm not sure the Benedictine parallel is all that more helpful than a notion of Christendom on this particular question.

But to accept the parallel for a moment - while the Rule asserts an ordered entry, every religious community I know of has to deal with a wide variety of experience and spectrum of discipline and learning amongst its aspirants. The Rule asserts a norm, yes, but in practice, the initiation often involves fits and starts, remedial work, and adjustments (however subtle) for each new member. I'm cautious about our tendency to romanticize any conversion (even to religious community) as so neat and linear -- and that is true in any age, especially our own!

It is impossible to know from the gospels who was present at the Jesus meals - all women are erased from the scene except if they had some "iffiness" about them - the anointing woman (not invited but welcomed by Jesus), the Syro-Phoenician woman - probably a Baal worshipper - confronting Jesus and winning the day, the Samaritan woman - not at a meal but affirmed as an evangelist.
I take this discussion from the other end - not what we always have don (which in Jesus time would have meant he would break our rules) but why is CWOB happening everywhere now? Is it an inbreaking of the Spirit -- has the persistent widow finally made us open our table to her?

Ann,

Thanks for such a clarifying point! Someone frequently seems to be "crashing the party," no matter where we look in the New Testament, whether women, children, Samaritans, Gentiles, or Paul.

Might CWOB be regarded in this light, and shouldn't our response therefore be like Christ's?

Ann,
Are you experiencing a flood of unbaptized persons who are insisting that you communicate them? I have to say that's not a situation I've encountered in my part of the country. Rather, I find clergy making the decisions on behalf of others who don't know the expectations. Sort of a Father-knows-best approach. The unbaptized aren't often discussions in these conversations; as I result I find myself more interested in the opinions of those like BSynder (whom I've encountered in other venues and, yes, that's the real initial...) who have only recently become practicing Christians.

I agree that the practice seems to be spreading. However, as I stated at the beginning of the second part, I'm unclear as to why. My sense--unconfirmed and lacking the data to confirm it--is that welcoming the unbaptized is a branding move intended to send a message about who and what the Episcopal Church is: we're the church that welcomes people. What is not clear to me is whether the change in sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and Christology inherent in this change are being consciously and intentionally made. I think that it may appear like a good idea (who wants to be against welcoming others?), but we have to raise the deeper issues as well.

Anyway, I can't see how the Episcopal Church is being "unwelcoming" in the first place. I'm not sure if it's in the Prayer Book, but many or most parishes that reserve Communion for those who've been baptized also explicitly invite anyone who hasn't to come to the altar rail for a blessing. Is this "exclusionary"? I think it's the very opposite.

I myself experience this because the priest often blesses me when I cross my arms over my chest as the chalice comes around. (I'm a member of A.A. - another reason for not using my full name on internet forums, BTW.)

Human beings are, routinely, handed food and drink - but it's incredibly rare to have somebody place their hand on your forehand (sometimes tracing a cross on your forehead - I think they do that for me because they know I'm already a member) and pray to God for a blessing for you. I often protest that the priests who do this don't need to bless me every time - but am secretly glad they do.

I've seen others get this blessing, too - sometimes it's done for babies who can't chew the host - and it's a lovely thing.

"Forehead" above, not "forehand," obviously....!

(But really, the hand is usually placed on top of the head anyway - although the cross is traced on the forehead.)

From a purely anecdotal standpoint, my congregation is not being flooded with unbaptized persons asking for communion. Visitors are extremely respectful of the printed rubric that invites them to come for a blessing if they aren't baptized, and several have done so. I have also baptized several adults who did not partake of communion beforehand and received no complaints there either.

As Ann points out, perhaps the trend towards CWOB is the movement of the Holy Spirit - after all, who am I to second-guess the Spirit? On the other hand, it could be that as more presiding clergy offer such an invitation, the more it will seem to our visitors that this is the policy at all Episcopal churches everywhere, which is definitely not the case in the diocese where I currently serve.

As a wise person once said, isn't it odd how the Holy Spirit only seems to move in directions we favor?

Kathryn Tanner at the Yale Divinity School wrote a piece for The Anglican Theological Review in 2004 that I think adds something to this discussion. Professor Tanner does feminism, queer theory, and postmodernism, in addition to traditional theology. She adds a concern for gender that the tradition has not really dealt with.

She wrote a rejoinder to John Farwell, a professor from the General Theological Seminary who had who had written a piece in the same journal against open communion and had said that for individuals to receive to communion before baptism is selfishness. Using a value-laden term to explain a social phenomenon is not, I think, the best scholarship.

I will paraphrase Tanner, knowing I risk leaving out something important in her argument. Tanner argues that the 1979 Prayer Book changed everything by giving baptism a new prominence, to the point where baptism, rather than confirmation seems to have become a rite of completion rather than that of initiation. Public baptisms take a lot more time to organize unlike in the days when infants were baptized in private ceremonies lest they died and be damned for all eternity. This reminds me bishops tend to show up at baptisms in the large Manhattan churches, at the same time they show up for confirmation and reception. Basically, confirmation and reception seem to have been downgraded, in my view.

Tanner says in a society where many kids were never baptized, I assume either because the family didn't want to raise the children with any particular religion or the family had another religion, it puts up an obstacle for a nonbaptized person to come to church and feel included, as there is a perceived stigma that they are unbaptized. Whereas in the old days a person who wanted to be baptized could have it done right away in a private ceremony, nowadays the congregation is supposed to be there to welcome him or her. And there has to be preparation. some people might be put off at the prospect of having to jump through these hoops, especially since the 1979 Prayer Book made the eucharist the main service on Sundays. Morning and evening prayer seem to have been lost, while the only thing that some people think when they think of church is communion. I have seen this attitude in my own parish. The position of both baptism and communion has changed since 1979.

She says that if the church wants to require that communicants understand something about the eucharist before they can receive then why not do like some other denominations and abolish infant baptism? How can the parents vouch for the child? And we would also need to deny communion to ecumenical partners because we would not be sure they believed what Episcopalians believe.

She recommends communion first and then using baptism as a rite of completion. Implicitly, confirmation and the episcopate are now more in search for a raison d'être. As I read her, I thought that basically what we have now is baptism as a rite of completion before communion, which is now seen as more of a gradual initiation.

She says more people come to church nowadays because they want to rather than because they feel community pressure. She agrees with Kierkegaard that the church is in more danger when everyone claims to be a Christian than in an age when few go to church.

More relevant to our discussion is that she does not buy the argument that the Last Supper are separate. She says there must have been some relation between the two. I see an emphasis on the Last Supper to the exclusion of table fellowship as a way to disempower women and to prop up the male leaders. Children also get downgraded in the traditional reading.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Tanner's piece is

http://www.anglicantheologicalreview.org/static/pdf/articles/86.3_tanner.pdf

or

http://tinyurl.com/5rg5j8x

John Farwell's piece is at

http://www.anglicantheologicalreview.org/static/pdf/articles/86.2_farwell.pdf

I forgot to add the tinyurl link for John Farwell's piece.

http://tinyurl.com/4r8pdt6

Gary Paul Gilbert

Gary,

I think your summary of Tanner's observations shines a bright light on another dimension of the current challenge: we have (probably unintentionally) made receiving communion easier than being baptized, whereas the older Christendon model of Church did precisely the opposite.

In the context I serve, where our parishioners come from a wide variety of upbringings and church experiences, I am confronted by an ever-changing spectrum of approaches to communion: the child and her family I mentioned previously, the adults who seek a blessing despite their baptism because of uncertainties about our particular theology of presence, guests (baptized or not) who are uncertain about their eligibility, Roman Catholics who might or might not feel comfortable receiving, caught between our welcome and their own church's teachings...the list goes on and on.

This particular conversation, while I tend to lean Derek's direction, still leaves me wondering if we are attempting to clean up what might better be left as a pastoral matter that is quite local in nature.

By way of contrast, I have a colleague who presents the standard "all who are baptized..." line in his parish, but faces a challenge as many parishioners there were raised in parts of the Communion where confirmation was the rite that preceded eucharistic eligibility!

One place's radical welcome might appear another's put-off.

This is the challenging dynamic of the post-Christendom church trying to live into a pre-Christendom heritage (i.e. the baptismal theology of the 1979 BCP).

It may well be that we have to live with this messy tension for quite some time.

Thanks again, Derek, for opening up a insightful conversation on this.

Perhaps giving communion to the unbaptized is the community welcoming the stranger?

Gary's point that we now expect Eucharist every Sunday does open up a new way of thinking about this for me. It used to be in many parts of the Episcopal Church you could go for months without Communion (especially if you missed the one Sunday it was offered). And in much of the Real West priests or bishops stopped by on their circuit ride only occasionally. Baptisms were generally private - and not encouraged as now to be held in community. Morning Prayer was the norm and there were no barriers to participation - could be and often was led by a Layreader - tho I grew up with the "minister" (he was very anti-Rome) leading. Our family often skipped the Sunday with communion as it was such a long service! I have to think about this dynamic and how it might affect CWOB.

Thank you, Richard, I am just taking in what I read in Tanner. I need to reread it more closely. It seems as if the 1979 Prayer Book changed or at least least shifted the meanings of baptism and communion. People who are seeking to have communion before baptism are responding to the ambiguities of the text. Given the lengthy process of rewriting the Prayer Book, the short-term solution is to rely on pastoral responses to this messiness. I hope the pastoral solution does not, in the long term, become a "don't ask, don't tell" approach of ducking important questions.

Thank you, Ann, Yes, morning prayer is more inclusive because lay people can lead it. In its interim period, my congregation has revived evening prayer on Wednesdays.

Gary Paul Gilbert

I hope the pastoral solution does not, in the long term, become a "don't ask, don't tell" approach of ducking important questions.

Gary, I completely agree! The phrase "dereliction of duty" comes to mind in response to your concern. That would be deadly to the sacramental life of the Church and our people.

Am I really hearing this rightly? I'm a strong proponent of the Daily Offices and am working on establishing public (lay-led) Evening Prayer services at our parish, but the Offices and Eucharist were always intended to function together to provide a well-rounded spiritual life.

Are you really suggesting that the community's central celebration of and participation in Christ's redemption and resurrection should be deferred or canceled because you believe it's exclusive?

I refer you back to Gregory Orloff's thoughtful comment in the first thread: if they're willing to encounter Christ in the Eucharist why would they be opposed to meeting him in Baptism--it's the same Christ...

To put a finer point on it, inclusion is an important part of the Gospel message. Anyone who doesn't believe that hasn't read Paul closely enough. However, for Paul the central mechanism for inclusion is Baptism. That's what makes the key connection to Christ and it's through that connection that the Episcopal Church has made its strongest theological case for the inclusion of lgtb Christians in the full life of our community. But now that's too exclusive and you want to degrade the place of Baptism?

Is it so hard to do the work of evangelism--to offer Baptism to those who come seeking Jesus?

This is an intriguing turn in the conversation. I'm pondering the dynamics of having the apostles creed -- part of the baptismal covenant -- in the midst of the daily office. Is that any more "hospitable" to the unbaptized than our Eucharist? The call to baptism seems to me just as implicit in the office as it is in Eucharist! I don't think we're off the hook either way in our call to evangelism.

Derek,

I understand what you're saying here and how you say it:

"To put a finer point on it, inclusion is an important part of the Gospel message. Anyone who doesn't believe that hasn't read Paul closely enough. However, for Paul the central mechanism for inclusion is Baptism..."

but I think Paul actually means to say that the central means of inclusion is the cross and that the work is done. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God's self, not counting people's faults against them, and God has entrusted to us the news that they ARE reconciled." God has done the work of reconciliation and inclusion and our work is being the enactment of the news of what God has already accomplished.

Yes, Donald, but the way that we enter into that reconciliation ourselves is through Baptism and thence discipleship. Paul did not say that since Christ's self-sacrifice on the cross has been accomplished we should go our own way, mind our own business, and act as if it hadn't occurred.

On our topic this came through my news feeds today.
I am not saying stop doing Eucharist as a primary Sunday worship experience I was just wondering about history and how I was shaped by Morning Prayer. Even tho the Creed could be seen as exclusive, many rattle through it without much deep thought or with metaphorical fingers crossed at the pieces they don't understand or agree with. The physicality of bread and wine make being allowed to take it a very different experience.
It is an exclusive rite as we have it now - whether that is bad or good -depends on the meaning for the person.
I do think my low church childhood has influenced me a lot more than all the theology I have studied.
I don't see Paul saying people can't participate unless they are baptized - I think it was much more fluid than what we see now. Later during the persecutions it became important to check credentials. Baptism was often delayed until just before death for a time. It is unclear whether or not infants were baptized. And whole households became Christian (wer they all baptized?) if the householder became one - regardless of their personal preference. I don't believe you can prove much from the Bible - we don't even know if the disciples at the Last Supper were baptized according to our beliefs. And I think more than the 12 were there - by extrapolating back from Acts - where 120 or so were praying in the upper room.

...since Christ's self-sacrifice on the cross has been accomplished we should go our own way, mind our own business, and act as if it hadn't occurred.

I don't hear that being said by anyone here. It seems to me the argument is whether CWOB leading to baptism is a possible path into Christian discipleship, where baptism then is, at least in part, a response to the grace encountered in the Eucharist. ("Taste and see...")

Yes, we can argue about whether our Eucharistic theology opens the door to CWOB, but the basic principles are not neglected by either side: God's grace precedes any action we take, including engaging the sacrament of baptism.

Donald, I've been reflecting on your "tidal wave" image. I find myself ambivalent about the image in ways that reflect on our conversation.

I do indeed believe in prevenient grace (as Richard notes), and am myself darn near universalist. However, I can't quite get all the way because I do believe our will is free, and has to be; for otherwise our capacity to love God and one another is false. If we're not involved in our decisions, we're not really persons. So, while I think God's grace is sufficient for all, I think the working out of that comes through God's loving persuasion, and not through God's love expressed as an overwhelming force. I think God calls to us, even while we await resurrection. I can't imagine that God's love won't, in the end, be persuasive, even to the Great Deceiver himself. But, in the meantime, we have to be participants in our lives before God, including those who decide to reject God.

In that light rites of passage become critically important, both for individuals and for the communities that shape them. I am God's child, not simply by creation, but also by adoption, a process. We express that process in this life in baptism, the "sacrament of new birth." We are different after baptism, not because God loves us more but because we become grafted into a community, into a life, where we can come to love God more, and love ourselves more. We believe there is grace shared in baptism, and I believe that it's specific to that purpose.

We have lost track in our lives of many rites of passage. Those rites we share with our society have largely been vitiated - marriage, for example, by premarital and extramarital cohabitation. It's not because of the sex; but how could I not see as part of the family someone my child has loved and brought to family events literally for years? The rites of passage to adulthood are largely functional - a driver's license - or academic.

I think we do ourselves as individuals and as a community of faith if we lose sight of the power and importance of our rites of passage for our Christian community, and especially baptism. So, I'm not "don't tell," in the sense that I maintain and teach that baptism is normative admission to the fullest life of the community; but I am "don't ask," in the sense of "when in doubt, feed." I have also had pastoral exceptions; but they haven't been such as to persuade me to publically undermine the norm.

Marshall Scott

Images of God as tidal wave or overwhelming force would make most abuse survivors run screaming from church. Please avoid them in your preaching.

Yes, Richard, the discussion is whether the eucharistic theology of the 1979 Prayer Book has made communion before baptism thinkable. It is harder to get baptized but easier to receive the eucharist.

I agree with Ann that certain people can more easily say the Apostles'Creed without thinking they are binding themselves to what the church has taught. The Nicene Creed, on the other, is less flexible.

The 1979 was supposed to empower lay people by making baptism the central sacrament. Ordained ministry is seen as flowing from baptism rather than ordination itself. The daily office allows lay people to gather together and minister to each other without a priest, which, for some, speaks to them. Some women, LGBTs, abuse victims, and others who want to hear a different voice from that of the often male and straight priest respond to the egalitarian service. Or they may simply want to hear a different voice lead a service. Some may have stayed away from the eucharist. If as Derek says, it is the same Christ encountered in a different form, then why not offer what these groups tolerate better? At some point they may feel ready to go back to regular Sunday worship, having found their voices.

Evening prayer sounds a lot like the evening service for a weekday in the old Union Prayer Book of Reform Judaism and has a flavor that seems more open to other experiences and traditions.

In any case, the 1979 now lists the ordained as bishop, priest, and deacon, very different callings, not the implicit progress of deacon, priest, and bishop. The church is a community of the baptized and does not obtain its authority from its ordained ministers.

For now, the denomination is condemned for to pastoral responses to liturgical and theological messiness.

Irreducible uncertainty is part of faith.

Gary Paul Gilbert

In England, where I usually worship, I think it would be highly unusual for communion to be offered routinely to those who are not baptised.

While God's grace precedes our own response, surely informed consent is important. During preparation for baptism (or first communion for those of us baptised as infants), we hopefully learn something of both the joy and cost of sharing the life of the crucified and risen Christ - and it can indeed be costly as well as life-enhancing. God's blessing however is freely offered to anyone who wants it.

...people can more easily say the Apostles'Creed without thinking they are binding themselves to what the church has taught. The Nicene Creed, on the other, is less flexible

Gary, I'm curious about the differences that you perceive making this so? Tell us more.

On another note, I gotta' wonder if there has ever been a Christian community without theological and liturgical messiness!

It's been fascinating to read all three parts of this series, with comments; I'm grateful to Derek for such thoughtful analysis of the issues raised by communion before baptism, and to the responders for their questions and challenges.

My first communion (at St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco) was an entirely unexpected experience of the risen Christ in bread and wine: it knocked me upside down and drew me inexorably toward baptism. While my own conversion might not represent the way things are supposed to happen, it's the way they did happen.

I hesitate to draw broad conclusions about what that experience means for others, and I agree that individual experience is not the point here. But as someone who's been baptized now for ten years, and continues to share communion with unbaptized people, I'd like to offer some observations.

I completely agree that the secular rhetoric of "inclusion" or "welcome" is inadequate to explain what's happening sacramentally during communion. Offering communion in order to be friendly, polite, or socially broadminded toward the unbaptized quickly reduces a mystery of God to being about our niceness.

The pastoral reason for offering communion to everyone without exception strikes me as being far more about the spiritual health of the baptized partakers––we who say repeatedly that we're not worthy to receive the meal, and yet frequently pretend that we're somehow prepared for it. I think it's good for Christians to eat bread and wine alongside people who incarnate the truth that nobody gets communion because she deserves it––or, for that matter, understands it. It's good for Christians to see that we can't control who is going to hear the good shepherd's voice, or when. It's good for Christian churches to feel themselves hungry and in need of something they cannot manage.

It's one thing to pride myself that, from a privileged position of correct belief, I'm generously sharing communion with unbaptized outsiders to make them feel "welcome." It's a very different thing to have to witness God's extravagant love for the unprepared, the unworthy, the laborers who show up at the 11th hour...to learn that God might be using foreigners, the unclean, the Gentiles and even the wicked to save me and my tribe, and to show us something about the wideness of his grace.

Grace is not sequential. It frequently shows up at the wrong time, to the wrong people. It doesn't follow the logic of the world. I'm not sure how we will discern the movement of the Spirit in our present struggles over communion before baptism. But I'm pretty sure it's a mistake to imagine the Spirit tidily walks everyone through a ladder-like curriculum of spiritual development before she decides to blow.

Richard, the Nicene Creed has the whole filioque, proceeding from the father and the son, controversy, among others. It also has the homoousion and homoiousion, of the same being and like being, controversy.

The Apostles' creed seems more ecumenical and much simpler and direct.

It has less metaphysics.

Messiness I see as irreducible but there comes a point when the disconnect between the world one lives in and the theological text is just too wide. The disconnect risks schizophrenia.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Marshall,

My response to this line of thought -

"I do indeed believe in prevenient grace (as Richard notes), and am myself darn near universalist. However, I can't quite get all the way because I do believe our will is free, and has to be; for otherwise our capacity to love God and one another is false..."

is that infinite love and patience longing for the good of each one of us needn't overrule our freedom.

Whether we image a means like purgatory or comically as in the film Groundhog Day or just leave it a mystery but the evident consequence of a God who is patient and unwilling that "any should perish" (II Peter 3:9), a recurrent theme of Christian formation and growing in the knowledge of God has been that we know God through our own desire and that the Spirit touches us there, moves us there.

So beneath my desire for self-aggrandizement (or even fantasies of destruction of another), beneath consumerist desire, deeper than all the desiring that distorts personhood and fractures community, the deepest desire of the human heart remains for communion with God, with a restored humanity, and with all creation. "As the hart longs for water brooks, so longs my soul for thee, O Lord."

On this, I love Ernesto Cardenal's 'Thirst.' Can produce to quote, but the long and passionate theme is that everything we do, even the worst we do, comes from thirst for God. So perhaps genuine freedom is growing into the deepest ordering of our desiring.

Sara

I do not think anyone here is arguing that those who are baptized are superior to those who are not, or that we fully understand the mysteries of Christ! And your book does indeed make a moving case for CWOB. But your experience in El Salvador and conversations with people like Ignacio Martin-Baro before becoming a Christian yourself had surely given you some idea of what might be involved.

There may be people with a hunger for Christ who are unexpectedly drawn to the communion rail. But I would be hesitant to see a situation in which visitors might feel that, out of politeness, they should take communion because this is the social norm.

Sharing in the bread and wine is an immense and unearned privilege whether we are in the USA, UK, Sri Lanka (the land of my birth), Sudan or Pakistan. But there is risk involved (in some cases obvious, in others less so), and I think it is helpful to offer some measure of informed choice, even if our understanding is incomplete. And those who share the bread and cup are part of the same body as their brothers and sisters everywhere in the world.

If I had even a minor operation, a doctor would make an effort to explain what it was about, and what might happen as a result, before I gave my consent. I might not fully understand the technicalities, but an effort would have been made, showing respect for me and treating me as a participant in my health. Sharing in the body and blood of Christ is more momentous than any operation! And God's love is I believe respectful of us, not because we deserve it but because of the nature of the Divine.

Sara,
Thank you for your testimony here! Experiences like yours have convinced me that the church does need to be open to the work of God outside of the "normal" channels. My concern, though, is that an intemperate rhetoric of inclusion and an unreflective adoption of Communion Without Baptism will lead to the dismissal that any channels exist at all. As I've reiterated, fidelity to the Gospel call and the historic use of the Sacraments flowers in discipleship. I do see the use of speaking of a progression from Baptism to Eucharist to a deeper encounter of God through years of accumulated experience and wisdom through Word and Sacrament. No, it's not always linear, but the collected wisdom of spiritual advisers through the centuries indicates that it usually is.

I might not be as concerned if I thought that your experience (from Communion to Baptism to Discipleship) were common and representative of those communed without Baptism. But I don't believe that it is representative. Therefore I'd be more comfortable with using the phrase "Communion before Baptism" if I thought that most communed in that way would be led to Baptism---but I doubt that most are.

At the end of the day, he church must keep in mind your experience as a reminder of the fulsome grace of God and a serve as a reminder not to quench it. However, I believe we must also present the discipling pattern that the Scriptures have given us and that spiritual wisdom has confirmed many times through the ages.

The conversation here has only convinced me more completely that CWOB (or "CBB") is not a good idea.

As Marshall Scott says above, God has given us free will, and people a right to know what they're getting into. As I'm coming to understand from reading this thread, the expectation seems clearly to be that they are "getting into" something. Is this not not correct? Isn't this the logical conclusion of arguing that Communion is NOT being offered as a "friendly" gesture to strangers, but as a preliminary to membership in the body of Christ? I mean, people have been speaking of "conversion experiences" and the hope that a "tidal wave of Grace" might wash over a unbaptized person.

But for me, this is exactly the problem. Suppose - as Ann remarks - a person doesn't wish to experience a "tidal wave" in that or any other sense? Suppose that "what's been good for me must necessarily be good for you" is an error - and perhaps a big one?

No, I believe that God gave us minds for making decisions just like this one (as Episcopalians often argue in other contexts - that we "don't check our brains at the door"). To me, it's a terrible idea to assume for other people that we know what's going to be good for them. And I have a feeling that the early Christians put Baptism - and the catechumenate - before Communion at least in part for this very reason.

Isn't this the logical conclusion of arguing that Communion is NOT being offered as a "friendly" gesture to strangers, but as a preliminary to membership in the body of Christ?

This is not what I hear being suggested. Rather, CBB (or CWOB) is being put forward as an opportunity to encounter grace, and then those who receive could respond by moving towards baptism.

I would counter the word "expectation" with "hope."

Going back to Paul's story for a moment, his experience of grace -- startling to be sure -- on the road to Damascus still left him with a choice to accept God's call or not.

Likewise, we know people who are baptized but still disengage from the life of discipleship for as long as we know them.

Presuming something significant happens in the sacraments does not mean we can expect everyone to say "yes" to the call to discipleship there -- at least not in the way we want.

Thank you, Richard! Yes, communion before baptism means one does not know if the person who receives the eucharist will later choose baptism. The future remains open. The choice will depend on many factors, not just the administration of the sacrament.

Gary Paul Gilbert

I still don't see how one can partake of the Body of Christ without Being part of the Body of Christ....that happens at Baptism. I may be a hardtush about this...but dang I grew up in a church that thought it was ok to have chips and dr. pepper for communion at youth group because "its just a symbol". This is the BIGGEST reason I refuse to ever go back to that church once I left home. I think the sacraments are very SERIOUS matters. God bestows on us at Baptism the grace to BENEFIT from Holy Communion. THIS is why I am so staunch on my position that we stick with the proper order of things.

Gary,

It's the "many factors" you mention that I think can get lost in this conversation. The sacramental life is always engaged in a context of ministry where people are nourished in prayer and community.

Sara Miles' and Donald Schell's witness is instructive -- it's not that St. Gregory of Nyssa decided suddenly one day to open their communion to everyone who wanted to partake. It came about as part of a larger engagement of mission in a particular community with particular pastoral and social needs, led by the Spirit.

As Derek so rightly points out, blithe appeals to "welcome" don't help us any more than "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You" signs unless we have engaging, life-giving ministries in our communities to back them up -- to provide incarnational context for God's grace to unfold.

This is another reason why I resist our urge to "fix" this one way or another. Official lines or bucking the official lines on baptism before communion (or any other theological matter) are both pretty meaningless actions unless they happen within a wider life of mission. I think this is what we mean by having a living tradition.

Precisely, Richard! The larger context is important. I would say there needs to be a certain degree of unpredictability or even risk. It would be, as Jacques Derrida, says in Without Alibi, a hospitality of visitation and not invitation: "It is a hospitality of visitation and not of invitation, when what arrives from the other exceeds the rules of hospitality and remains unpredictable for the hosts." The other arrives like a ghost, as in Hamlet. The rules are still there but are exceeded, in a ghostly tradition.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Thank you, Derek, for your long-needed articles! I think your most important point is, "One change in our sacramental practice—...impacts our sacramental theology as a whole, our ecclesiology, and ultimately our Christology." That is, a change like that affects what we think sacraments are, what we think the church is and who we think Jesus Christ is.

This is one reason that I am now convinced that the church I belong to is characterized, among other things, by the expectation that people participating in Eucharist be baptized. This is an expectation, and of course allows for pastoral exceptions. Thanks for clarifying that in this debate no one is talking about asking for proof of baptism at the rail! In 25 years of ministry I have never met anyone who has denied communion at the rail to anyone. The debate is whether the expectation should be changed officially, canonically.

My frustration with the main proponents of communion before baptism is a frustration with their theological method. As I understand them, their main points go something like this:

1. Baptism is a boundary, and boundaries are bad, because they establish "insiders" and "outsiders."

2. Jesus not only didn´t require baptism before eating with the "outsiders" --he went out of his way to do it, flagrantly transgressing Jewish purity laws.

3. The "Body of Christ" refers to all humanity, not only Christians.

4. "It is the grace of God's love that incorporates us into Christ, and not any sacramental activity." (Donald Schell) And so on.

I have found what I consider some misunderstandings in all this:

1. Boundaries are NOT bad --especially boundaries allowing exceptions. In fact the ability to respect boundaries may be considered a form of maturity. Besides, there is a kind of over reach in wanting to "tear down boundaries" which if I belonged to another religion, I would find offensive. Sometimes one finds calls for this in the name of “inclusion” but as a gay Hispanic, I have found that too often "inclusion" becomes co-optation of the “other,” so I coined the phrase "beyond inclusion"! Behind this there is also a fear that if someone is not, somehow, a Christian, he or she cannot be saved. Yet Vatican II already did away with that idea.

2. I am all for transgressing! :) But to transgress you have to have a law, rule or canon to transgress. Sure, make the pastoral exception and give the Jewish mother of the bride communion at the rail. It´s a very powerful sign that even the most theologically firm boundaries are to be transgressed by love. BUT transgression is not possible without rules to break.

3. It seems that in the mind of some proponents of CWOB the unbaptized are considered sinners, unprepared, etc. I think this is very very mean of them! The unbaptized are made in the image of God (from our Christian perspective) and are neither more or less worthy than us. So proponents of CWOB have to make all humanity members of Christ´s Body, --and therefore “saved” (never explaining what that means) so they can in fact receive Communion. (Thanks for pointing out that "saved" does not mean "conscious after death" in Paul, but more like "healed.") So, since they want everyone to be saved, they make everyone Body of Christ. This, if taken all the way, means that Muslims, Hindus, atheists, etc etc are all members of the Body of Christ. –Too imperialist for me. True, all humanity is, potentially, "in Christ" because his liberating death/resurrection reaches to all of creation.
God, however, is not a marionette master, but respects free will, allowing us to choose to appropriate/receive divine grace. Further, even if we assent to grace, it might be in another religious path, or none.

Two thousand years of theology east and west has held that a person becomes a member of the actual (as you say, social) Body of Christ AND of his mystical (risen?) Body through a bath in the name of the Trinity, a bath which is the "likeness (ie., sign or symbol) of his (Christ´s) death and resurrection.” (Romans 6ff.). This action shows him or her as a part of Christ as well as showing forth his/her (already existing!) filial relationship to God.

4. a Protestant position, with some pedigree is that sacraments are not means of grace, because only faith can avail us of Gods grace. Therefore talk of sacramental grace is a form of “works righteousness.” But this view is based on the assumption that faith is not involved in participation in the sacraments. Traditional sacramental theology in the church (east AND west) however, has always understood that without faith the sacraments are ineffectual. Besides, sacramental theology in the West is going precisely in the opposite direction, increasingly understanding the sacraments as communicative sign -events (sorry Chris!) mediating grace (J.M. Chauvet), and paying attention to the cultural, social and linguistic means that will actually communicate the sign to the participants. --This is why when the participant is without faith (pistis, ie.., trust) and does not find the event meaningful, the sacrament cannot bring about what it means. That´s because sacraments do not work mechanically, regardless of the faith of the participant. They are communication events, not pinball machines.

More generally speaking, I have found some rather strange aspects of the position espoused by proponents of CWOB:

1. A discomfort with differences and boundaries, wanting everyone to be everything. If taken all the way, this undermines a theology of Holy Order that understands and supports a variety of charisms and ministries in the Body of Christ. (Lay presidency in Sydney is a good example of this collapse). Besides, isn´t participating in Eucharist also placing a boundary? Why Eucharist and not Tibetan meditation? One cannot have religion, let alone ritual, without boundaries --as over a century of research by students of religion and ritual have consistently shown, beginning with Mircea Eliade, all the way to Jonathan Z. Smith, Roy Rappaport, and Catherine Bell just to drop a few names.

2. An assumption that "salvation" requires being a member of the Body of Christ. Ie., "Extra ecclesia nulla salus." This is hardly an appropriate position for people who want to be “inclusive”! So they remove the concept "Body of Christ" from the concept "Church," denying the Prayer Book´s foundations in a baptismal ecclessiology), and instead make “Body of Christ” coextensive with “humanity.” (Why stop there? Why not all creation?).

3. A tendency to interpret sacraments as factual, literal THINGS, (a form of sacramental fundamentalism, typical of medieval sacramental theology) rather than as outward SIGN-actions representing and communicating interior grace.

4. An understanding of sacraments --again medieval-- as bringing about something that was not there before. Eastern and more recent Western sacramental theology. however, emphasize that sacraments "show forth" what is there already.

5. A strange ecclesiology, understanding the Church as something other than the community of the baptized and different from what is envisioned in the Pauline corpus, as you wisely point out. If the church is not the baptized, what is it, -- just the clergy? Again, another pre-Vatican II position. Crossan, for one, has shown that there are strands in Paul that go back not only to the Jerusalem community´s cross/resurrection traditions but to the Galilean itinerant Sayings Tradition that created Q and the synoptics. I bring this up because I wonder if proponents of CWOB are tempted to claim to be resurrecting a pre-Pauline understanding of church membership without baptism. There IS the possibility that baptism originated as a compromise solution to how to incorporate pagan converts without cutting them. (The thinking being that Jews as already in the Covenant, did not have to be re-incorporated into it through the final part of the conversion ritual of circumcision and bath). Even if that is true, which is disputed, it would only support welcoming Jews to communion without baptism.

In short, I would characterize CWOB as a heart-felt but misguided, culturally conditioned movement characterized by a problem with boundaries, and the glorification of transgression in reaction to right wing, claims about "salvation," the nature of the church, etc.

Strangely, tough, in the process, these proponents are working from the very same misconceptions about the nature of Christ, redemption, church and sacraments as the right, apparently unaware that in the last 50 years sacramental theologians beginning with Rahner, all the way to Chauvet, have already spilled rivers of ink to achieve precisely the same thing --without throwing out the ecclesiological baby with the fundamentalist bath water.

Perhaps God is in the process of creating a new religion, Christian in words but Universalist Unitarian in theology and worship. But I ask the reader, if that is the religion you believe in (ie., trust), why not join it?

Just a coda that the Canadian Anglican Church House of Bishops have made a pronouncement on "open table communion"--that is communion before baptism. They are against it.

"We have been made aware through media articles and pastoral visits by bishops that in some parts of Canada a practice of ‘open table' has begun. This involves admitting people to Holy Communion before baptism. We recognize that this practice arises out of a deep concern to express Christian hospitality. However we unanimously reaffirm our understanding that the Eucharist is the sacrament for the baptised. We do not see this as changing for the foreseeable future. At our next meeting, the bishops will discuss and offer guidance to the church on Christian hospitality and mission and how these relate to the Table of Christ."

http://news.anglican.ca/news/stories/2357