This personal reflection on the Lord’s Supper served to jumpstart my interest in Communion and forms the basis for research I’m currently doing on youth, young adults and the Eucharist.

Fast Food: Running with Jesus

We waited and salivated as we watched the huge chunks of soft French bread being unloaded from the wooden trays. I was eight, the year was 1982, and it was communion Sunday at West Hills Covenant Church — one of the few Sundays each month to which my friends and I looked forward. We knew that after the communion service the leftover loaves of bread would be portioned out to any kid who wanted a chunk — a chunk of the body of Christ — to tide us over until we got home for lunch.

The grape juice was off limits, however, because we were told it caused “nasty stains” on the carpet. Most of the kids were loathe to believe this poor excuse, and tended to believe that the juice — the blood of Christ — took away stains. The pastor said it washed away the stain of sin, surely carpet stains would be no match. Nevertheless, having made my own stain of grape juice on our living room floor once, I was not sure who to believe and just tried to stay out of the debate.

We waited expectantly at the church kitchen door where they’d distribute the leftovers and we would rush off to gnaw on the big hunks of crusty bread as we ran around the church. I’m not sure if it was the trail of crumbs, or the crusty rinds that we sometimes left lying around that finally did us in, but there came a time when our communion Sunday ritual became suspect. I do not know whose ire was raised, but I heard through the grapevine that someone was concerned that there “were children running around the church with the body of Christ.” I thought this was a rather ridiculous charge when it was obvious to everyone that it was just crusty bread. The wrappers from Albertson’s grocery store could easily be fished out of the trash if anybody had a question.

The debate became a pretty large issue in the church, and I remember people being divided on the issue. Some thought the whole ritual of distributing consecrated bread to kids was downright disrespectful, to say nothing of all that running going on in church! Others argued that it was merely bread used to commemorate the death of Jesus, and no one should make such a fuss about it. The debate raged on within the congregation, and when we arrived at the kitchen door following the next communion service, we were turned away by a sorrowful shake of the head from the kitchen lady.

“Sorry kids, the church board has considered the issue, and you can’t have the bread. This, after all, represents the blood and body of Christ. We need to act respectfully with it,” she said. She opened the trash can, dumped the remaining loaves of bread and added,

“Oh, and no more running in church.”

The Bootleg Eucharist

I soon learned that the Covenant folks weren’t the only Christians who have difficulty being generous with their bread. When I was ten, I attended Catholic mass with my friend Tannen. His family was spending the weekend at their beach cabin, and they invited me along. Sunday morning came, and we all got up to go to church.When we arrived I immediately realized how different Tannen’s church was from my own. The pastors all wore robes, and the pews all had footrests. I thought at least the footrests were a nice addition until I got the evil eye from Tannen’s grandmother and was told they were for “knees not feet.” She also corrected me to call the pastor a “priest.” I realized near the end of the service that I had lucked out and had arrived on communion Sunday. Tannen later told me that every Sunday was communion Sunday at his church-something I thought made him lucky since I knew that sermons were always shorter on communion Sunday.

People began going forward to kneel before the priest, and so I followed along, too. Suddenly, kneeling up front, I realized that things were rather different at Tannen’s church. The large chunk of French bread I was anticipating had been switched with something akin to a cracker. When the priest came to me, Tannen whispered to stick out my tongue, and taking the opportunity to break a cardinal rule at my house, I complied. The priest proceeded to stick a wafer of what seemed like styrofoam on my tongue, and as I chewed I realized just how foreign this whole communion service was to me.

Upon taking my seat, however, I discerned just how foreign I was to the communion service. Tannen’s grandmother whispered in an angry tone to those next to her, and shot me an evil stare. I gave Tannen a hard elbow to the ribs thinking that he must have tricked me with the whole “sticking out the tongue” thing. Only later did I find out that only Catholics were supposed to go forward. The ritual seemed oddly exclusive to me. “Are you even baptized?” Tannen’s grandmother asked accusingly on the ride back to the cabin. “Of course, I am,” I said happily. “I got baptized two years ago at the river baptism our church does.” All his grandmother could do was snort, fume, and grumble that I had “stolen the sacrament.”

Mechanized Morsels

Soon after the incident at the Roman Catholic church, my family began attending a new church, Portland First Church of the Nazarene, and I once again encountered the nasty-tasting wafers. Although I longed for the sweet French bread of my old congregation, I found that the wafers at the Church of the Nazarene were at least different in distribution from those of the Roman Catholics. The Nazarenes invited everyone to take a wafer and thimble-sized cup of grape juice from the trays they passed around on their quarterly communion Sunday. But just as with the Roman Catholics, I was troubled by the stoic ritualism of the communion service. Pass the tray. Hold the elements. Eat together. Drink together. Everyone lean forward to put your plastic cup in the pew rack in front of you. At least that last movement was not orchestrated from the front, but everyone did it as if it had been silently commanded. I rebelled and held my cup, wondering why everyone wanted to get rid of the blood of Jesus so quickly. Everything felt oddly individual and sterile; the meal seemed so meager. In the end, communion lost the meaning it once held for me.

Handfuls of Jesus

While the Nazarenes were not any more generous with the portions of their bread than the Roman Catholics, at least they allowed everybody to take what they offered. Years later I found an oddly different scenario at the Easter service of an Eastern Orthodox congregation. It was nearly three hours into an Easter Eve service, in the early hours of the morning, that the holy bread was unveiled. I was intrigued at the huge bowl of bread prepared for the tiny congregation in southern Idaho. Harkening back to my experience with Tannen and his Roman Catholic grandmother, I remained seated, but I was overwhelmed with emotion as I witnessed people going back two and three times to fill their hands to overflowing with bread. Here was the visible body of Christ truly feeding upon Christ together. They were not pretending to eat together from pressed-and-formed wafers of miniscule size. These people feasted together and prayed together. They were not shy about taking from the bowl, as if with each scoop they proclaimed, “I need to feed upon Christ. I need him to become part of me. I need for me to be part of him.”

Following the service, we were ushered next door to a lavish potluck of European meats and pies. Although I had not been invited to dip my hands into the bowl of holy bread, suddenly I was incorporated into this continuing celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection. Rarely in my church experience have I felt more included, more a part of the body of Christ, than I did at that moment over a meal of perogies and red wine. And yet I had not been invited to take part in the totality of their celebration. I felt oddly included in the community, but still held at a distance from the means of grace.

Guerrilla Ecumenism

I have floated across the gamut of Christian Eucharist celebrations, partaking in each, experiencing the presence of Christ in all, and the whole time doing it surreptitiously. Call it guerrilla ecumenism or bootleg Eucharist, but I suspect that just such guerrilla communion — unity gained incognito — will be one of the things that drives Christian ecumenism forward in the 21st century. My experience is just a sign that those in the community of Christ may be more ready for ecumenical unification than Canon Law, books of order, or manuals and handbooks have yet afforded.

Renewing the Feast

It was the experience of Eucharist in the midst of that Eastern Orthodox potluck that inspired me to take the experience back to the young adult ministry I led at the Church of the Nazarene down the street. Despite the anorexic celebration of the Eucharist in the Church of the Nazarene, I had become a Nazarene minister and now hoped that I could reinvigorate the celebration of the Eucharist so that it felt more like a meal than a wine tasting. Further, young adults from more than a dozen denominations and local churches attended the group, and it seemed to be the perfect place for a truly ecumenical celebration of the consummately Christian meal.

One Sunday evening in the dead of winter, college students expected to arrive to the normal worship service we offered, but instead they were greeted by a candlelit room dotted with dining tables and chairs. Each person was assigned to a table as they entered, and when the room was full we served a simple meal of soup with the instructions to talk and pray with one another.

Nearly a half hour into the conversation, I went from table to table, breaking a loaf of bread and presenting a pitcher of grape juice. With ancient words of institution, I invited each table to transform their dinner conversation into a joining in the Lord’s Supper together. There was an obvious feeling of unease at each table as people wondered how they might transform something that had always been “just a bite” into a prolonged meal together. The tension did not arise from the presence of Christ’s body and blood, but their prolonged presence in its vicinity; there was a tentativeness as people shared the abundance of bread and juice around the table and wondered if they should pray, or speak, or remain silent.

As uneasiness spread throughout the room, and as people were puzzled by what it might mean to truly celebrate the Eucharist as a meal together, I felt the need to give a simple directive. “Just one rule for tonight as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper,” I called to those gathered. “Communion is usually celebrated on the run, so no more running in church. Stay and enjoy the Body of Christ together. Be the Body of Christ together.”

And they did.

And they were.