It’s Inside Baseball… except when it’s not!

Updated - July 7, 2022. It’s a triennial event. Every three years, as we get ready for the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, some issue, some resolution, some controversy will come up that burns up the internet airwaves and vies for the attention of clergy like me, convention deputies, and other church geeks. 

Whether or not these “hot issues” make any difference to everyday Christians… well, that’s another question.

This year’s edition of the “Hot Button Issue” comes in the form of a resolution from the Diocese of Northern California that, if approved in both the House of Deputies (laity and clergy) and the House of Bishops, would remove baptism as a prerequisite for admission to Holy Communion. There have been learned responses from eminent scholars, theologians, and preachers (lay and ordained) on both sides. And the arguments are very “inside baseball.”

[N.B. The Resolution has been deferred to the next General Convention in two years partly because of the shortened and streamlined agenda of this COVID-delayed, and abbreviated General Convention. Read more here.]

As near as I can tell, the rationale behind this resolution (and I am summarizing here) is either “hospitality” (i.e. “don’t turn aside guests and inquirers who present themselves at the communion table”) or “evangelism” (i.e. “don’t make baptism a barrier to the Good News.”)

The twenty-two theologians and church historians who have written a letter opposing the motion says (and, again, I am summarizing here) that in unlinking baptism from communion means that there is essentially nothing to get initiated into. Communion, they remind us, an action of the Christian community into which the faithful are initiated. Baptism is the Sacrament of Initiation. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Christian community. 

The debate has devolved--as these things usually do-- into side issues, the main one being what we mean by "people" when we say in the liturgy "The Gifts of God for the People of God." That somehow, when we address the baptized at the Eucharist as the "People of God" that that makes other people who are not baptized as lesser people, or something like that. 

And then there is the whole question of whether or not folks outside the confines of the Episcopal Church even know or care about what we're doing on Sunday morning anyway. As one colleague said on social media, "Given the state of our evangelism, until people are knocking down the doors to come into our churches, I am not sure what the argument is about."

But I digress.

As I write this, I honestly can’t predict how the next General Convention will vote. Whether the proposed resolution passes or not, I know two things for sure: Initiation is hard work. And Christian community is matter of intention.

To me, the resolution is both well-meaning and unhelpful. In trying to be the most pastoral, to me it misses the pastoral mark in several ways.

To become a follower of Jesus in community assumes a certain intentionality. And our Prayer Book reflects that. In fact, the baptismal rite in our Prayer Book assumes that the norm for the baptized to be adult converts to the Christian faith. It’s just that we baptize more babies than adults because we assume that Christian families in Christian households and congregations will raise up Christian children.

Whether the person first receiving Communion is a child or a grown up, the task of the community is formation and an increasing sense of inclusion into the community of faith and the life as a follower of Jesus.

Having said that, my pastoral practice has always been to communicate the Sacrament to anyone who presents themselves to me at the Communion rail, or for that matter, the hospital bedside. I am certain that over the course of nearly forty years of ordained ministry, I have at one time or another given communion to someone who was not baptized… say, an adult who was raised in a tradition that only practiced believer’s baptism but left that tradition before it occurred and then found his or her way into an Episcopal Church. Or a person who never encountered a church before and was simply doing what everyone else in the room is doing. There are thousands of stories like this and more, and I am sure I’ve encountered folks who are living them out, knowingly or not. 

So what does one do when, as priest, one meets or pastors such a person? 

My own practice has been that when I find a congregant who is not baptized, I will care for, teach, and invite that person to baptism, preparing them along the way, and asking them, once they enter a process of catechesis, to refrain from communion until after their baptism. I have baptized enough older children, young adults (teens and college aged), and adults to know that this process, while time-consuming, works. The process of initiation is not instant gratification. It is a process of building relationship between God and the person, and between the person and their Christian community.

To the charge that not communing such a person is somehow not inhospitable, I reply that it is apex of hospitality to meet people where they are, to listen to their story, invite people into conversation, especially when that conversation is as central as a person’s relationship to God, their neighbor, and themselves. To have that conversation is to invite a person into a process of reflection, prayer, and community, and to walk with them through that whole journey.

I am, frankly, perplexed by the argument—put forth by some theologians that I have profound respect for—that baptism is a barrier to communion, because it short-circuits initiation as part of the process of full inclusion. 

To be fair, I think that for many in this debate, the argument that baptism must precede communion sounds and feels to them as if we are in the business of checking one another's papers. Kind of like this:

One thing for certain, initiation happens. 

Over the years, I’ve joined enough organizations… from workplaces, to organizations that train and certify chaplains, to volunteer fire and EMS companies, to local community theaters and choruses, and, yes, even churches… to know that every organization on the planet, every place where humans gather in groups, have rites and processes of initiation. Even something as informal as a Twelve-Step group, has a process to welcome new people, identify appropriate leaders and mentors, and to establish group norms to assure the safety and anonymity of their members. And these processes are not instantaneous.  We in the Church aren’t any different than that, even as a community founded upon the free, unconditional, unbounded grace of God.

A significant amount of textual real estate in the New Testament is spent on sorting out what it means to be a part of Christian community. The Epistles are filled with congregations working out this question. Even the Gospels, growing as they do out of various Christian communities have their own take on what it means to be a follower of Jesus in community. Sometimes they err on the side of grace (as with the inclusion of Gentiles into what started out as a Jewish sect when the Church was very young) and sometimes the communities require discipline or correction (as when Paul admonishes these early Christians to not let their liberty become an occasion for sin). Christian community is always a work in progress.

I suspect that the two halves of this argument are a side urging order and a side urging charisma. Which is a good thing! Because Christian community always experiences the tension between charisma and order, and it is in that tension where the Holy Spirit lives!

So, what about Communion?

Every Sunday, I stand before you and make this invitation: “In the Episcopal Church, all baptized Christians are welcome to receive Communion. This is Christ’s table and you are all welcome to it.”

When there are events (like weddings or funerals or the Big Holy Days) and where there may be people present who don’t how “we” do things, I give a brief instruction, including how to participate even if one wants to opt out of communion.

You want to know the funny part about my standard invitation? I wrote that little script many years ago, when I was working in Catholic Healthcare as a Chaplain in a hospital run by a community of Catholic nuns. The invitation I recite came in reaction against the experience of being excluded from Communion in that tradition!

In those days, I would go to many churches and clergy groups to talk about pastoral ministry at my Catholic hospital, and this put me in situations where I attended Roman Catholic Mass but was unable to receive because I am not, in their view, in full communion with the Bishop of Rome (ie, the Pope). I often heard a little spiel (I don’t know if they still do it) talking about “our sad divisions” and as gently as possible discouraging non-Catholics from receiving at their altar.

My weekly invitation that you hear is a deliberate reversal of that standard announcement.

So, while I follow the Episcopal Church’s official line on “open communion”—that is, Communion is open to all the baptized, I am equally committed to baptism as full and complete initiation and I believe that the Church’s normative practice is that communion grows out of baptism.

I also believe that other oft-overlooked rubrics require are important guidelines, too. Like the so-called “disciplinary rubric,” which requires us to be at peace with one another when we present ourselves for Communion, and that people who are at enmity with one another might do well to refrain from receiving until they are reconciled.

Speaking of which, I notice that the proponents of the resolution also seem to drive around the uncomfortable fact that communities don't just welcome people. They also live together, and they set norms for each other as to what is appropriate behavior and the consequences for going outside those boundaries. The aforementioned Disciplinary Rubrics are a case in point. (In nearly forty years of ministry, I have never invoked these myself. But a foundational story growing up in my household was my parents account of how in the late 1950's during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, my family's parish priest in northern Virginia once invoked these when he was confronted by a parishioner who on Sunday morning loudly objected to receiving Communion alongside a person of color.) The implication is that being in communion means being in relationship with a community and in that relationship there is at once accountability and amendment of life.

Since the time of the Apostle Paul, the long tradition of teaching in the church reminds us not to take lightly the significance of sharing Christ’s Body and Blood in community; at the same time, we are equally admonished by our Lord and the Apostle not to lay on each other any unnecessary burdens. And, finally, we are reminded in scripture not to turn the gracious liberty that we have been granted in Christ into an occasion for sin and pride.

All along the way, I keep before me something Pope Francis said not long ago, “who am I to judge?”

Which is why, I repeat, that as a practical matter, I have never, ever, refused to communicate anyone who present themselves to me at the rail (or who requests communion at the bedside). Neither in my nearly forty years of ordained ministry have I had to invoke that very long, very specialized disciplinary rubric. I will not check your papers or ask for your bona-fides.

I might urge and encourage you to be reconciled to your sister or brother, or to be sure that you are spiritually ready to receive the blessed Sacrament, I may even invite you to the sacrament of confession, but none of these are the same thing as refusal. If you are not baptized, I will certainly invite you to take the step of both coming into relationship with God in Christ and being baptized into His body, the Church, and in any event to remain in fellowship with the community and to present oneself for prayer and blessing.

At the same time, I get nervous with we start invoking modern, post-enlightenment ideas of ‘rights’ or modern ideas of ‘privilege’ on to the pastoral act of taking, blessings, breaking, and sharing the bread and wine of the Eucharist in Christian community. Because Christians are not solitary creatures, and our liberty in Christ is not a ‘right’ (in the political sense) but a grace. Christian community is a community of people living under grace who seek to follow Jesus Christ as his friends and apprentices.

The way we are fully initiated into that community is through baptism. Our communion is a sign that we have all chosen to continue in this community, this portion of the body of Christ, together. In any event, we walk this journey as followers of Jesus and any claim that we have to be a part of that community is through God’s grace. The process that we take to become apart of a given community can teach us a lot about what it means to listen for and respond to God and to live a faithful, abundant life in community. 

The particular conversation at this moment may seem like, and may in fact be, “inside baseball,” and whether or not this particular resolution passes this summer still leaves an important question before us and every follower of Jesus: how do we know and follow Christ with the people God has given us in this community at this moment? How do we become apart of the community of Christ’s followers, friends and apprentices? How are we accountable to one another in ways that lead to charity and growth? 

The answer may be as simple as an act of faith, and as mysterious as life together in Communion.