I hope God grades on a curve. Otherwise, I’m toast.

I didn’t take communion for many years. During summer breaks away from Calvin College, I sat stoically in the pew at Bethel Baptist Church in Erie and let the plates pass. (In a Baptist church, you stay seated while the elements are passed among you; you don’t get up and go forward.) Each church I attended thereafter seemed like it was missing something.

That was a long time ago. I sought it out only recently and talked with Pastor Robert Appold at St Matthew Lutheran Church, who was kind enough to listen and allow me to join them, which I’ve been doing for a number of weeks. I attend an early service with Dee Dee. I take the bread and wine and Dee Dee gets a blessing.

Lutherans walk forward to receive communion (at least this congregation does). I was a bit apprehensive; I can remember only one other occasion many years ago where I went forward; I was a guest at a Christian Reformed Church and had friends acquainted with such things. This time I was on my own, and was there because I wanted to be, not because others expected it.

Why did I stop taking communion in the first place? What was I struggling with?

It’s easy to layer our current sensibilities over the past and explain away decisions as stubbornness or immaturity, which is uninteresting and convenient, and unhelpful.

Click to enlarge: This is a pew card from St Matthew Lutheran Church in Ada, MI; it explains what you must believe to partake in communion with them. It’s fairly simply and most Baptists I know wouldn't disagree with any of it, but I wanted to be sure I understood it before joining them; some LCMS churches ask that you be a member.

More often, if we’re honest with ourselves, we see things more clearly (and painfully) as we get older; I believe I was then detecting a missing ingredient, like a skipped step in a recipe. I sat there time after time and told myself, “I’m not sufficiently prepared; there will be some insistent thought or memory that intrudes at the last moment, and I’ll be accountable for it.”

We worship in a digital age where secrets are easy to keep, and the neighbor in the pew is not a neighbor on our street. Increased privacy and license have led some Christian to brand the evangelical mind with a fear that every nurtured mental image is as great a sin as murder.

I still have recollections of Sunday school and bible teachers saying "there is no such thing as a little sin," and that sins in your head are just as bad as the sins you act out.

That’s too bad. It encrypts and convolutes faith to the point where it’s a jumble of complicated ideas with only an incidental connection to the body.

I prefer to think faith is far more physical, and most meaningful when fixed in what we do and how it impacts those around us.

I hope God grades on a curve. Otherwise, I’m toast.

[2013-09-10]

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