Communion is such a desperately serious thing.
And yet a fellowship meal is also social, together, relational.
Recently I led a time of communion in our midweek group and something really funny happened.
There is a guy in our group who has a severe nut allergy so won't eat anything from a mixed use kitchen, because of the risk of contamination.
I was passing the bread around:
"The body of Christ broken for you"
"The body of Christ broken for you"
"Sorry you are not allowed it are you"
He looked at me in absolute horror as I paused. I suddenly realised a little bit more explanation was required.
I stopped, looked at the rest of the group and added "You can't because of your food allergy. And for absolutely no reason that would relate to Church discipline!"
At which point everyone giggled.
With foot firmly removed from mouth we carried on.
2 comments:
Agree on the funny.
Still a suggestion. get some communion wafers. Always have them available for people with nut allergies, gluten intolerance etc. We even have them in a little glass tub on the plate to avoid contamination. Also have had someone bring their own bit of gluten free bread.
For similar reasons we also use non-alcoholic wine - otherwise how do you offer communion to an alcoholic (the "Sorry you are not allowed it" would be rather more dramatic in that case).
Agree though, Communion can be very funny. With hindsight my fumbling the chalice and spilling wine when leading Communion for Methodist Council counts. At the time though I nearly died.
Yep we use non alcoholic wine for that reason.
We also moved to using small individual cups partly due to swine flu health advice and partly because we have students from asia /africa who really struggled with sharing a larger vessel.
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