Communion
TL;DR I want to start a monthly tradition at our home sharing bread and wine as communion that you are welcome to join. Skipping to the last paragraph is also a good summary of what I’m starting. :)
I have grown up all my life in a world of Christianity—my family, church, school. Even though growing up in a bubble like that makes it seem like my Christian faith could be somewhat forced upon me, for sure I have had my own unique experiences in life that have led me to my personal convictions and faith in Christ. And of course, part of my journey has led me to have different viewpoints in what it means to practice my faith than what I see is common around me. These “differences” could be their own entire book or podcast series, but one specific thing that I want to narrow in on is the sacrament of communion.
Churches I have been a part of all my life have decided to practice this in different ways. My childhood church passed plates of small pieces of sweet bread and a tray with cups of grape juice and read passages from The Last Supper in the Bible. They did this once a month and it always felt special but also I think as a kid I was just excited to have a little snack in church. This is all communion was to me for quite some time: a snack in church with a mediocre callback to the cross which I probably thought about a tiny bit just because I was supposed to—almost like saying a quick prayer of thanks before dinner.
Later on, after moving to Seattle and becoming a part of Mars Hill Church, I gained a new perspective on what communion could be. The church had real bread and real wine at the front of the church and encouraged only Christians to come forward to take it after they had reconciled with God and any people in the room they had sinned against. To me, this helped create a new love and respect for the idea of communion: showing how Christ’s work on the cross helps restore broken relationships.
After Mars Hill ended in 2014, the churches I have visited or been a part of have done communion more closely to my childhood church, but on an even simpler level. Passing out grape juice in plastic disposable cups with a wafer on top that resembles something more like styrofoam than bread.
It was at this point, I felt conviction in my heart setting in and this whole project is about taking action on those convictions. I do not want to cast much judgment on churches and their style of practicing communion. I of course don’t think there is any malicious intent in their disposable communion cups. I suspect it’s more something like: they know the sacrament is important and should be practiced, but have found a way to make it cheap and accessible to a great number of people. I will admit—part of the beauty of the sacrament of communion is that it is a picture, a remembrance of Christ’s work. And because it is not literal, a vital part of the practice is the believer’s heart and mind being in the right place.
However, is it wrong to seek a more rich and beautiful communion? Should our ways of worship be cheap and quick because it will reach more people? If God is a creator who appreciates great art and the practice of creating it, shouldn’t our efforts to glorify God be focused on excellence? This is my conviction, and instead of writing to any church to criticize them I felt more that I could and should start the practice in my home.
All of this background and history brings me to the present day. The closest of my old friends from my Mars Hill community separated and spread out in the years following after the church ended, with a lot moving away from Seattle. Our family has changed a lot, growing from 2 in 2016, to 3 in 2018, to 5 in 2019, and finally to 8 in 2020. Right when our family became the biggest is when the new church we started to attend closed their doors and held online only church service for about 2 years. Communion during online service became crackers and orange juice or whatever we had in the fridge. Over the pandemic and our sporadic online church attendance, I waffled between the feeling of being hungry for authentic church connections to not ever wanting to go back to a Sunday service.
Simultaneously in the last 5 years our main community has become all of you, the people we love, the people we know love us, the ones we want to spend time with. I don’t know if anyone else has these thoughts, but one thing I wish is that we had more intentional focus on the things we know we have in common—our faith: our relationship with God, things that excite us, things we are struggling with, things we are learning. I know partially it’s because sometimes it just feels weird to bring it up when we are doing other stuff. But also (at least for me personally) it’s because there are weeks that go by when I haven’t spent much time with God and what He is doing isn’t on my mind.
Which leads me to what I want to start doing in my home and invite all of you to take part if you want to. My idea is this: one Sunday a month; real bread, real wine. One to two hours eating and drinking and talking about what’s going on in life, how we are seeing God moving, encouraging each other. The Oxford definition of communion is “the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.” Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he spoke at The Last Supper. Bread and wine are things we need, things that bring joy, things that can be daily, things that bring sustenance only after they have been created through brokenness—the crushing of grain, the crushing of grapes. There is a rich and beautiful picture in these elements for what Christ did, dying on the cross. And in my opinion, an excellent way to remember is with a great loaf, a great bottle, around a table with great friends. I have decided that this is important enough for me that I will likely be doing it with our family even if no one can make it—so obviously there is no pressure but I want anyone that is interested to know that our door is open.
Aaron