why do we do what we do

This Sunday at Bunyan we're doing a whole church sunday (the name we give our all-age or famly services) where the whole church will participate in communion.  As Baptists, children can often/sometimes get excluded from this important meal and often takes place once they gone to their different activities. This appears to be a traditional thing, rather than one informed by any theology - when you do some theology, it is my contention, that the whole church should always be present for communion - it is the meal that joins us together in Christ.  Taking an idea from my mum and dad's church in Bicester (baptist as well), we're involving children like children are involved in the Jewish seder meal during Passover. Here, the children ask questions which basically ask why do we do what we do.  The point of this, theologically is to pass on the story and to remind everyone of the meaning and the reason for the meal. Again, communion in free churches often, because of their lack of shared liturgy, can be devoid of explanation - its assumed - and without a shared understanding of what the bread and wine symbolize.  A recent post from Graham @ Leaving Munster quoted this:

The Eucharist is the place where the church practices postconsumerism. The communion table levels those of different economic means - poor and rich get the same portion. It effaces our carefully cultivated tastes - there is no menu, no list of options, no "good, better, best!" hierarchy of products.

I like that phrase postconsumerism - it would be wonderful if the whole church could grasp that, could experience that, could recognise that the communion is foretaste of the kingdom. For the church what we eat and how we eat are so important to our identity as the church.  Last year, I blogged (here) the following, below, which I found Jonny Baker.

When we take the Lord’s Supper, we aren’t just agreeing to a theological principle or performing a dutiful act of remembrance like laying flowers on a grave. The Lord’s Supper is a many-layered subversive and prophetic act that declares once and for all - the exile of God’s people is over. The kingdom of God has come and will culminate in a final feast where all the friends of Jesus, regardless of class, race, gender, or nationality will sit at his table. Israel is - not a proud, pure, triumphant nation - but a rag-tag band of sinners living in the grace of God. That’s who we are and that’s why we bother with the Lord’s Supper.

Comments

[Laurence]

There're some fantastic thoughts; and they serve to remind me how fascination the Eucharist really is, with so much potential. If only I'd had some of these reflections to hand a couple of years ago, when our chapel was discussing whether to have the children open to taking the elements with us in celebrating communion. Luckily, they were allowed to in the end, as I’d advocated pretty much by instinct (my line being that they were part of the Church, and this is therefore important), and many now do. There's usually some quick story told to them beforehand, to ensure they have some gist of what's going on.

But I wonder about the possibilities in your use of a seder meal-structure of story telling, as a variant on the whole narrative (thus far I've pretty much only seen different versions of the Eucharistic prayer used). I’ll try and remember to bring it up some time, see what they think – perhaps the change, in itself, might be enough to help us look at Eucharist afresh (perhaps all the more notable for us, given how much food and catering features in our ‘extra-curricular’ activities!)