This is Keith, and this is Ben, and this is main street Lutherans. So, Keith, we're going to talk about communion as our main topic today, and I'm sure that you've got a story or two about giving first communion to some kids.

Oh, yeah.

Actually, I could tell you a story about my first communion. So I was in, I want to say, fourth grade at Zion church in Glenrock, where I grew up, and there were maybe a half dozen of us going through our first communion class, and the class was predominantly taught by our pastor's spouse. And I don't remember much about the content of those classes, although I can picture the room that we were in and sort of the arrangement we were sitting in. One of the things that we did not do that some churches do, that I do as a pastor, is they did not give the kids the opportunity to taste the communion elements prior to the first day that we did this in worship. I always give the chance for kids to try the wafers, try the bread, try the gluten free wafers that some of their friends have to use that they're so glad they don't have to, the grape juice and wine that we use. Anyhow, we didn't do that. And so I distinctly recall one of my classmates, Kevin, who was standing next to me. Not the Kevin that I am pastor alongside of here at St. Matthew by the. Gets the pastor comes around, gives us the bread, eats the bread, communion assistant comes around, gives the little individual cup of wine. Kevin knocks back his little cup of wine, pauses for a moment, his eyes open very widely, and then he proceeds to spit the little sip of wine out onto the carpet in the church.

Wow.

With everybody laughing. It was quite a spit take moment, because just he was thrown off by the flavor of the wine. And that was just a very memorable first communion moment for.

And we wonder why the Roman Catholic Church didn't let the congregation members drink the.

Right. That's right.

That was one of the fears is they'd spill it on the carpet, and then what are you going to do? Jesus on the carpet?

I'm sure it's one of the commandments, thou shalt not spit, take the communion.

True.

Yep, yep, yep.

Well, I had one at Warburg Seminary when I was in. It would have been right before freshman year at Capitol. We're serving communion, and a kid comes up, probably a six year old, with his parents who were students at the seminary at Warburg seminary in Dubuque. He takes the common cup, knocks it back, hands it back, and says, all done. And that was port. So, Doug ugd. And he grabs it, takes it back, refills it, comes back and shakes his head. And that was a moment. My parents actually made sure that we had tried wine out in public before we could do that. So we went to dinner one night and got italian food and some red wine, and I got to drink a little bit just so that I knew what was coming.

Yeah.

Strongly recommended.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So now we've talked about how we abuse communion.

Oh, come on. There's so many more ways. I'm sure.

But that's true. That's true. We're going to talk about the sacraments. We'll talk about communion now. We'll talk about baptism at some future.

Date, which seems kind of backwards, and yet I think it makes sense in that for adults, communion is going to be the sacrament that you encounter first if you're coming into the lutheran church for the first time.

Well.

And honestly, it's the thing that is most different from other denominations. And other lutheran denominations in particular.

Yeah.

And so if we're focusing at first on what makes us a little bit different and what might make someone uncomfortable or more comfortable knowing about before they open the door to an ELCA congregation, I think this is a perfectly good thing. Very few people are going to need baptized when they walk in the first time, correct?

Yeah.

People are going to want to know about how communion works in your church.

Absolutely.

Certainly before they take it. And you're right. Perhaps before they even walk in the door.

Yeah.

But since this is our first talk about sacraments, we ought to talk about what makes a sacrament in the LCA. Now, Lutherans recognize two sacraments, baptism and communion. Other denominations recognize more and fewer.

Right. Three for Anglicans, seven for Catholics. I don't know there's anyone that recognizes less than two, which I guess would be one.

Yeah.

Or none.

Yeah.

Maybe that's the wrong way to say it. I think some denominations put less attention toward communion than baptism, and so it sort of elevates baptism as a primary sacrament as opposed to communion, which is, in their cases, more symbolic and so not as important.

Right.

But at any rate, so Luther defines sacraments. That's one of the things that he separates with from the Roman Catholic Church. And so he sees it as something commanded by Jesus that involves the word and an earthly.

Yeah, yeah.

And so that's how we arrived. That's how Luther arrived at the number two, because you're right, he was coming out of that catholic context. He's dealing with an existing set of recognized sacraments, but applying a different definition to them. And so he just kind of ended up eliminating them until, or narrowing it down until we got down to the two, which are communion, of course. That's what we're talking about right now. And baptism.

Right. Because it's in our notes more than anything else, because we'd probably forget about it. But if you're interested in looking at the nitty gritty on these two things and how the church practices them and what we're going to talk about, that's what we're going to talk about here. But there's a document published in 1997 by the ELCA. Keith got a copy fresh off the press when he was in seminary.

I did.

I still have it.

He's got it with him right now.

Yeah.

With the letter tucked into it from the dean of chapel who presented to all the students.

And it's now been opened twice.

Once when I read it and another time to make sure it was my copy.

That's right. And so what that document does is it actually spells out what the expectations are from the denomination on how churches will practice these things. And it's not just the sacraments, but they are a major part of that. It includes things about how we deal with other denominations and things like that. But it's not a theological document, it's a practical document. They call that audiophra. It's the way we do things just for good church order, as someone I know says quite often.

Right. Yeah.

Hey, random trivia question, and this might be a folktale, but I heard a story once that because of Luther's particular definition, he actually struggled with a possible third sacrament. And that is.

Ooh, that would make sense.

Yeah.

Because there is a physical element in it with the water. And Jesus commanded his disciples, know, as I have served you, you also should serve each other. But because the church up until that time had not considered footwashing a sacrament, Luther wasn't looking to add a new one. He was just narrowing down the list, particular couple. I just thought that was an interesting story.

Yeah, that is very. Know, honestly, feeding sheep would probably almost hit that too, then.

Yeah.

Could you imagine the lutheran church if.

We all had to feed sheep every Sunday? Yes. There'd be one really fat sheep for the congregation to feed. Because everybody just be the one.

Yeah, absolutely. And knitting would be a spiritual discipline.

Right.

But since we don't do any of that when we do communion, and now we're going to dumb this down a little bit for folks that probably haven't been in an ElCA church or a lutheran church, perhaps. So what do we use now? When Jesus gives first communion? It's the Shabbat. Right. So he would be using unleavened bread.

Well, it was Passover.

Passover.

So.

Guess not.

Yeah.

So they would be using unleavened bread because in part of the jewish Passover observance, is to remove the yeast from your house. Yeah. Some christian churches today, sort of in recognition of that act, both in Judaism in general and for Jesus on that particular night in particular, still use unleavened bread.

But it's not required.

But it's not required.

Yeah.

The church that I serve at, we use leavened bread. Same kind you would slice to make a sandwich.

And now, what about those poker chips?

Yeah, the wafers. I always tell the kids in confirmation, we get those, but cutting the bottoms out of styrofoam cups and stiping across on them.

But, yeah.

The truth is, they are simply a very simple unleavened bread recipe. And they do have some advantages. They do not leave crumbs. They don't go bad very easily. They don't mold. If they get stale, you can't tell because they still taste the same and they travel well. So that's what most pastors I know use in, like a home communion kit where if you're visiting someone in the hospital or nursing home or their own house that is not able to physically come to church anymore, and you occasionally go visit them and take communion to them. Most of the time that's done with wafers, even if you don't normally use them in a church worship setting.

But it always has to be a bread. We don't do oreos. We don't do chocolate chip cookies.

No. In deep theological discussions, there are always conversations around emergency, which is a pretty broad, narrow term, like what qualifies as an emergency. And they'll say that if someone is at war and they're about to go into battle and this is perhaps the last time they might ever receive communion, and there's no bread in sight.

Yeah.

Use whatever is in the ration kit that make a comparable substitute. Same thing with the wine. You could use a can of Coca Cola or a bottle of water if that was absolutely all that was available to you in the moment. The emergency part really comes down to the, is it really pastorally advisable to share communion in this way, in this moment? And again, if you're talking about someone that may never have the opportunity to do so again. Yeah.

It's probably important to go back to that part of the sacrament, that it is the word that makes the sacrament, that gives the sacrament its power.

Right. And so if you're going on a youth retreat and you forgot the bread and wine, you're probably not going to qualify. In that case, you're either going to have to run out to the store or just wait.

So pizza and doesn't. Doesn't work then, right?

Yeah.

And then as far as the wine goes, when we use wine, I know that when we were at Calvary, we used Fairbanks port because I think it was cheap, but it also had maybe a little bit of an antiseptic thing because we did common think. I don't think congregations do common cup quite as much anymore.

Not as much. I have seen it once or twice since the pandemic, but it's generally been not in a regular congregational setting, it's been like a continuing ed event or a synod event or something.

I would think maybe a wedding where maybe the bride and groom might share the cup and everybody else would get it. Something else.

Right.

Like that, but where they're trusted and limited. And then as far as grape juice, I know that we offer grape juice often for folks who can't take wine for various reasons.

Yeah.

Or just for people who really just don't like wine, especially younger kids frequently will just take the grape juice because they just can't stand the taste of the wine. And that's fine.

Yeah.

And some churches use red wine, some use white wine. The variety of wine is not relevant, really, at all.

Most often, if you're choosing between cups, if it's red, it's the wine. If it's white, it's the grape juice.

I'd say that's the more common approach. Other places, white grape juice for that very reason, so that you can visually tell them apart.

Yeah.

I've been to churches where it was the reverse. They used white wine and what is it, red or purple colored grape juice.

Yeah.

What about those little pandemic kits? Have you used those in your congregation?

Yeah, we have. A lot of people don't like them, of course. I personally think the biggest problem with most of them is that when you have elderly people and there isn't an ELCA congregation that's not on a college campus that doesn't have elderly people, they have a really hard time opening the kit. And so we had an experience where the elderly folks were still opening in their kit during the benediction.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Because there aren't enough younger people to help them get them open.

Yeah.

And they are frustrating. They serve their purpose, but I don't know of very many places that are continuing to use them across the board. We have some folks that are able to come to church, but they don't come forward for communion. And some of them, we take communion to them in their seats. Some of them just prefer to use one of those little kits, and I think it's just because it doesn't draw any attention to them that way, then that's good.

Yeah.

So then the next important thing that probably differentiates us most from other lutheran denominations is who do we let receive communion in the LCA churches?

Yeah.

We have what gets called in some church circles an open table.

Meaning that you need a reservation from an online source.

Yeah.

Or you slip a 20 to the guy at the door and he'll squeeze you in.

Yeah.

No, it's an idea that anyone. It's interesting because if you go back, I suspect if we go back to the use of the means of grace, it somewhere in there is going to say something like, any baptized Christian is welcome to come forward for communion, which at that time seemed like a pretty generous statement to make, that if you say you were baptized in a catholic church as a kid, or you were baptized in an adult baptism in an evangelical congregation, and maybe you were just visiting grandma for Christmas, or maybe you had moved into a new town and looking for a new church, and you'd be welcome to come forward and receive communion. Now, there are conversations going on about, is it truly hospitable in a time when there are lots of folks interested in the christian church who didn't grow up in the church and so maybe were never baptized, is it really hospitable to say to them, no, just because you came in the door today for the first time, you can't take communion because you're not been baptized? First off, who's going to have that conversation? Right. The pastor isn't, like, looking for the id card on each person as they come forward. And the other thought is just that, again, from a sense of hospitality, if it's a meal and an open table, then perhaps everybody should be able to come. I don't know that we've made a true theological statement on that yet, but there's a lot of conversation around it.

Sure.

Yeah.

And then who can distribute it? Who can do the blessing of the communion? Who can do that part of the service?

Yeah.

So in terms of the communion ritual that happens before we start getting into the eating and drinking part, that would typically be an ordained minister of word and sacrament, which we commonly call a pastor. And that's not because there's anything special about pastors or their work or their role or the process by which you become one. It's simply what Luther and his compatriots referred to as good order in the church, that the church is a community. And in community, there's structure. And so part of that structure is that. The point being that the communion is even in the word itself. It is something done in community. It's something we do together. And so it's not necessary for just anyone to be making that moment the. It's part of the pastor's job. Now, again, you're going to find someplace in those emergency settings, if you don't have a pastor and you're about to die and you want to receive communion, your friend Joe can just do it for you. And that's considered legit. But typically speaking, that's not necessary for most of us 99.9% of the time. And so pastors are the ones who have that role. Now, as far as distribution of communion goes, anyone can do that in terms of helping in the service, to hand out the bread, to provide the wine. Sometimes that's something that certain individuals in a congregation, like, I've been in churches where all of the church council are the people that help distribute the wine. It's just a way for them to be involved. It's a way to help them be visible so people can recognize, oh, those are the council members. I know who they are. Not every church does that.

Now, what does our church believe if, say, I take communion from someone who eventually does something bad in the church and is excommunicated from the church, it doesn't happen very often. But is there any consequence in communion from that?

Does that affect. No. Thank goodness for Jesus, because it is. Know, Luther has a. I can't remember the wording of it, but he has a very pronounceable statement someplace that says something like, the merits of the minister are irrelevant in the validity of the sacrament.

It's all over the book of Concord.

Yeah, anybody? So, yeah, if your pastor, if they mispronounce the words, if they mess up the Lord's prayer that day, if it turns out they're a horrible person in some way, communion is still valid. If they are still a ministry in good standing with the church.

So what about online communion? How is that? I don't think the church has an official position on it at this point.

It does not. Did you guys do that where you're at in groc?

We didn't really ever do online. Wasn't we sort of just blasted through.

Gotcha. Yeah, we did start online services pretty quickly, and it was weird. You and I were chatting about this a little bit before we started the episode. St. Matthew has had a radio broadcast for almost 80 years at this point. Originally on an AM station, now on both AM and FM. And this question never occurred to anyone about whether it was okay for me, listening at home, listening in the car. Probably not in the car. Communion would be awkward in the car. Unless you weren't the one driving. But anyhow, the idea that. What's that?

A tour bus?

Yeah, right. Yeah, you're in a tour bus. You get the party wine going. But the idea that somebody would be listening at home and, oh, we're coming to the part of the service where there's communion. Now, I might have been saying the words. Maybe I have the confession memorized, or maybe I'm reading the bulletin online or had a copy of it mailed to my house. I might be reading the words of the confession along. I might be singing the hymns. I've listened to the sermon. I prayed the prayers. I may have spoken the responses in the prayers as we went, if I'm familiar with it, I might have said the Lord's prayer and recited the apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. I don't know that it would have ever occurred to anyone to say, oh, it's coming up. Time for communion. I'd better go to the kitchen and get some bread and wine. Until there was a pandemic.

I watched some church services online for one of our LLM classes on worship and several. They weren't lutheran denominations, but there were denominations that skipped. They edited out the communion part because they felt it wasn't valid.

Sure.

So they didn't want to encourage people to do a sacrament wrong.

Yeah.

And there's certainly that conversation going on at St. Matt's. We kicked it around a little bit, and we finally just erred on the side of this pandemic situation. It's the world we live in in the moment. We're talking back in 2020 and 21.

And I may be wrong on this, but I'm willing to be wrong and say something. So don't take advice from me on this, anybody that's listening. But it's always been sort of my opinion that if we give communion and we try to do communion, it's God's supper, it's God giving us this relationship. It's God's word that institutes it. If we do communion in a way that is offensive to God and God decides not to honor it, we're not going to drop over dead from it. Right. I don't think that's how it works. Right. I don't think we can gatekeep it quite that way.

And in a way that's an extension of the merits of the minister. Do not the sacrament make argument. Right. This is what a congregation has decided to do in a serious, deliberative way, and said, hey, we think the best way in this time, when there is so much isolation to help people feel as connected as they can to the body of Christ and to their congregation, to encourage them to share in communion, which Again, shares the same root as the word community and communication. We all felt that it was an appropriate step. Now, there was even some question at the beginning about, well, how are we going to undo it after the pandemic? How do we say it's okay for now but not later? And again, we've not tried to make that distinction. I have learned, and even I'm kind of surprised by it. Every once in a while, I'll be talking with someone and they say, oh, yeah, when we were at home. And maybe it's just because they didn't come in that Sunday, or maybe they are now consider themselves shut in. They have said, yeah, we still go and grab some bread and wine and have communion. Oh, great.

Yeah.

And you don't want to turn them away.

Yeah.

I guess the last things are the practical ones. So how often are we recommended to do communion? When I grew up, it was the first Sunday of the month.

Yeah.

Like Easter and Christmas.

Yeah.

And then in my first call, it was the first and third Sundays.

Wow.

Yeah.

But they had like 40,000 people to communion.

Yeah.

That's fair. The last church that I was at, it wasn't that many, but it was a big church. The last church that I was at before I came to my current call, they had communion every week, I think, but one Sunday a month, because people missed it, they would kneel at the communion rail, and then they would use individual cups and bread. But the other Sundays of the month, they did continuous communion, which you just stand and walk through the line. And they use probably.

Yeah.

And intinction.

Yeah.

And so it drove me nuts, because again, I'm thinking from a hospitality standpoint, somebody comes in the door on a Sunday, and they're like, oh, I walk through this line, I get my piece of bread or my wafer, they use wafers. On those Sundays, I get my wafer, I dip it into this thing and they get me back to my seat. Now, what's this, like kneeling at the railing and now, oh, wow, you get real bread. That's nice. What's this little cup for? And yeah, it was OD, but that was just what they.

Oh, I'll have to tell you one of John Czarnota's stories sometime. Hot dog buns and bread.

Nice fresh baked bread.

Anyway, yeah, we get hung up on the method sometimes, I think.

Yeah, right. Yeah, that's what, that's what people end up talking about because it's one of the distinctions. They're like, oh, you can tell stories about it, but the. How often anymore. It seems to me that most ELCA congregations are back to weekly communion. Well, in ways, the means of grace.

Says that we should do it at least weekly, but not every service has to include it.

Yeah.

The only congregations that I know of personally that do not have weekly communion are those that do not have a regular pastor on staff at the moment. So maybe they're a very small church and they share a minister with a couple of other congregations and maybe that pastor is not at their building every Sunday.

Right. And our synod, the bishop is allowed to authorize some people to give communion. So our lay ministry, our licensed lay ministers are permitted by the bishop to give communion along with the diaconical. Am I saying that right? Ministers. So deacons, deaconesses, they can do that too.

Yeah, we have the same here. I know sometimes interns who are at a site where they don't have a pastor on site, that there are basically the pastoral presence. They're often authorized to preside, but there.

Are synods that do.

Just.

And when we talk about synods, that's a geographic thing. So I'm in southeast Michigan, which is basically Detroit, and know everything outside of, you know, southeast.

Yeah, I'm in the lower synod, which is about nine counties in south central Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

And some of the synods are huge geographically, and some of them are just like Ben's, like the size of a large city.

Yeah.

So I think that does it. What do we get out of communion?

Gives you a chance to get up.

And stretch your legs and walk around a little bit.

Yeah.

That could lead us down a much longer, deeper rabbit hole. But I would say know, first off, we have communion because Jesus tells us to.

Right.

And so that's part of what makes it a sacrament. And so that's partly why we do it. But it's not only because Jesus tells us to. It's also because.

Well, it's in his words. Right. Do this for the forgiveness of.

Yeah, yeah.

Do this in remembrance of. So, you know, we do that because Jesus tells us to. We do it. Communion. That. That book that we've referred to a couple of times. The use of the means of grace, the title is significant because we believe that the sacraments are means of God's grace. That means that they are one of the ways that God's love and compassion and forgiveness come to us in a very tangible way. Love and forgiveness that you can put into your mouth.

I think it's important that. So this is how we get God's grace. And it's through God's grace that we receive faith. Right. It's that old lutheran dictum of saved by grace through.

You know, Ben, I'll ask you a question. What do we believe happens with the bread and wine during know?

I think the safest answer to that is we don't really know, but we believe that it is transformed into the blood and body of Jesus Christ, and that it is a thing that we have trust in and for us to know the details of it. And when specifically that happens is really not a question that we need to ask.

Right.

Or at least not need to answer.

Yeah.

And certainly nothing happens physically to them. They don't change in flavor or smell. Right.

But they're more than symbol. That's an important Jesus.

You know, we believe that Jesus promises to be present. Luther's wording was in with and under the physical elements of bread and wine. And he said, I feel confident in saying that because Jesus is present in my split pea. You know, beyond that, yeah. Jesus comes to us with the grace of his suffering and death in communion in a particular way, more so than just the ways that Jesus is present with us everywhere.

Well, since we've just talked about the gospel and all that, we got to talk about the law now. So we're to our questions. Last week's question was, what is the primary purpose of the ten Commandments? We had. There are rules that we must follow in order to earn salvation. There are laws that are given to us by God for use in our courts. That's answer B. C is they show us that we fall short of God's demands and that we need faith in Christ for salvation. And the fourth one is, they had a purpose in the time of Moses, but we are not to use them anymore. And the correct answer is c, that they show us that we fall short.

Not only because that's always what I answer multiple choice questions with.

Yeah, nice move.

Yeah.

So our new question for this week, and answer on our socials. You can join us on facebook. You can email us at [email protected]. Our website does not right now have a form to give us feedback, but our website is mainstreetliutherents.com. And I'll repeat that here at the end of the show. But the new question do you want to read this one?

Sure. What commandments of the ten focus on humanity's relationship with God? Your choices are commandments one and two. That's letter a, commandments one and three or one, two and three. Letter B. Letter C would be commandments two and three, or letter D. All of them commandments one through ten. Or I guess we could say e. None of the above.

Absolutely. All right. So send us your answers and we'll take it from there. We'll talk about this in our next episode. Thank you very much. And I think that's it for this week.

All right, bye, y'all.

Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Foat. You can reach us at [email protected] our website is mainstreetlutherans.com. Or you can find us on the socials at Atherans right now. That's Facebook, Instagram and threads. Links are in the show. Notes this show is produced by foat media productions. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.