Communion

Religious tradition as a child pg. 97

Mom and Dad were a little late picking me up from the Primary class upstairs.  Dad explained to the sunday school teacher that they had communion that morning and so church had taken a bit longer than usual.  Walking down the teal carpeted steps to the Narthex I asked my father,

“What is communion?”  

He glanced at my mother and took a breath as if this was going to be hard to explain to a child.  He began in the condescending tone adults use with children when trying to explain something hard.  Even as a child I could sense his hesitation and picked up all the non verbal cues that has seared this particular moment into my memory forever.  I knew this was going to be important if not sacred information he was about to explain to me.  I tried hard to focus on his words.  

He began with “Once a month all the members of the congregation eat a wafer of bread to make us remember Christ’s last supper. He took it with his disciples before he went to death on the cross.  It is called The LORD’s supper, or communion.”  

I had been in church before when they passed the trays of rectangles and tiny cups of juice around.  They told me I couldn’t have any and I was fine with that. I thought maybe there wasn’t enough for everyone. None of the other children took any and it didn’t look good anyway. I knew what bread was and it was not the pressed dough things I had seen them pass around.  I knew what vanilla wafers were but the tiny, white rectangles did not resemble cookies either.  To me they looked more like medicine, almost like a pill.  A pill you took with a tiny bit of juice to wash down.  No mention was made of the juice’s import so I assumed it was peripheral to this LORD’s supper thing. Now I know that trying to explain drinking blood represented by wine represented by grape juice was too large a topic to handle in the stairwell.  Another puzzlement was that nothing about the tiny pressed dough looked like supper of any kind to me.  Was this really what they ate just before Jesus went to his death?? Naw, that can’t be right. The only other sacred food I was familiar with was Manna. I had been taught the stories of the Israelites eating manna provided by God Himself in the wilderness. Perhaps this was manna.  Mystical manna might be something Christ ate before His death. I reasoned that the wafer/bread/manna thing had to have a type of spiritual drug in it that made people remember what Christ remembered.  It activated a part of your brain put there by God to come awake when you ate the Wafer breadmana. Together the whole church had some kind of communal LSD trip that transported them to the actual last supper.  This intrigued me.

I asked my dad if I could have communion.  Both Mom and Dad laughed and looked at one another as if this were preposterous and told me I was too young.  This only confirmed my suspicion that this was, in fact, a drug.  Children have to take medications specifically for children.  I had taken baby aspirin and children’s cough syrup. It only made sense that there were drugs specifically for adults. Being baptists, my parents didn’t drink alcohol so I had never been denied a type of food or drink before.  The only other time Mom told me I was too young was when I asked about another religious topic.  I had asked her what virgin meant.

Now my parents were trying to clarify that communion was for people who had already been baptized into the church and were members.  

Well, this was news to me.  I wasn’t real sure what being baptized into the church meant but one thing was clear.  I was not yet a member of this church, I was excluded, on the outside looking in.  I had accepted Jesus into my heart and said my prayers every night. I had attended sunday school and church every sunday of my life.  I was told I was now welcome in heaven itself and yet there were things that went on in here that I was forbidden from participating in!  I did not like the way this felt.  I asked if my older brother and sister were members. I learned that I was the only one of the family who had not been initiated into the club. I wanted badly to belong.

“What is baptism?”

Again with the look.  

Dad began, “Well you have to go to some classes with the pastors, then you make a profession of faith and they completely immerse you in the baptismal, um, in water, in front of the church.”  Mom tried to help out with  “This represents the sacrament of dieing to your old self and rising out of the water alive with Christ in the new man.” She looked at my 8 year old face. “ You know,... forgiven of your sins.” she sort of petered out.

Interesting. I nodded as if this sounded perfectly reasonable.

“When can I be baptized?” and get the full membership package, I added to myself.

“You are too young now but 12 is about the youngest they baptize folks.” said Mom.

“Why 12?”

“Because when Jesus was 12 he spent time in the temple and understood spiritual things by that age.” clarified Dad.

Again I nodded.  Not really following the connection but I rolled with it.

Twelve.  

O.K.

Four more years.

I could wait.  

Profusion of fate, dunk tank, new man, whoever he is, and then full membership! Then nothing could come between me and the mind bending, members only, transcendent Wafe-bred-anna!!!!

Needless to say my first communion was a bit of a let down.