01.26.08
Watered-down Communion
Last night was the final night of the Ecumenical week of prayer that I mentioned earlier. The service included a lot of singing, some prayer, some short messages by area pastors and priests, and communion.
Well sort of. As an area pastor’s wife sang a beautiful, self-translated version of Adonai, we all came forward to receive a tiny cup of water. The program explained that the water was a symbol of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus who takes away our thirst, and of baptism.
But you see, it wouldn’t be possible for all of us to take communion together. The Catholics believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. The Protestants believe it’s a symbol of Christ’s body and blood. And some Protestants don’t feel like we should share communion with Protestants from other denominations. So what’s the end result? Communion that … isn’t.
Which I think sums up some of my problems with ecumenicalism in general. We pray for unity, we listen to carefully-worded messages imploring unity, we sing songs about being bound together. But we’re not. And I think most of us are to stubborn to shift our beliefs so that we could have actual unity. Or at least feel comfortable watching others live out their beliefs, even if they differ a bit from ours.