6/23/2022

6/23/2022

Dear Friends in Christ,

Next month clergy and elected lay delegates from all over the US will gather in Baltimore, MD, for the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church. The General Convention is the governing body of The Episcopal Church. It meets every three years as a two-house legislature that includes the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops, composed of deputies (both clergy and lay people) and bishops from each diocese. For more information about General Convention see here.

Programs and policies are adopted through resolutions to C0nvention which are submitted by Legislative Committees, Bishops, Deputies, Dioceses, and Provinces. Dioceses vote on resolutions at their annual Diocesan conventions which are them forwarded to General Convention. For more information about resolutions at the 80th General convention see here. Already I have seen one resolution hotly debated on Facebook - resolution CO28, All Are Welcome At The Table submitted by the Diocese of Northern California. Resolution CO28 seeks to repeal CANON I.17.7 of the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church (2018 Revision, page 88), which states: “No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church.” A group of noted theologians (including my History of Christianity professor from seminary) making a statement and clergy in the groups I belong to divided on the issue but leaning toward open table.

Both Baptism and Eucharist are described in the catechism of the BCP as “The two great sacraments given by Christ to his Church...” Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as God’s children and makes us members of Christ's Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God. Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again.

Back when I was a child you could only receive communion if you were confirmed, something that happened around 14 years of age. Quite frankly it was the only reason many of my friends got confirmed back then. At some point the Church decided that baptism completed the initiation rite into the Body of the Church and was sufficient for communion, no matter how young the baptized. As long ago as 2012 practice did not always follow the canons and people were debating the merit of Canon I.17.7, but the 77th General Convention that year voted against changing them. Now it is back for another go-around.

I have to admit I am conflicted on this issue. While it seems simple in practice, the nuances are more complicated. Open table, as the practice of welcoming everyone to Holy Communion regardless of baptism is commonly known, is increasingly common in churches these days. Just this term speaks volumes and suggests that adhering to the canons would be “closed table” which is exclusive and inhospitable and contradicts the slogan, the “Episcopal Church Welcomes You.”

At Saint Anna’s we practice open table, and I don’t have any intention of changing that. When I say that everyone is welcome at the Sacrament of Holy Communion, I mean everyone. For one thing, I believe it is God’s table, and I nor anyone else gets to say who can and cannot gather around God’s table. For another, when Jesus invited his disciples to partake of the bread and wine to remember him, he didn’t stipulate any

requirement. I believe Eucharist is a gift offered freely and unconditionally by Jesus whereas baptism is our commitment to the community of the faithful we call the Church and can be our response to the gift of communion. However, I also worry that without baptism Eucharist can become a form of “cheap grace” whereby someone receives the body of Christ without offering anything in return. The language of the current canon means that we will not lose sight of the importance of baptism, and I worry that changing the language of the canons might relegate baptism to something unimportant and unnecessary. I also believe we can debate the rightness and appropriateness of certain practices, but we do not dictate the movement of the Holy Spirt and cannot know how she moves within and through people as they experience Holy Communion, and I know Eucharist can be a means for people to enter the body of the faithful and experience the risen Christ.

Baptism is already less and less the norm for people these days, but it remains central to our faith and to our ecclesiology. Those opposed to CO28 worry that passing the resolution will make it less significant than Eucharist. Yet we celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday while offering baptism only on four occasions a year. I hope that if nothing else, this resolution will inspire us to examine our approach to baptism and find ways to make it more central to our practice. I always add the caveat to my commitment to open table, that at some point I would want to have conversation with an unbaptized person regularly receiving the sacrament of communion about what it means to commit themselves to the sacrament of baptism

So for now, God willing and the people of the 80th General Convention assenting, we will continue to provide an open table at Saint Anna’s, and continue to wrestle with what it means to be baptized into the body of Christ in the world.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Jane+

NOTE: If you are interested in Baptism for you or someone you know, please contact me and we will arrange a time to talk.