Let the Little Children Come to Me

Lauri writes about her 3-yr-old's desire to commune. Joy too writes of her toddler's distress over not being communed. All my children have been communing now for four years. I am stubbornly sticking my head in the sand and refusing to acknowledge the fact that my grand-daughter is not communing; I'm trying desperately to convince myself that I don't know she's excluded from the altar. [Fingers in my ears. La lala la lala lala la. Not gonna open my eyes to the fact. Blindfold on! La lala la la la la....]

What is a parent to DO when they have no answer for a child as to why he cannot eat Jesus' body and blood??? And my gut-level reaction is to say, "Don't let him know about it in the first place." If we do not teach them the sixth chief part of the catechism, they won't learn it, and thus won't know what they're missing. If we don't talk about the Lord's Supper at home, and how we long for it, and what a treasure it is, the kids won't learn. Oh sure, they'll still know that this is something we do every Sunday and they will deduce that it's important. But the less we talk about it, the less we teach them of their sin and their need for forgiveness, the less we let them know about our own deep desire for Sunday to come so that we may be joined yet again with Jesus' body, the less the children will be taunted by their exclusion.

And then I thought,
WHAT AM I THINKING?
The solution is to hide God's word and His blessing from them? The solution is to avoid parts of the catechism? The solution is to refrain from teaching certain hymns?





I'm not going to discuss infant communion or age of first communion right now. But here's the question: Why has this become such a huge issue for parents in recent years?

We didn't used to have toddlers holding out their hands, begging the pastor. We didn't used to ache over this denial of Jesus to our little ones. We didn't used to care. Why do we care now?

And I think....
the answer has to do with ...

what we're teaching now,
what we believe about the Supper now.




We used to commune once a month. Now it's every Sunday (or hopefully more frequently). The children see that this is something we do every week. It must be important.

We used to have children begin learning the catechism in 7th grade. They didn't start learning when they were only 1 or 2 that "it is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself, for us Christians to eat and to drink" and that "in the Sacrament, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us."

Sunday School used to be about Bible history and learning to be nice to our friends and telling other people about Jesus. Now our children are learning that the Bible is not just history stories, but also stories about how we have failed and how our God rescued us and continues to give of Himself to us who are not worthy. We are teaching our children about their baptism and about the Lord's Supper in a way that we didn't several decades ago.

The pastors are preaching more now than in years past about the Sacraments, connecting the Gospel reading to what Christ gives at the Table. The pastors wish to incite in their parishioners a yearning for the Supper.

And you know? Those little urchins LISTEN. They hear what we're teaching them. They hear the hymns and liturgy. They hear the catechism. And they believe it. And they long for that Supper which Jesus has provided for His lambs.

What else would be expect the children to do?

So we have only three choices. We can put off teaching them. Or we can take Jesus' words to heart: "feed My lambs." Or we can continue to weep over the fact that we are tongue-tied when our wee ones ask why they cannot commune.