While doing kitchen work today, I was listening to Issues Etc on the topic of infant communion. The guest said some good stuff. But one big thing confused me.
Much of his argument [against infant communion] was based on the fact that Jesus instituted baptism in a different way than He instituted the Lord's Supper. He said that one was directed to the recipients and one was directed to the ministers. He said that Jesus did not institute baptism by baptizing people, but by telling the ministers what to do, what to say, and why. He said that Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper by speaking directly to the recipients (through their mental faculties).
But ...
Jesus was baptizing people. Jesus and His apostles baptized more than John and his disciples (John 3 and 4:1-2).
First, Jesus baptized. And He catechized on baptism (to Nicodemus, for example). Then later, Matthew shows us the specifics of how He told His apostles to administer baptism. On Maundy Thursday, Jesus communed His disciples. Then later, we see what Paul wrote about specific instructions regarding how to administer the Lord's Supper that Jesus had instituted earlier.
Why are those different from each other?
Showing posts with label infant communion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infant communion. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Infant Faith
In the notes on the baptismal rite, our hymnal tells us that
When the candidate is unable to speak,
sponsors may be appointed
to speak in his or her stead.
The pastor addresses the questions ("Do you renounce the devil?" ... "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" ...) to the baptismal candidate. Not to the sponsors. The sponsors are not answering the questions, although they are voicing the answers. It is the child who is answering the questions, through the voice of the sponsors.
This is not something new. This is the catholic position. This is what I've been taught all my life as a Lutheran. When I was taught in Sunday School about my baptism, the teachers told me that what happened in baptism was mine. It wasn't something done in view of a faith I would have someday. It wasn't something that belonged to my parents and thus would be my heritage too. It was my own.
Because of this, I am always astounded when I hear pastors say of children they themselves have baptized in recent months, "We don't know what this baby believes. He hasn't told us; he can't tell us."
This came up again last week in a conversation on a friend's blog. On the one hand, we say that of course infants can have faith. We say that God brings babies to faith, makes them alive in Him, and joins them to Himself, all through His grace and not through any merit of their own. Just as He does for me and for you. But the same pastors will turn around and say that we don't know what the child believes.
We say that the confession of sin and the confession of faith made in Baptism is the child's very own confession. And then we say two or three months later that we haven't heard this child's confession to be able to ascertain what he believes. Well? Which is it? It is the child's confession or is it not?
I think we don't take seriously what's going on in Baptism.
When the candidate is unable to speak,
sponsors may be appointed
to speak in his or her stead.
The pastor addresses the questions ("Do you renounce the devil?" ... "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" ...) to the baptismal candidate. Not to the sponsors. The sponsors are not answering the questions, although they are voicing the answers. It is the child who is answering the questions, through the voice of the sponsors.
This is not something new. This is the catholic position. This is what I've been taught all my life as a Lutheran. When I was taught in Sunday School about my baptism, the teachers told me that what happened in baptism was mine. It wasn't something done in view of a faith I would have someday. It wasn't something that belonged to my parents and thus would be my heritage too. It was my own.
Because of this, I am always astounded when I hear pastors say of children they themselves have baptized in recent months, "We don't know what this baby believes. He hasn't told us; he can't tell us."
This came up again last week in a conversation on a friend's blog. On the one hand, we say that of course infants can have faith. We say that God brings babies to faith, makes them alive in Him, and joins them to Himself, all through His grace and not through any merit of their own. Just as He does for me and for you. But the same pastors will turn around and say that we don't know what the child believes.
We say that the confession of sin and the confession of faith made in Baptism is the child's very own confession. And then we say two or three months later that we haven't heard this child's confession to be able to ascertain what he believes. Well? Which is it? It is the child's confession or is it not?
I think we don't take seriously what's going on in Baptism.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The Streets of Rome
Bible class ended late that Sunday 18 years ago.
As it so happens, there must've been something going on in the congregation that I was unaware of. Pastor Wieting had been talking about closed communion a lot, making a case for it. One of the things he'd discussed a few weeks previous was the difference between "closed communion" and "close communion." The term "closed" came from the early church when the pastor would say, "Deacon, the doors! The doors!" That was the time in the Divine Service when all the not-yet-confirmed members would be required to leave. They could not be present for the sacred mysteries found in the Lord's Supper. The doors were closed behind them. They were welcome for the preaching, but shut out of the building during the Eucharist, until they had been baptized and received into membership.
Also, as it so happens, in recent weeks there had been a child abduction less than an hour away. A stranger abduction, not a family quarrel. A little girl nabbed off her bike in the daylight, less than 1/4 mile from home. In a Mayberry-like town not far from our own Mayberry-like village.
As I said, Bible class went a little long that Sunday. I came upstairs to find the doors of the church open, and my children nowhere to be seen. They weren't in their Sunday School rooms. They weren't in the narthex. They weren't in the nursery. And the outside doors were standing wide open. My three children, aged 2-7, were not in the building. Panic grabbed my heart. I soon found them, playing outdoors on a gorgeous sunny morning, unharmed, and unaware of any reason for Mommy to be having the conniptions fits that ensued.
Wait a minute! What did those mommies do in the early church? After all, the non-communicants were put outside the doors of the church during the communion service. The streets of Rome were decidedly less safe than the streets of small-town central Wisconsin ... even with a child-nabber was on the loose. Did they have church-nurseries in Corinth and Ephesus? If so, who was skipping the Lord's Supper to babysit? How did that work? This just didn't make sense.
Within a week or so, we saw friends, one of whom really knows his church history. I asked Pr Eckardt about it. His response was shocking. He told me that the children weren't sent out in the streets unattended, and they weren't sent to the nursery with a babysitter. They were IN there, partaking of the Sacrament with the adults. (Now, don't anybody tell me that Eckardt is in favor of infant communion. He ain't. And back then he wasn't even real keen on the idea of kids younger than 8th grade communing. So this is not a fellow who was revising history to suit his viewpoint.)
This week Pr Weedon's blog included a quote from St Augustine:
Those who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are denying that Christ is Jesus for all believing infants. Those, I repeat, who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are saying nothing else than that for believing infants, infants that is who have been baptized in Christ, Christ the Lord is not Jesus. After all, what is Jesus? Jesus means Savior. Jesus is the Savior. Those whom he doesn't save, having nothing to save in them, well for them he isn't Jesus. Well now, if you can tolerate the idea that Christ is not Jesus for some persons who have been baptized, then I'm not sure your faith can be recognized as according with the sound rule. Yes, they're infants, but they are his members. They're infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves. (The Works of Saint Augustine, Part III-Sermons 5:261.)
I've been told that, although it is true that infants were sometimes communed in the early church, it was an unusual thing, a rare thing, something that happened only in certain pockets of heterodox practice. But this quote is from Augustine, for crying out loud. Even Augustine says the babies receive the sacraments. Not just the sacrament of baptism. But sacraments, in the plural. The infants "share in His table."
Is it really so hard to recognize that, through most of church history, wee children were communed when they were baptized? I mean, if people want to argue that what they did for 1200 years of church history in the West (and 2000 years in the East) is wrong, that's one thing. But to argue that it didn't happen?
As it so happens, there must've been something going on in the congregation that I was unaware of. Pastor Wieting had been talking about closed communion a lot, making a case for it. One of the things he'd discussed a few weeks previous was the difference between "closed communion" and "close communion." The term "closed" came from the early church when the pastor would say, "Deacon, the doors! The doors!" That was the time in the Divine Service when all the not-yet-confirmed members would be required to leave. They could not be present for the sacred mysteries found in the Lord's Supper. The doors were closed behind them. They were welcome for the preaching, but shut out of the building during the Eucharist, until they had been baptized and received into membership.
Also, as it so happens, in recent weeks there had been a child abduction less than an hour away. A stranger abduction, not a family quarrel. A little girl nabbed off her bike in the daylight, less than 1/4 mile from home. In a Mayberry-like town not far from our own Mayberry-like village.
As I said, Bible class went a little long that Sunday. I came upstairs to find the doors of the church open, and my children nowhere to be seen. They weren't in their Sunday School rooms. They weren't in the narthex. They weren't in the nursery. And the outside doors were standing wide open. My three children, aged 2-7, were not in the building. Panic grabbed my heart. I soon found them, playing outdoors on a gorgeous sunny morning, unharmed, and unaware of any reason for Mommy to be having the conniptions fits that ensued.
Wait a minute! What did those mommies do in the early church? After all, the non-communicants were put outside the doors of the church during the communion service. The streets of Rome were decidedly less safe than the streets of small-town central Wisconsin ... even with a child-nabber was on the loose. Did they have church-nurseries in Corinth and Ephesus? If so, who was skipping the Lord's Supper to babysit? How did that work? This just didn't make sense.
Within a week or so, we saw friends, one of whom really knows his church history. I asked Pr Eckardt about it. His response was shocking. He told me that the children weren't sent out in the streets unattended, and they weren't sent to the nursery with a babysitter. They were IN there, partaking of the Sacrament with the adults. (Now, don't anybody tell me that Eckardt is in favor of infant communion. He ain't. And back then he wasn't even real keen on the idea of kids younger than 8th grade communing. So this is not a fellow who was revising history to suit his viewpoint.)
This week Pr Weedon's blog included a quote from St Augustine:
Those who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are denying that Christ is Jesus for all believing infants. Those, I repeat, who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are saying nothing else than that for believing infants, infants that is who have been baptized in Christ, Christ the Lord is not Jesus. After all, what is Jesus? Jesus means Savior. Jesus is the Savior. Those whom he doesn't save, having nothing to save in them, well for them he isn't Jesus. Well now, if you can tolerate the idea that Christ is not Jesus for some persons who have been baptized, then I'm not sure your faith can be recognized as according with the sound rule. Yes, they're infants, but they are his members. They're infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves. (The Works of Saint Augustine, Part III-Sermons 5:261.)
I've been told that, although it is true that infants were sometimes communed in the early church, it was an unusual thing, a rare thing, something that happened only in certain pockets of heterodox practice. But this quote is from Augustine, for crying out loud. Even Augustine says the babies receive the sacraments. Not just the sacrament of baptism. But sacraments, in the plural. The infants "share in His table."
Is it really so hard to recognize that, through most of church history, wee children were communed when they were baptized? I mean, if people want to argue that what they did for 1200 years of church history in the West (and 2000 years in the East) is wrong, that's one thing. But to argue that it didn't happen?
Friday, March 30, 2007
Infant Communion
My husband tells me there's an interesting discussion going on over on Pr Petersen's blog. I'd love to go look, but laundry and cooking call. Looking forward to reading later.
How can it be that I have accomplished so much nothing today? Okay, Maggie and I did some schoolwork. And we have a nice dinner: stroganoff over noodles, hot fresh whole-wheat bread (with homemade peach jam), roasted carrots, and homemade banana cream pie. I sure do like eating, but sometimes I wonder if I oughtn't be doing something else with my time other than cooking.
How can it be that I have accomplished so much nothing today? Okay, Maggie and I did some schoolwork. And we have a nice dinner: stroganoff over noodles, hot fresh whole-wheat bread (with homemade peach jam), roasted carrots, and homemade banana cream pie. I sure do like eating, but sometimes I wonder if I oughtn't be doing something else with my time other than cooking.
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