Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking:
September 7 Worship Service Video
Join us following worship in the Van Roon Community Hall for the He/SheBrews Café.
- Church School returns this Sunday, September 7 at 10:00 AM. Please share with others that this ministry with children is ready to welcome all.
- Seekers, our weekly Tuesday morning Bible Study resumes this week on September 9 at 9:30. Join us any Tuesday you wish for fellowship, prayer, scripture, and conversation. Senior Choir resumes this Thursday, September 11 at 7:30 in the sanctuary. New members are always welcome.
- A Celebration of Life for Peg White will be held on Saturday, September 13 at 11:00 AM at the church.
Dear Friends
Welcome to worship for Sunday, September 7, 2025.
Call it a liturgical faux pas.
One Sunday when I was on vacation I went to an Anglican church I had never been to before. It was in a beautiful old stone sanctuary and there was only a handful of people there though very friendly and welcoming. When it came time for communion I realized that it was going to be “at the rail”. This is an older tradition and one that I am not very familiar with but I will try to describe it. In a horseshoe shape around the front of the chancel (the elevated space on which sits the altar) there was a railing. Beneath it was wrapped a single cushioned step so that if you kneeled on the step with your back straight your arms could rest on the railing.
In communion “at the rail” congregants come forward and take a place kneeling on the step. When it is full the priest begins to move around the semi-circle offering the bread. Following that a deacon moves a few steps behind offering the cup. Once all those kneeling have been served the steps fill up with the next ‘wave’ of people until everyone has been served.
Really, fairly straightforward except that it was unfamiliar to me. After I took my wafer I paused and prayed. But not seeing anything else happening, and not recognizing that the cup was coming from the other side, I got up and returned to my seat. Wineless.
Now in fairness nobody said anything, or looked at me strange, or did anything to make me feel uncomfortable. But I hadn’t picked up on the cues and at least felt that I should have known better.
In part, I learned a lesson about creating welcoming worship and being aware of how a stranger experiences some of the things many of us ‘regulars’ take for granted. All of us need to be sensitive to the ways worship can feel foreign to visitors or people unfamiliar with the patterns of our Sundays. Helping a newcomer with practical suggestions can be an outstanding way of exercising hospitality. I was grateful for this reminder in the practise of ministry.
But the other reflection I had from my faux pas was theological, and part of the evolution of my understanding of what communion is and what it offers. At no point did I think that having had bread but no wine was in any way less-than having fully communed. It didn’t occur to me that I was lacking and somehow needed to get back to the rail and have my turn with the cup. And if I had done that, it would have been all right too. Communion, after all is a sacrament, and thus a sign of God’s grace. It is fulfilled in the heart of the one who receives and not fulfilled by properly adhering to custom or etiquette.
Our understanding of communion had grown and expanded over the years. It is one of the ways I know our tradition is moving in the right direction. There was a time when communion was reserved for members or for the confirmed. I am aware of local customs where people have been discouraged from taking communion unless they felt in right relation with God, through confession, attendance, or otherwise. Many of us will have memories of an era when communion wasn’t offered to children, the logic being they were too young to comprehend the mystery. But who among us can comprehend the mystery but for the faith of a child? And why were we ever refraining from serving communion to the baptised?!?
Today we celebrate an open table, which is not a means of standing in judgement. It is simply our best way of declaring that communion is aspirational. The more we expand our understanding of who can receive the elements and how they can be shared, the more we grow and deepen in faith and witness.
As part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the United Church of Canada an art project was commissioned. Titled “A Place At the Table” it is a photograph that borrows from DaVinci’s Last Supper and re-imagines the banquet at the end of time where all are welcome and no one is turned away. If you are interested you can see it by clicking here: https://united-church.ca/a-place-at-the-table. Personally, I think it leans too heavily into identity at the expense of character and conscience. But that’s what art is supposed to do, make you think and enter into conversation.
This Sunday we resume monthly communion where Christ is our host and we are the guests. Everyone is welcome and no one is judged.
Even if you forget to drink from the cup.
Grace and peace,
Michael
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- Read this week’s scripture lesson here: Luke 14:25-33
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