What's in your mailbox?

The mainline church I attend would not expect Communion to be celebrated without a clergyperson officiating. “Order” seems to be important. I do not personally agree that ordination is a requirement for the celebration, but understand that others have that opinion, one which I think is an anachronism surviving from pre-Reformation, Transubstantiation days.

But, despite that tradition which limits Communion and where and when [and by inference, with whom] it can be celebrated at least a little, we, like what seem to be most congregations in the United Church of Christ, seem to want to go out of our way to encourage participation by everybody, even by those who are too young and too skeptical to know what “remembrance of Me” might mean.

But now a church in England [not the Church of England] is offering mail-order Eucharist. The Open Episcopal Church is now sending Eucharistic wafers out by mail. There is a handling fee, although it seems modest and they insist that they are not charging for the wafers.

They note that many people just cannot or will not get to church.

The creeds refer to the one catholic church ‑holy and universal, spanning all time and nations – of which those who cannot get out of their abodes would be members, members who should still have access to what God and the Christian community have to offer. However, it makes me wonder how much awe and reverence a wafer received in the mail [and I don’t know British mail, but I assume not received on Sunday] inspires or how much sense of Christian community this brings about.

Television has long been accused of making us a more non-social world and these days the internet receives the same accusations, not without reason.

We do Communion in our church the first Sunday every month and on special liturgical occasions [e.g., Maundy Thursday] and my attendance is little affected by that schedule. Communion services are not the reason I attend church, although I know that many of my fellow congregants do think it important. I guess I attend to listen, learn, and pray with others, to receive a message, and to socialize a bit in a way that one cannot do that by television or on line.

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