To me, communion is a communion with the divine, and a celebration of unity, community, and at-one-ment.

It can be celebrated in all kinds of ways. To me, personally, every breath, every interaction with my environment, is a communion with the divine.

It is complicated.  To me it means a shared meal, a fellowship of believers, and an opportunity to make sure that everybody is fed  (I'd prefer an entire meal to a crumb or bread and a sip of juice). 

It is also symbolic of God with us.  Many of the stories of Jesus center around Jesus sharing a meal with others - think of the loaves and fishes, of his visit with Mary and Martha, his visit to Zaccheus' home, his final supper with his disciples, as well of his parables about food and his teachings "I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink'.  Also in many of his post-resurrection stories Jesus is made known in the breaking of bread.  I think that whenever we break bread together in Christian fellowship the Spirit is with us. 

Hi crazyheart,

The elements are pointers.  It isn't the element itself which is vital.  What is vital is what is being pointed at.  

While I am not an absolute purist when it comes to the elements I am not in the camp that thinks anything goes.

All that would need to happen for substitutions to the elements would be successful communication of what the elements represent.  Bread and Wine are staples in the diet of the times.  Milk and Cookies not so much.

When wine is not employed and the substitution is water it is called an Agape meal or Love Feast and it is a different focus.

I have never heard of eliminating the bread.

The sacrament of Holy Communion is a powerful occasion and is not limited to any one particular emotion.  It is a hopeful celebration and evokes memory of the promise that Christ made that he would not eat or drink of that bread until the day we all ate and drank it together in the Kingdom to come.

Grace and peace to you.

John

RevJohn - both in the congregation that I now attend and in my former congregation we made available both bread and rice bread or crackers for those who have problems with gluten.  In my present congregation we also have some of the little glasses filled with water rather than grape juice.  We never use wine. 

I don't think either substitution interfers with the symbolizism and it makes the communion more inclusive. 

(I would like a choice of wine)

For me, it is table fellowship, an act of not food or even symbolism, but one of acceptance. It signifies Jesus' open table and his radicalism.

As such, the food or meal or the symbols are irrelevant.

It can be happy, it can be solemn.... it is always very personal.... it can also be sad knowing that some are still considered outcasts.

I'm still working through what it really means to me now. The sharing is about the bond shared by the community; the wine and bread signifies the ritual that Jesus ordained for his disciples and so it is a bond to Jesus and the early church as well. I don't really buy into the whole "body and blood of Christ" part of it, but I guess that plays into why I'm UU instead of Christian, although I suspect that many to most in the UCC and other liberal churches must interpret that symbolically.

As for whether other elements could be subtituted, I think that the symbolism of bread and wine is very potent, even without the "blood and body of Christ" element. I don't have an issue with substituting grape juice (or even water) for wine or using some kind of gluten-free substitute for bread since some people might otherwise be unable to participate, but I think that if you stray  too far from the original elements you do risk losing some of the symbolism and meaning of the rite.

Mendalla

I am not sure about the reasoning for the water.  But I do know that my sister is quite allergic to grapes - not the grapes themselves but the mold that sometimes grows on them and the chemicals that they might be subjected to during the growing process.  Since she will not eat grapes unless she washes them with detergent and water and then rinses them several times over, I doubt if she would be happy drinking grape juice unless she was absolutely sure of how the grapes were washed and processed as the juice was made.

For me communion is a a time of thankfulness for all that God has done for me, joy in being saved by Him, and sorrow for Jesus' death on the cross. I believe that God uses communion as a conduit of His grace. At this holy meal, he strengthens the faith of believers in Christ.

lol - if you call a cube of dry bread and a thimble of grape juice (or even wine and communion wafers) the "beginnings of a good lunch" remind me never to accept a lunch invitation from you.

Although Harper apparently pocketed his to save for later. mmm-mmmm good.

Jesus was a self confessed 'wine-biber' and had a reputation for so being...he made gallons of wine at a party so not only did he approve of wine, he asked that it be used as a reminder of him. In my church, communion takes an entire evening and involves a whole bottle.

Fie, fie, I say on you grape-juice cowards! You know who you are!

J. Wilson, Pastor  Founder, Chief Theologian and Offical Church poet:

The Church of Variable Liikelyhood

("I came", He said, "that ye may have life and it more abundantly" You ain't going to get no abundantly with grape juice....)

 I think that the choice of food matters.

Bread and wine matter because they are staple foods.  Milk and cookies not so much because they are not, in our culture, what we might call a "dynamic equivalent" to the bread and wine.  Rice, as RevJohn has already noted, is a good equivalent to bread because of the role as staple food it plays a part of particularly in Southeast Asia.

The dynamic equivalent suggests that what you are putting into the place of the bread and wine can, especially in a cross-cultural situation, work effectively on the people in a similar way the original would.  I would guess that for much of the world bread or rice (or rice cakes) are effective to that end.  We do know, however, that bread and/or rice are not staples in every culture, and so there may be other alternatives that can be understood in a similar dynamic way as bread is to North Americans.

I wouldn't become a fundamentalist about not using milk and cookies, but I think that in a Church that has a heavy focus on social justice that milk and cookies are an inappropriate way of being people of faith because the whole metaphor related to the Passover is about escaping from bondage (slavery) and to use milk and cookies in a world where every day around 100,000 people die of starvation (more than 16,000 children each day) is to not take seriously the use of staple foods in the 1st century Near East to talk about the movement from slavery and bondage toward the Promised Land.

We too are enslaved (women abused and sexually assaulted by men; children abused and sexually assaulted by men and women; children become victims to our national strategies on welfare as we make war on the jobless and the homeless; addictions to alcohol, tobacco, drugs; obsessions with outer beauty, etc.) and the countries we live in are continually complicit in colonial practices against other countries - be it wars on terrorists (which we don't even know how to define), unfair trade practices (especially against foreign agricultural products and commodities), outsourcing work from our countries and building sweat shops in other countries, etc.

I just think that the story of faith is really about something primal that has more to do with bread and wine (or grape juice) than it does milk and cookies.  The milk and cookies, as far as I'm concerned, are akin to a travesty against the Gospel of freedom and good news and salvation and joy and peace.

This is about the best explanation of communion that I have ever heard. :)

Communion helps me to remember.

By way of comparison, here is an exerpt from a standard Wiccan ritual, the part where we partake in a communal feast. Some of you may find it interesting.

Feast

Priestess takes up the wine goblet. Priest takes up the athame.

Priest: “We acknowledge our needs and offer our appreciation for that which sustains us.”

Priestess: “May we be ever mindful of the blessings of our Lord and Lady.”

Priest lowers the athame into the wine briefly and withdraws.

Priest: “As male joins female for the sake of love and bounty, let the fruits of their union promote life. Let the earth be fruitful and by her wealth let us be blessed.”

Priest takes the wine goblet and offers wine to the earth. He offers wine to the priestess. Starting at east he offers wine to the worshipers. The priest returns the altar with the wine goblet and drinks from the goblet.

Priest: “As I enjoy these gifts of Boann and The Dagda, may I remember that without them I have nothing.”

Priest takes up the bread and Priestess takes up the athame, touching the bread with the athame.

Priestess: “This food is the blessing of the Lord and Lady given freely to us. As freely as we have received, may we also give food for the body, mind and spirit to those who seek such of us.”

Priestess takes the bread and offers some to the earth. She then offers a piece to the priest.

Starting at the east she offers bread to the worshipers. The priestess returns to the altar with the bread and eats.

Priestess: “As I enjoy these gifts of Boann and The Dagda , may I remember that without them I have nothing.”

And to think people use to think sex was dirty.

Bolt

It may be heterocentric in that it does celebrate the particular sexual union that is a procreative one. If one takes it in isolation, without any context, it might even seem somewhat prejudicial.

However if one takes into account all of our philosophy regarding sex, love, and procreation, it takes on a rather different tone, IMHO.

While it is true that there is only one type of sexual union that results in procreation, we do not believe that this is the only type of valid, or celebratory sexual union. This particular snippet is an acknowledgement of the bounty of nature, and the method nature uses to procreate practically all things on earth. We understand that procreation is only a small part of the nature of sexual fulfillment. IN essence you can thinkl of this snippet as celebrating procreation, through the medium oof sex, rather than celebrating any "correct" type of sex act.

We also believe that each of us harbours God and Goddess, male and female aspects, within us. Thus a sexual act performed by two men and two women is just as valid a expression of love as by man and woman. This is why you will often see two women performing the roles in ritual, or two men, or a man and a woman in opposite roles.

We also have specific versions of the ritual that are used for same sex weddings, or to honor a person who requests it, or just because we havn't done one for awhile.

Finally we have this dictum from the "Charge of the Goddess"

"All acts of love and pleasure are My worship"

I hope that provides some context for your very valid concerns, StevieG

I'm not aware of any that do not.

The sharing of staples like bread and wine in honour and appreciation of Diety is practically universal.

Any union between opposites is a Holy Communion because it celebrates the ultimate and godly state of being: Unity and Synthesis.

And the Union between Creator and Created is The Most Holy Communion.

With only one or two exceptions it was always a tiny wafer and a thimble full or Welch's grape juice. Southern Baptists say they take the Bible literally but don't blink when telling you that when the Bible says wine it really means grape juice. Anyway I once was at a summer Bible camp and they passed around loaves of basically french bread and most likely grape juice and we'd tear off a chunk of the bread, dip it in the cup, and pass it all along. I thought that was cool.

As for the reason, that's easy. "Do this in remembrance of me". That's actually on a table in front of the pulpit at my parents church and I've seen it elsewhere also. I heard it a lot at communion too. The bread is to remind us of JESUS' body, broken for us, and the wine, to remind of us HIS blood, spilled for us.