"No, you can’t take Communion with us. You see, only those confirmed in the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran church can partake here. If I were to make an exception, you would have to believe that this bread and juice are literally Christ’s body and blood as we consume it. As you’ve stated, you don’t..."
I stood there, dumbfounded. My brother and his friend, both a year younger than me, and my cousin, older by a year, stood with me. We were being addressed by a Lutheran minister, clad in a full, black robe. None of us did, or could, say a word.
"You see, we just believe very different things about this sacrament." Now he seemed uncomfortable at our silence, at our brows furrowing, at our growingly defensive postures. "I pray that one day you’ll be able to learn more about this mystery and be confirmed in theMissouri Synod." He nodded to us quickly, turned to the Camp Director beside him and gave a longer, knowing nod. He then deliberately shuffled out of the little chapel and into the world, never to be seen again by me or the other three whose foundations of faith he’d just significantly shifted. Shattered would surely be too strong a word -none of us now committed the cardinal sin of doubting our salvation, we still ’knew we knew’ - but surely we were mutually confused, angry, and suddenly made insecure by the act of exclusion we had just been exposed to.
I thought it a gross injustice. Surely I had met the criteria for partaking of the body and blood. I’d attended a private Lutheran school through eighth grade. My family had even attended the connected church for as long as they could stand it, a period of about three years. Not to say that my parents were irreligious by any means; they had switched to a non-denominational church after that, the services of which us young kids didn’t feel the need to sleep through the entirety of anymore, nor of which they were tempted to do the same. But in my time at school, I had learned all about God, Luther, and Jesus...
What was that he said about ’literal’ body and blood? I guess that was the missing piece. That’s what I missed in confirmation class. I’d failed to attain that level of spiritual education, to be indoctrinated in the finer points of Lutheranism. And it was no choice of my own! My sister had a bad experience in her confirmation class and my parents decided they weren’t going to put my two brothers and I through the same thing. What a shame--now I was reaping the consequences of my sacramental ignorance.
"You know, I really don’t want you boys to go a whole summer without taking Communion," it was the camp director, our boss for the summer, clearly made uncomfortable in the wake of his colleague’s speech. "You should find a church in town that allows non-members..." he stopped. It was a poor concession and he knew it. He had tried to soften the blow, but the stark reality remained: we weren’t welcome in this body of Christ, to remember that sacrifice, one we’d heard about and accepted all our lives. Now, we just didn’t meet the necessary standards.
We attended the mandatory chapels once a week, but we didn’t go looking for another church that summer.