I hope you've had a chance to check out the great Christian Century article I referred you to in a previous post. The heart of the article, Who Is Communion For? by Charles Hefling, the cover story for 11/19/12 is reproduce below. I thought it was an excellent discussion of what we mean when we talk about Open Communion. For the full article click on:
http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-11/who-communion
...The way in which Jesus shared meals was—and the way Christians conduct their communion rites should be—an effective expression of divine grace. “Open commensality” [as Dominic Crossan is pleased to call this scandalous table fellowship.] the first century and “open table” today are similar, in the relevant sense, just insofar as they both do what God does in the way that God does it. God gives. In no way does divine giving depend on the recipient, and what is given is neither achievement nor prize. It is precisely gracious, gratuitous gift and only gift.
So too, it can be argued, the church’s gift of inclusion within its own life and labor ought to be offered lavishly and gratuitously. Of that broad imperative the Eucharist is not the only enactment, but it is the one that in some sense defines the church, and as such it should not contradict itself by imposing conditions on who may or may not help to enact it.
This line of reasoning shifts from replicating the historical details of Jesus’ practice—always a dubious move—to drawing implications from the doctrine of God’s prevenience to which that practice, like everything else about Jesus, bears witness. Divine grace is always operating prior to human response. So then, if the Lord’s Supper may be regarded as a “means of grace,” it too should be an incarnate expression, a sacramental sign, of God’s initiative.
The biblical warrant, if one is wanted, will not be the feeding of the multitude or meeting Zacchaeus in his sycamore tree so much as the parable of the prodigal son whose father went out to meet him. It is commonly held that worthy reception of communion is a matter of inward disposition, repentance above all. But while the foolish prodigal did confess his folly before the fatted calf was eaten, his father got there first, “preventing” him in the original sense of the word. So too, arguably, the church as publicist of God’s antecedent willingness to embrace and forgive might at times “prevent” even that decisive act of repentance which is baptism by offering communion to persons who have yet to be baptized.
Those who adopt this train of thought may not use John Wesley’s language, but they mean pretty much what he meant by declaring that communion is a “converting ordinance.” Conversion happens in and as response to being “drawn” by the Father, without which no one comes to the Lord Jesus (John 6:44, 6:65). The drawing may go unregarded, but on the other hand a readiness to receive and follow it may also be nurtured by deliberate practices, among which is participation in the Lord’s own supper.
Accordingly, on the sort of reasoning Wesley followed, the one indispensable prerequisite for receiving communion is a desire to accept whatever blessing God is pleased to give through it. Such a desire may be only the first faint beginning of conversion. Nevertheless, the church has no business withholding an appointed means of forming and focusing it. On the contrary, the communion table ought to be open to all who find themselves drawn to it, including those who may never have been baptized as well as those who, by no decision of their own, were baptized as infants. They may not yet be able to make a profession of faith, and they may have only the vaguest conception of what they yearn for. The point is that they yearn for it.
If framing an argument in terms of converting ordinances seems too old-fashioned, the same point can be made in another way. The Eucharist, it might be said, is food for a journey, nourishment for growing into mature adulthood in Christ. The journey may begin at the baptismal font. It may begin afterward. It may instead lead toward baptism. But except on an extrinsic, magical view of what baptism does, there is no ground for believing that without it human beings are inherently quite incapable of benefiting from the Lord’s Supper, whatever the benefits may be.
To include the unbaptized in the invitation to communion therefore need not be to say there is no journey—which would be offering cheap grace, or to say everyone is really an anonymous Christian already—which would be condescending and amount to the same thing. Rather, an open table invitation could constitute an acknowledgment that those who accept the invitation may well be cooperating with the prevenient operation of grace, in response to a “drawing” on which the church may not presume to set boundaries.
This theological rationale has much to commend it. There are still objections, however, that it would have to address. An invitation to communion is an invitation not simply to eat with friends but to encounter the risen Christ, which is to say, Christ crucified. “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). The meaning of the Eucharist, in other words, is not just the love of God but the love of God manifested in the “paschal mystery” of death accepted and transformed into new life. If that mystery is what unchurched seekers are being welcomed into, hospitality seems too bland a word. It would be only fair to inform them—warn them, rather—that the way of life which the church proclaims in its Eucharist comes with demands and costs and responsibilities. Otherwise, extending an unconditional welcome would amount to a kind of bait-and-switch.
For much the same reasons, it would be reckless simply to decide that as of such-and-such a Sunday, the communion table at such-and-such church will be open to all, irrespective of baptism. Communion never is irrespective of baptism, although possibly it may in certain circumstances precede it. That is the truth of which the extreme “no baptism without communion” view can be seen as an exaggeration. As Mark Stamm argues persuasively in Let Every Soul Be Jesus’ Guest (Abingdon, 2006), the idea of communion as a converting ordinance and a means of cooperating with divine grace implies no denigration of baptism; quite the opposite. What it does imply, practically and liturgically, is the integration of communion into an intentional program of formation that involves the whole local community and has in view the duties as well as the blessings that Christian initiation brings. A fully developed catechumenate; renewal of baptismal vows in the setting of eucharistic worship at regular times in the liturgical year; a font brought into architectural prominence; communicating the newly baptized at once, children and adults alike—such are Stamm’s recommendations for (re)establishing the link between the two great paschal celebrations.
The recommendations do not in themselves resolve the question of whether an open table policy is theologically justifiable in general or pastorally appropriate in any particular instance. They are not meant to. They do, or would, give concrete expression to a conviction that if the Eucharist is to be regarded as a means of Christian formation—and that is arguably the surest ground on which to build a case for open table communion—then eucharistic worship needs to belong to a larger pattern and process. A visitor who experiences a communion service as a discrete, one-off event, like a tour of the Grand Canyon, has missed the point, or else the point has not been made clearly enough.
That point, the embeddedness of this liturgical action within an all-inclusive, corporate turning to God, is one which has been made, negatively and somewhat mechanically, by insisting on “no communion without baptism.” There seem to be serious reasons for thinking it would perhaps be better made by saying, in many and various ways, “We are glad to have you join us in our pilgrimage. Please know that you are very welcome. Please know too that to join, you have to be prepared to join, to take the plunge, literally.” In that context, the question is not whether a ritual requirement for receiving communion may at times be waived for individuals who are indeed so prepared. The question is whether opening the communion table to them now is the most appropriate way to prepare them further.
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