I was in Church yesterday and we were taking the Holy Communion. In our Church , the practice is that everyone will walk orderly to the front of the sanctuary and take a piece of the communion bread and a small cup from the serving stewards. Each will then return to his or her seat to wait for the minister to instruct us to partake the bread and cup together. Now, seated beside me was an African brother and due to some reasons he abstained from going out and participate in the Holy Communion. My immediate thought was that this brother was serious and sincere about participating in the Holy Communion. Perhaps, he feels unworthy to partake the Holy Communion because of some unconfessed sins in his life or perhaps he feels angry with God. Whatever the reason is, I give this brother his due respect because he didn’t treat the Communion with contempt.

Nevertheless, I was more bothered by the thought that if he was in sin, all the more he needs to participate in the communion! Christ would forgive him of whatever sins he had committed. Christ would want him and welcome him back to the fellowship of His body. God would love him because he was not frivolous with his faith but fears the LORD. He needs the communion more than others so that he can feel forgiven and accepted back into the fellowship with Christ and the brethren. I was so tempted to give my bread and cup to him and tell him all my thoughts but I didn’t. I feel this requires more than just a few words. This thinking of not participating in the Holy Communion has to be addressed more fully and a change of mind or conviction, has to be effected.

I recall that in my younger days as a Christian, our Youth leader used to tell us that if we have sinned or have backslided then we should abstain from partaking the Holy Communion. He read this from some Christian magazine. We all believed in this teaching. This may not be wrong but looking back I feel this was incomplete and the emphasis was wrong. The emphasis should be that we must confess our sins and quickly get back into fellowship with the Lord and the brethren and not to abstain from participating in the Holy Communion. The minister should also explain this and lead those feeling guilty to immediately confess their sins and come back into fellowship with God instead of staying away from the fellowship by not participating in the Communion.

I believe that all Christians , not matter what spiritual or physical states they are in, must partake the Eucharist because this was the commandment of Christ. If anyone is not right with God, then, get right with God. Just as what Paul had said in I Cor 11:23-26, each time we partake the Eucharist, we proclaim the death of the Lord Jesus until He returns. It is a spiritual union with Christ in His death as well as Life in His Resurrection!