As you teach your children how to come to this Table, one of the things you should be cultivating is this: we come because we were invited, not because we are entitled.
The invitation proceeded from grace, and is extended to us in grace. We don’t deserve any of it. The response we should have, if we “get” this is a response of gratitude. Grace breeds gratitude.
But one of the temptations that comes from bringing our children to the Table early, as we do, is that it is very easy to take this for granted, assuming that this is just the way it has to be, because it has been this way their entire lives. Just as we take our hair color for granted, or our skin color, or our family name, or anything else we have always had, we take our access to this Table for granted. A sense of entitlement creeps in, and entitlement is always based on pride, comparisons, envy, and ingratitude. It is anti-response to the response of gratitude for grace.
When entitlement takes hold, the idea of church discipline becomes monstrous. To excommunicate someone is, in this thinking, to deny their personhood. Rather, in the biblical framework, it assumes personhood, because covenants are made and kept, or broken, by persons. When an individual is held accountable for his covenant-breaking, this honors the dignity of his responsibilities.
The bread and wine here is all grace, all gift. It is not our birthright in an entitlement sense. It is our new birthright.