Because our church community is growing so rapidly, it is necessary for us to remind you of certain things from time to time, and this is one such reminder. If you are new to our community, as many of you are, you may have noticed that our children worship together with us, though the entire service. Or at least through most of the service. He’s getting better.
And you may also have noticed that children (who have been baptized) partake in communion a lot earlier than what you have perhaps seen elsewhere. We don’t administer the elements to newborns in some superstitious way, as though bread and wine have innate powers. They have no magic power apart from the rite of God’s people partaking together under the authority of the Word. They do not.
But if you have a baby who is worshiping the Lord together with us, trying to say amen, raising his hands at the doxology, and so on, and he notices the tray going by, and he sees all his people partaking, and he discerns the body, then it is time for him to partake. But because this sacrament is not a household ordinance, we would request that you let one of the elders know that your child is partaking. The elders “hold the keys,” not fathers and mothers.
To those who argue that such little children, including one-year-olds, are too immature to discern the Lord’s body, our reply is simple. The body is up and down the row you are sitting in. The entire body is all around you. The body is made up of your people. And when a child wants to partake, seeing that his people are doing something that he wants to do as well, he is discerning the Lord’s body. And if you want to partake of the bread and wine, while excluding him, then you are not discerning the Lord’s body. We grant that the child is not doing this perfectly—none of us are—but he is doing. And it would be a shame if he were doing a better job of it than you are.
All who are bread should get bread.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.