Communion #5

Well I kept up my end of the deal. I bought port for communion. But we didn't have communion. I hope the bottle doesn't get lost. It's sitting in the sound equipment cupboard. Or was....
We didn't have communion, but we did have a happy chappy labrador come trotting into church during the sermon on prayer. He must have wanted to be like this dog...

Communion #4

Me and my big mouth - now i have to buy the communion wine for this Sunday. I hope I don't forget. If we only end up with grapejuice, you'll know I've forgotten.

Did you know?...Out of the reformation came the tradition of the minister drinking all the left over wine, so that no one could grab the left overs and parade them around and worship them like the Catholics did.

Communion #3

I'm really on a roll with this communion thing. On Sunday ML gets up for announcements and not mentionaing any names, mentioned that I had nearly died last week from the communion wine, and therefore this week we were having a 2002 Merlot. Well I don't know how to break this to you, but uuummmm, well, .... Merlot's (unless they are really expensive) don't really improve with aging. They are generally designed to be drunk not too long after being bought, and if kept too long will deteriorate. So...I think maybe a port is the way to go - being a fortified wine they are supposed to last a long time, so you can open the bottle and come back to it a few months later. Unless of course you buy what EF calls hobo port which is rotten to start with.

So anyway I was thinking, "Why have alcoholic anyway?" Just because I like wine is not a good enough reason to serve alcoholic wine for communion. It's not about enjoying a good nip. It's about what it represents. But it has been a long standing tradition (the Jews used wine) and the grapejuice thing is only quite modern. You only have a mouthful anyway, so it's not like you are going to get tanked.

Communion #2

I really felt I need to do a follow up to my original post on communion. I turns out people do actually read my blog, and my minster saw it. He passed on my communion post to the person responsible for communion and I received an email of apology! Wow, this blogging thing really is powerful! Apparently they are rethinking the way we do communion.

I would like to say here that I think communion is an important time for us to remember what Jesus did for us when he died for us, and I never wanted it to become a comedy. But good laughs do come out of serious things.

My Dad, like me, is a red wine lover, and also a retired minister, so therefore loving red wine can’t be a sin. (White wine on the other hand is purely evil). He loves telling the story of the time he came to my church and we were all sitting around tables and on each table was a bottle of red wine and a plate of Turkish bread for communion. He has this idea that we have really stylish communion. Not anymore. Anyway I’m not expecting top grade port, but I don’t remember the communion wine tasting so bad when I was growing up. But I was probably too busy trying to avoid the gooblies floating around in the common cup to worry about the taste. But according to my Dad they always had a reasonable quality port.

Communion

We had communion on Sunday morning at church. We have little mini cups for the wine. You get a choice of grapejuice or alcoholic. Being a red wine lover I go for the alcoholic. It's funny how you have this expectation of what the wine is going to taste like, but then it never meets it. This time the wine was sooo bad, I audibly gagged when I took a sip, so that people all around me heard and turned to see what had happened. I felt like I'd been poisoned. And then tears started running down my face. It must have been the wine frome the $2 shop. Lots of people were laughing, but they probably thought it was because I got a shock from the alcohol, which was not the case. I got a shock from how awful it tasted.