#open table

(a.k.a. letting non-Christians/non-baptized individuals receive the Eucharist)

When I first started attending my church, we were a closed-table congregation, and I thought nothing of it because that's all I'd ever known. A few years later, though, we got a new rector, and one of their non-negotiable conditions was that we open the table to everyone. Now that I had to actually think about it, I initially disagreed with open-table practice mostly on the basis of I Cor. 11:27-32 (and backed up by Didache 9:5).

It took a long while, but the Holy Spirit eventually led me to realize I was mistaken.

Don't get me wrong, the Body and Blood are more precious to me than ever. Indeed, as an Episcopalian convert, my church treats the Eucharist with far more reverence and respect than any other Protestant group I've known, and it's beautiful. But I can no longer justify withholding Christ from those who earnestly seek Him.

The 1 Corinthians passage, properly understood, isn't actually an obstacle here--it's a warning against taking the Eucharist disrespectfully or haughtily. Furthermore, I have positive evidence in the form of multiple people who have testified that God called them to Himself and began the conversion of their hearts through earnestly receiving the Body and Blood as their first act of faith. If God chooses to work thusly, who are we to stop Him?

Where: bar pool tables When: Mid August Who: @nickclas

Nadia didn’t really know how to play pool well, but she wasn’t playing for any real stakes. Just drinks and she had a feeling the guy playing with her would buy her next round whether she won or lost. He was staring at her chest, small though it was, every time she leaned over the table to take a shot. With her thirtieth birthday coming up, it was a nice ego boost even if he wasn’t exactly her type. 

Or it had been until a very unhappy redhead returned from the bathroom (how long had she been in there?) and glared daggers at Nadia. She dragged the man away from the pool table and right out of the bar despite his protests that nothing was going to happen and it was just a friendly game. 

“Damn,” she muttered, staring at the half finished game of pool. “Guess I’m buying my own drinks again.” Leaning on the cue, she looked around, raising her voice slightly. “Looks like I lost my opponent, anyone up for a game?” 

Hi there! I personally think that it is totally fine! Jesus freely offers his body to all people. If you felt close to God in the sharing of communion, then glory be to God! the Spirit was with you, affirming that you were welcome at the table.And to address one common explanation for why certain people, such as children or others who have not had some special class, cannot take communion, I like the response one of my pastors once offered: “Sure, little children don’t really ‘get’ what communion is, or what it does...but do any of us really?”

But different Christians have different viewpoints about who can and cannot partake in communion, so let me share a few. Note that I could not find any denominations that say you must be confirmed to receive communion (I bet there are some, though). Usually the main barrier is that you must be baptized, and for some denominations you must be an official member of that specific denomination. 

Some denominations, such as my home tradition Catholicism, practice a closed table or “fenced” table, wherein only those who have been baptized and received their official first communion (and have been to Confession if they’ve committed any mortal sins) can partake in the Eucharist – though you don’t have to be confirmed, actually. 

I now belong to a denomination with an open table -- well, it’s loosely fenced, in that all who are baptized Christian (or, as the PC(USA) Book of Order describes it, all who “are seeking Christ”), regardless of denomination or status, are welcome to partake. 

My individual congregation does not fence its table at all -- we welcome even those who are not baptized and/or are not sure they believe in or are seeking Christ to partake. In There’s a Woman in the Pulpit, Rev. Julia Seymour discusses how she also practices this radically open table with her congregation. Her denomination (Lutheran) requires baptism in order for one to take communion, but Rev. Seymour knowingly offers communion even to the unbaptized. She defends her decision thus:

My predecessor at the first congregation I served had begun discussions about open communion. He did offer communion to older children, but there was still a very formal first communion. Typically between first and third grade, children would be taught about communion and then have the opportunity to take their first communion surrounded by their family and by the community’s prayers.I supported the idea of communion education for that age group (and older), but I still was handing out the body of Christ willy-nilly around the altar. Every hand stretched out received. Everybody was welcome to come forward with open hands. If God has no barriers to grace, why would I erect them?More to the point, how could I enforce barriers? Is there a hierarchy in the sacraments that I did not know or understand? Perhaps baptism confers some mystical ability to perceive the presence of Christ in communion and I have been circumventing that. If I have been, I was not doing it inadvertently.In that first congregation, there was a [neurodivergent] woman in her late forties named Annabelle. ...Annabelle always enthusiastically approached the altar rail. Her parents had worked for decades to teach her ‘proper’ responses to various events, including and especially receiving Holy Communion. Yet her enthusiasm for all things often overrode the lessons she had been carefully taught.One Sunday, I handed Annabelle a piece of bread and said, “The body of Christ, given for you.”She plucked the host from my fingers with her own and stuffed it in her mouth, grinning at me and blurting out, “Don’t mind if I do.”I grinned back. Her parents were horrified, but I thought it was the best and most enthusiastic possible response to Christ’s invitation to communion and community. Don’t mind if I do. Rather than groveling in the face of grace, Annabelle reveled in it. I loved this.Suddenly, I knew that was my response to communing all people. “Don’t mind if I do.” Some people are washed on their way to the communion table. Others may eat their way to the font. There is no way of containing the movement of the Spirit, and it flows between both of these holy and mysterious gathering areas. In all things, I do my best to examine what I’m doing because, in truth, I want to be sure I am not in God’s way. Gratitude expressed to me for a welcome or openness in the congregation’s practice is not personal when I hear it. But it is the blessed assurance that the Spirit is moving and I’ve managed not to impede the flow or the experience.

Throughout this series of posts, I hope to chronicle my experiences running an Open Table Campaign using the Original 1974 version of Dungeons & Dragons with Supplement I: Greyhawk, Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, as well as the rules for the Ranger class from the Summer 1975 Issue of The Strategic Review. I will be writing about both my successes and my failures, as well as the problems I wind up facing and my solutions to them. Hopefully this series will encourage more people to try both OD&D and the Open Table style of play.

What is an Open Table? Why run one?

Put plainly an Open Table is a style of running D&D especially but tabletop roleplaying games more generally that is flexible and playercentric. Players schedule their own sessions with the referee and are responsible for wrangling other players from the playgroup to make a party for that session, as well as determining their goals. The only job of the referee is to have the dungeon levels or hexcrawl already made and then adjudicate the world. The two best resources on this sort of play are Justin Alexander’s Open Table Manifesto and Ben Robbins’ article on The West Marches. (These creators are brilliant, go read their stuff and support them if you can, we need more people like them in the rpg space).

Town Hall will be closed Tuesday and Christmas Day for the holiday. Trash collection will be delayed on the second day of pickup.  Recycling, normally scheduled for Wednesday, will be moved to Thursday. Trash pickup scheduled for Thursday will move to Friday while the regular pickup normally set for Friday will be moved to Saturday. Recycling  is for bottles, cans and plastics. Because of the…