They file toward the table, taking turns to pick up a round white wafer there and to select a grape-juice-filled cup from a tray on a white tablecloth. As they go to and from the round table, they sing:
Taking my sin my cross my shame
Rising again I bless your name
You are my all in all …
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Jesus Lamb of God worthy is Your name
Some are dressed up; others are dressed more casually.
While it might sound like a scene from a church in central Indiana, it happened in southern India.
Sunday, Oct. 4, is World Communion Sunday, a tradition that dates to the 1930s and focuses on Christian unity. On the eve of it, area residents who have lived in or traveled to other countries share how they have experienced Communion there over the years.
During Communion, Christians remember Jesus’ death on the cross, recalling his beaten body with bread or wafers and his shed blood with grape juice or wine.
Different churches within Christendom have different practices surrounding Communion — different theologies about what the bread and cup are or represent, different choices in what bread and drink they use, different timing for how often they celebrate it, etc. But THAT they celebrate it is something they tend to have in common.
Though the coronavirus has curtailed or changed Communion practices in many places — with some churches now using individual sealed units that contain both a Communion wafer and grape juice, for example — many of the stories shared here happened pre-COVID.
Karen Pieratt of Morristown remembers kneeling up front for the bread and cup as a child growing up in India. Today her sister continues to gather with fellow Christians in southern India at their pastor’s home for worship; once a month, those who have been baptized share Communion. It’s a close-knit group, Pieratt says, where the pastor’s wife bakes a cake if someone has a birthday and the group sings, prays, drinks coffee and cuts the cake.
“Money is hard to come by India,” Pieratt said, “but the way people love on you is incredible.”
Grape juice fills their Communion cups, but in some other places in Asia the cup is filled with actual wine.
Eunjoo Ballenger is from South Korea but lives in Greenfield and attends Evangel Church. Her husband, Jody, is lead pastor there.
She said when she lived in South Korea, Communion was celebrated once a year. After a prayer for repentance, worshipers shared bread and drank wine from a common metal cup.
Gary Wright has seen people in Hungary also use actual wine. Wright, president of World Renewal International in Greenfield, said from his travels to minister in various countries, a service with Gypsy Christians in Hungary was perhaps the most unusual Communion observance he’s seen.
“One tray was carried around the room containing both bread and wine. The wine had a strong alcohol content that was noticeable from a distance,” Wright wrote in an email to the Daily Reporter. “The tray was carried to the parishioners at their seats. It was fine, just different.”
Kaitlin Smith surmises there are differences among how Christians in Uganda celebrate Communion, perhaps according to denominational practices. From what she’s seen since she moved there in January 2019, the bread is often chapati, a flatbread eaten in parts of Asia and east Africa. Grape juice is not common in Uganda, she wrote in an email to the Daily Reporter, so the cup is filled with grape Fanta — watered down so it goes further.
“They don’t have the little communion cups that we commonly use in the U.S., so they share big cups and pass it to the next person,” wrote Smith, who serves as a coordinator of several medical clinics in villages outside Kampala, the capital city.
“I did attend one church that had the plastic communion cups and you are not to throw them away! They wash and reuse each little cup.”
There was no cup, but rather a large wooden bowl, when Carl Baird shared Communion with about 300 people at a conference in Australia.
“A man from Tonga came up to pray over the Communion … we all grab a little piece of bread, we all walked up to a big wooden bowl, and we dipped our bread in the juice and we walked back to our seats…,” wrote Baird, a New Palestine native who helps lead evangelism ministries at a Youth With a Mission base in Cannonvale, Queensland.
“I look up from my seat and the man from Tonga picks up the massive wooden bowl and chugs the remaining amount of juice.”
More recently, Baird attended a wedding ceremony that included Communion. The couple broke bread and shared the bread and the wine with the wedding party. Because COVID-19 restrictions prevented them from passing it to the rest of the guests, Baird and other guests had to bring their own Communion elements, he wrote. Still, he found it moving.
“I remember looking up at the newly married couple, both of them on their knees on the beach, faces down in the sand, crying out to God,” he wrote. “And everyone in the audience was praying and taking part of the Communion with them. It was such a beautiful moment …
“Those are the moments that remind me why Communion is so important. … It’s about drawing close to God, building that friendship with him.”
