tradition

... tradition should be allowed to be itself; that is, the living voice of the very human church as it struggles with scripture, sometimes misunderstanding it and sometimes gloriously getting it right.

Taken from: N. T. Wright's

The Last Word, pp. 117ff.

i read this in mike cope's blog this afternoon. i was privileged this morning to precide over one of the greatest traditions that our tribe follows; communion.

i love communion! i think that it is the central act of our worship service, and the honor to lead the congregation in something that Jesus did for His disciples, to me, is awesome!

i remember the first time i took communion. it was minutes after my baptism. i was a little confused by what it was, because i had never partook before, and brother howard (fyi, i don't call people brother or sister so-and-so because i think we are who we are. that is my opinion.) served me. i don't remember his first name, that is what everybody called him, so that's how i remember him.

i also remember taking communion once on a saturday. what do you think about that? it wasn't sunday, and i didn't die from a lightning strike afterwords. come to think of it, Jesus served in on a thursday, if memory serves me right.

the communion i remember was served individually to all those participating. the servers stood at the front of the sanctuary, and we came up one by one from a line formed leading up to them. the server handed me the piece of bread, and looked me in the eye, and handing me the bread, said,

"ken, this is the body of Jesus Christ, broken for you."

tears welled up and fell from my eyes. then another server handed me the wine, and likewise, looked me in the eye, and said,

"ken, this the blood of Jesus Christ shed for the remittence of you sins."

WOW!! what a Savior!! what a tradition!!

we did a communion service similar to this at park row one year, and can you believe it, some people who you would think that would be against it said, " ... that was very nice. why haven't we done that before?"

what are some traditions that you can think of that if they were not done the way remember doing them they would not be legitimate?