A Christian's Guide to Communion?
I have had this in my drafts box since April 24th, 2023. Some time ago, during COVID, I had started a somewhat impromptu series of “A Christian’s Guide to” several things secular and a few spiritual. I will go ahead and warn you in advance, that the actual part about Communion is going to take a few moments to get there.
The purpose and goal of these were to articulate some of the internal things I was grappling with regarding Christianity, the Gospel, and what those had been meaning to me over the past decade. The series sort of took a backseat to family and personal events that contribute to the constant shaping of these articulations.
I have alluded to my what would now be Christian heritage quite a bit, but I do not think I have ever shared what those of us in the Church would call my testimony. I will publish it by itself somewhere else later, but in talking about communion, I am going to provide my testimony here.
The story starts with my first memories of church, which is that we were Catholic. In first grade my Dad started taking me to Sunday School at Twining Elementary in Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota. We were learning how to recite The Lord’s Prayer, and Hail Mary, the latter of which I never learned to recite. This was all leading up to our first Communion, which in Catholicism is the second biggest deal behind Baptism, which for me happened within the first few weeks of my life. It was a big deal, as our families were in attendance, and I was blessed with my very own Godfather, CJ Gerdes.
In Grand Forks, this was my Dad’s first “long-term” assignment as an Air Force officer. This meant a lot of change for my family as far as social status and esprit de corps go in that certain bonds shared by officers would also affect spouses and dependents. The motives and spirit behind this is not from a place of malice or elitism (not denying that this is the case in some places), but it meant that our housing and treatment were greatly improved because of my father. It meant that my treatment at school was considered in light of my father’s rank. This included where we went to church, who we sat with, and at my level, who my friends would get to be. At the spousal level, this meant the Officer’s Wives Club, and it is probably very close to what it sounds like with the unspoken dynamic being that each wife’s status was attached to the rank of their husband. Now this being my dad’s first officer assignment, it meant we were at the bottom of the top tier social structure.
As Catholics this meant we were somewhat religious, but for my family it was more of a professional religion than it was a personal one. Catholicism is big on merit as is the military so there was a lot that would correspond with each other in that sense, and that merit-based system would extend to what my mom would bring to the club. These wives would meet for brunches, go shopping, plan squadron events, and offer each other tons of support. It really is a great thing when it is a great thing. During one of these outings, my Mom was waiting in the brunch line at the Officer’s Club (actual building) and was getting out her wallet to pay for brunch. Wallets in the 80s was like opening a book, and it was during this activity that a lady in the line with my Mom noticed a picture of Jesus that my Mom kept in her wallet.
“I know Him.” this lady said. However, where a religious person might take that as a given as popular as Jesus’s general image is, the conviction of how she said “I know Him.” caught my Mother rather particularly. Olga and my Mom would eventually sit together and become friends in the Wives Club. This “I know Him.” however my Mom could not shake, and she finally challenged Olga to explain herself. What followed was an afternoon at Olga’s house where my Mom would receive for the first time the Gospel, and it is here where my story actually begins.
Later that afternoon when I got home from school, I remember feeling as if something significant had happened with me. In looking back at this, I know that even at that time God had been softening my heart to understand His gift of Salvation through faith in Jesus. My Mom’s countenance was different, the kind of exuberance one has at finding something they had been searching for. My Mother was different, her feelings toward me carried a new sincerity, her eyes looked at me with a connected depth that made me curious. I trusted my Mom, I knew that if she had reason to be happy about something, that maybe I should be happy too. I wanted to share in this, what son would not?
However, what followed was a hard turn. My Mom asked me what did I know about Jesus? I knew that He was the Son of God, that He died on a cross, that we took Communion and relied on a priest for something important that had to do with God, things that at seven I had already accepted as how things are for no reason other than it was what we did as a family. The whole thing did not really mean anything to me, and this was even from knowing the basics of His death. My Mom said, “Jamie, go find our crucifixes and bring them to me.” The one I knew we had was a wooden crucifix that hung in our house. It was a beautiful piece, any good Catholic would be proud to display it. We wrapped them up and placed them in boxes in our basement that day. I thought maybe we were doing something different, but the whole thing was questionable, so questionable that I remember this time very well. We went for a car ride, and she took to me to meet Olga. Olga was the wife of a Lt. Colonel (three grades higher than my Dad), and was from Santo Domingo, as was her husband, Percio. Olga was in my memory, the sweetest lady I had ever met. Her hospitality and demeanor so disarming, but I knew from the first few moments that she was the reason my Mom had become so confident and somehow relieved. My Mom is a Korean lady, and Korean ladies are dutiful wives and mothers, and they carry the weight of the family in their faces, but for the first time in ever, I was seeing two ladies who had reason to be happy about their life. Olga asked me, “Do you know Jesus?”, and of course I did not. She told me everything I already knew about Jesus, the Cross, Adam & Eve, and finally, and this is where things became clear to me, the concept of sin. There is no question that I was a good boy, and that I knew right from wrong, but why did I know right from wrong? More importantly, why is what I knew about right and wrong from my parents, things that I also felt to be right and wrong? It is because I knew sin. “Did you know that Jesus died so that your sins would be forgiven?” — as a young boy, this was not immediately clear. Jesus dying on a Cross was just a sad story about God’s Son and His reception here on Earth, for some reason we honored Him for that. This sadness and reverence I had for Him started to be connected in mind. She told me how His death was not just sad, but that it was personal. She told me that we revered His death on the Cross because God loved us specifically. This story was no longer just a story, this story had now become a part of me. I remember how all of this came together, and this understanding of the Gospel at seven made a sad story, even sadder, but it was deeply understood by me in those moments that I was the recipient of a gift. That day, April 18th, 1989, I put my faith in Jesus at seven years old. Several weeks later, I would be baptized at the Larimore Dam in North Dakota by my first pastor, the late Harry Brotzman.
As any skeptic should, this appeal to my emotions as a seven year old warrants a scrutiny if I was somehow influenced by people I trust into believing a delusion. I would wrestle with this later in life as I matured and sought my independence from my parents, but of all the things I would disavow coming into my own (things as recently as this year), Jesus and His Gospel has been the only constant I could not within reason give up on. It is not fear of eternity, or fear of anything, really. As a man, I very much look at opportunity to be in control, to be independent, to rule my own house, and take responsibility for my own life. Intellectually, philosophically, I would be content with “nothing” at the end of all things. So much me me me, my my my, I this and I that, things that are very much up to me, that I can present to others as good, but in my own space in my own devices, I have things as any person would, things I am ashamed of. Sure, I am not evil or as bad I can be, but I am also not good as I should be. I inhabit both worlds of good and evil, I am inclined by vulnerabilities to things that would negatively impact me and my family, and I am motivated by love (both of myself and to my family) to do good things instead. What I cannot do, however, is 100% live in the goodness that I am capable of, because what I am also capable of and that would come much easier than goodness is that I can most certainly catastrophically fail. Goodness, mercy, forgiveness, all take effort and intentionality, but apathy, complacence, judgment, hubris, pride, misguided vindictiveness, even with good intentions, while they may appear good in certain contexts, come from a very self-aggrandizing place, a version of me that is full of hypocrisy, an unwillingness to allow for imperfections, a commitment to self-righteousness and virtue signaling for no reason other that I have to be right above all things. You see, dear reader, that a commitment to self-righteousness on its surface seems like a good thing and as a presentation it makes a certain earthly sense, but my soul remains ever lost in this place without taking on His righteousness over my own self-righteousness.
In 1989, when I put my faith in Jesus with the understanding that my salvation was secured, that my sin was forgiven, I experienced joy. This joy is the same joy that so many Christians experience at this revelation, but it was also the same joy that would become a memory, an elusive sentiment. I would spend my formative years holding on to this memory as the foundation of personal convictions. I was a great kid growing up, my parents did such a wonderful job in their love, provision, and discipline of me that I only hope that I can be the same for mine. I never got into serious trouble, I knew when I was doing wrong and would have the courage to leave. This would be my reputation going into high school, it would be in my character reports to my parents from school. I grew up believing that the joy of salvation had to mature into me working for it, putting my faith into action, that if I did not it was because I was falling short because of sin. My joy had become elusive where my awareness of sin became an obsession. I would worship Jesus fervently, I would attend church, I would serve where possible, all of these things were to occupy my time with things of the Lord so that I could feel I was earning that gift of salvation, that I was living in obedience and fleeing wickedness. Yes, these things were fulfilling, and they were rewarding. I was happy. In college, I took a year off with my friends to join a discipleship program called Master’s Commission. My friends and I, we served that program with significant effort. We gave up our jobs, we submitted to a curfew, we gave up romances, we gave up our time, our folks gave up significant finances for us to do this. We learned every video, we served every event, we served and served and served and while we expected nothing material, our hearts were soured when in a moment where someone gave back to us, the program took it from us. We joined Master’s Commission with a trust that serving the Lord in that capacity would be the reward, and more often than not it was. We placed our trust in our leadership, and we were let down by them. It is with sadness that today most of my class no longer acknowledges Jesus. In fact, our experience in MC and the expectations created served as the reason for blaming God for hardships, for loss, for injustices inflicted in His name by people we trusted, all those things. In a few more years, as the lot of us would go on to resume our college educations, the number of us that remained believers would further dwindle. Our fellowship, probably to this day, have had meetings trying to determine why young people who grow up in the Church leave it by the time they are young adults.
At the end of college, I went straight into working for a non-profit ministry. I remained faithful to my church, I remained faithful to serving, because when I put my faith in Jesus at age 7, the experience and revelation of the Gospel was serious. I could not, even at the expense of my friends, disavow that. Even in the face of compelling humanism, casting doubts of Christ’s divinity, I knew that such things really did not make significant difference or offer something better than just serving God, even He were mythical. Over time, the majority of my closest friends would forget the Gospel and take paths that would lead to addiction, abusive relationships, crime/imprisonment, divorce and hurtful infidelities that would further be used as reasons to deny God and His gift of salvation because these were somehow His fault. We were raised with promises that if we did what was right in God’s eyes, that we could avoid these things because we “sought first His kingdom and His righteousness…” and that turned out to be inaccurate because we conflated seeking with working and doing as the conditional elements that would satisfy our lot in this life. This was wrong.
At the end of my career in ministry, my burden on behalf of my friends turned into disappointment. My heart of compassion turned into one that had instead decided that God’s judgment was what was appropriate, a decision that did not belong to me. My works sustained me, my friends’ lack of works failed them, but we were both wrong. I had to quit. I knew that I was straying from something deeper that I had forgotten. Still, I knew that from the age of seven, my introduction to Jesus then was the only thing I could hold on to. I knew that something as personal and impactful as that, was very much between God and I. I quit the ministry and embarked on a years long sabbatical from church, from ministry, from everything. While I did not quit on God, I certainly quit working for Him. I quit focusing on holiness. I took where I thought I was being legalistic and gave those things up, the fruit of which had some positives. I began to look at sin equally, and in so doing the areas of sin that normally make Christians mad, I began to feel a burden for instead so that God would be revealed. In all of this, I still strived to be good. I still tried to “do good in the sight of the Lord” and while the discipline was beneficial, I remained so spiritually depleted and unhealthy. This spiritual stress would affect my marriage because of how it impacted me. I had entered into a dangerous complacency and self-righteousness where grace was sufficient for me, but not so much for thee.
In 2020, I watched a documentary called American Gospel, which summarized my upbringing from Catholicism to Pentecostal/Charismatic, hitting on some of the deeply held beliefs I had let go of over the years. However, there came a point in the film where the Gospel was explained in opposition to those things. While I sat there and listened to the Gospel in opposition of what and who I had become over the years, along came whispers from the past…
“I know Him.”
“I know Him.”
“I know Him.”
“You know this.”
“You’ve always known this.”
“You know Him.”
“You know Me.”
Joy elusive. I became seven again. My faith, childlike. Later that evening through tears, I told my wife how wrong I had been, that I was so upset at how I could forget this, yet so affirmed that what had been burning inside of me was not me losing faith, but something buried, something lost to time, rediscovered.
Today, we look back on this grasp of the Gospel as it would prove to become vital to enduring the family and personal losses we would face, three of my friends and then my mother-in-law, Christmas Eve 2022. Spring 2023, it would reach a culmination in what would become a very loving miracle for my wife, Courtney.
Even three years later, our return to the Gospel remains a cherished event, the joy of which is no longer elusive. Spring of 2023, my wife and I visited a church that is not quite what we are used to. Liturgical elements, and weekly Communion, are distant memories for me, and completely foreign to my wife. However, this church has them. The stark difference though was Communion, where you take it on your own. Our first Sunday, I sat there with my juice and cracker feeling pressured to not do this in vain. All the scripts of churches past, my familiarity with the Last Supper, all on my mind. The rigidly reverent side of me trying to do this right, but then a realization to “do this in remembrance of Me”. I recalled the living room at Olga’s house in Grand Forks at age 7, then I recalled my very own living room in 2020 revisiting age 7, and it was all about Jesus. There is nothing I can do, or anything that can happen to me that would separate me from Him.
I know Him.
