(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . An open God invites to an open table. Communion is for all. [1] ['Jon Paul Sydnor', 'Chitown Kev', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Bill In Portland Maine', 'Thom Hartmann'] Date: 2026-08-04 A friendly note to all Daily Kos readers. This essay was posted to Street Prophets, a progressive religious community on Daily Kos. As a blogger there, I am a progressive like you, only from a Christian perspective. In support of progressivism, I am trying to articulate a progressive Christian political vision. After all, no progressive leaders will be elected without the progressive religious vote. As I argue for progress from a Christian perspective, I am in no way asserting the superiority of faith to atheism, or Christianity to any other worldview. I am just trying to advance humanity from my own particular perspective. I think that God prefers kind atheists to mean Christians. My hope is that we can all cooperate across worldviews to create a more just, inclusive, and peaceful world. Thank you. ***** An open table signifies universal salvation. Religious ritual either works or it dies. One criterion of effectiveness is the ritual’s ability to transform our interaction with the non-ritualized world. If the ritual causes us to interpret and act in ordinary time in accordance with the values expressed in ritual time, then the ritual has succeeded. If the ritual produces no change in our feeling or behavior outside of ritual time, then the ritual has failed. Although ritual practice is introverted, focused on its own space and time, the effect of the ritual practice is extroverted, spilling into and changing everyday space and time. In other words, ritual creates in the present, ritualized space-time what we will strive to create in the future, universal space-time. It enacts a vision of reality and impels action toward that vision. The Christian vision of reality is the kingdom of God as preached by Jesus and anticipated by the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, remembers, repeats, and anticipates the communion of saints experienced at table in the presence of Jesus, a communion that will be perfected in the kingdom. By doing so, it breaks down the boundaries between past, present, and future, remembering the past into the present, a present that anticipates our future gathering in the full presence of God. At the same time, it breaks down the boundaries between locales, so we gather at the Jerusalem table of Jesus, the local table of our church, and the future table of the new creation. It unites the work of the divine persons, as we are invited by the same Savior, pervaded by the same Spirit, and giving thanks to the same Creator, thereby communing with the same Trinity. The invitation to communion is an invitation to community. Since communion is universal, one reality sustained by one God, the community of the table is universal, one gathering at one feast. An exclusive ritual cannot express inclusive love. Jesus’s teachings and Sophia’s intimations both commend a church without boundaries, an “us” without a “them” that fulfills the intentions of Abba. author In Jesus’s day, those who would pollute a table, those who were to be excluded from table fellowship, were the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, so Jesus says: “When you have a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed” (Luke 14:13–14a). Who are the outcasts today, with whom we would not share a meal? At table, we should exclude only those whom Jesus would exclude, but Jesus included Thomas who would doubt him, Peter who would deny him, and Judas who would betray him. We conclude that Jesus would exclude no one, as do we. The table must be open. Sadly, most invitations to the communion table are exclusive, limiting participation to baptized Christians, or baptized Christians who have been confirmed in their specific faith, or baptized Christians who have been confirmed in their specific faith and are currently in good standing with the church. Religious authorities frequently enforce this limited participation. Ironically, the authorities of Jesus’s day denied the Holy Spirit within him, accusing him of possession by Beelzebul instead, and would have shunned him from table (Mark 3:22). It follows that, in our own day, if we deny communion to some, we risk denying communion to Christ. Changing ritual is good for the soul. If communion is open to all, then it is open to children. At Grace Community Boston, as soon as a child can digest solid food, they are welcome to be brought forward for communion. This development, which was natural and spontaneous, demanded that we discuss the imagery used for communion. We needed to engage and alter tradition according to our norm: the agapic love of God. Such breaking with tradition is traditional. As Tom Driver notes, rituals change through history. They are created in times and places according to the need of those times and places; as needs change rituals change. A new world will need new rituals, and any community moving toward the kingdom of God strides toward a new world. author Children tend to think literally. The capacity for metaphorical thought develops with age and life experience. Since we were serving communion to very young children, we became concerned that their literal interpretation of eucharistic imagery regarding the body and blood of Christ would make them think that we were all, literally, cannibals. To investigate, we asked our parishioners what they remembered about communion from their childhood. The results disturbed us. The body-and-blood language had conjured some gruesome imagery: one parishioner thought that her church had Christ’s corpse in the back room, behind the apse, and from this corpse carved up the body and drained out the blood for each week’s service. Others had similar memories and were convinced that they were eating and drinking (or their parents were) the literal flesh and blood of Jesus. And they remembered being, let us say, discomfited by this regular occurrence. All good theology is pastoral theology, so we were more than willing to adapt tradition to this pastoral discovery. While celebrating communion, we began to avoid body-and-blood imagery, emphasizing instead remembrance of Jesus’s absolute ethical courage, the presence of Christ among us through table fellowship, and the promised banquet at which all will be filled. Like the early church, and like many contemporary emergent churches, communion became similar to an agape meal or love feast—we replaced wafers with large chunks of fresh-baked bread and goblets of grape juice. Our invitation to table is open, and we have served Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, agnostics, humanists, and Jews. Utilizing pastorally revised yet biblically grounded language, we began referring to the elements as the “bread of heaven” (John 6:51) and “cup of salvation” (Psalm 116:13; see also 1 Corinthians 10:16). Children partake joyfully and see nothing spooky about the experience. Change is difficult. But after a good change, you don’t want to go back to the way things were; you’re thankful to have moved on. After the Exodus, the Israelites did not want to go back to Egypt. After encountering Jesus’s new way, his followers did not want to go back to their old ways. After removing body and blood language from communion, and replacing it with bread of heaven and cup of salvation language, no one in our church wants to go back. We sacrificed the familiar for the unfamiliar, and are the better for it. The future invites. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 237–240) ***** For further reading, please see: Driver, Tom F. “Transformation: The Magic of Ritual.” In Readings in Ritual Studies, edited by Ronald L. Grimes, 170–87. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. Edmondson, Stephen. “Opening the Table: The Body of Christ and God’s Prodigal Grace.” Anglican Theological Review 91 (2009) 224–37. Jennings, Theodore W. “On Ritual Knowledge.” In Readings in Ritual Studies, edited by Ronald L. Grimes, 324–34. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. King, Ursula. Women and Spirituality: Voices of Protest and Promise. New York: Macmillan, 1993. 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