When the time rolls around for the Lord’s Supper, fundamentalist pull out the little plastic cups and the big bottle of Welch’s grape juice (making extra sure not to use the sparkling grape juice with the foil over the cap since this is most assuredly the appearance of evil)
Now everybody in fundamentalists circles knows that Christians since the Apostles have all celebrated the Lord’s supper with grape juice. How they did this without refrigeration is a bit of mystery. It would seem that although our Lord turned water into wine, His followers spent a lot of their time miraculously turning wine back into water. Those Jews who were used to drinking fermented wine for Passover must have been in for quite a shock.
Moving forward in history, we can clearly see that all those tales about Luther and Calvin drinking beer and wine are just nonsense. It’s doubtless the devil’s lie to get the demon rum into our churches. Believing in a good American prohibitionist like Billy Sunday is better than following the examples of those beer-swilling foreigners any day.
Fundamentalists, lift those little cups high and be thankful that you are free from leaven of wine, if not the leaven of the Pharisees. All hail Welch’s.
I am always afraid that I will drop the plate of cups.
Yeah, me too.
When I was a kid, our church had glass communion cups. My mom, being a deacon’s wife, had to stay for at least an hour after church hand-washing all those little cups.
How come the actual deacons never had to clean up? Wasn’t part of their job description in Acts serving tables?
Never dropped the cups, but I have had to live through my 8-year-old son’s first partaking: hesitating to take the bread as he announces loudly, “I’m not hungry!” Plus, when the juice came around, draining his cup with a loud *smack!* and *aaahhhh!* An unwritten rule of communion: you’re not supposed to have fun remembering the Lord’s death!!!!!
One first Sunday of the month (isn’t that when all IFB churches have communion) a loong time ago, my best friend and I sneaked into the church kitchen right after the service was over, and started chugging down all the leftover little cups of Welch’s. I still remember the beating I received when we got home.
We have kids who come in the kitchen and do that in our church now. Since I am the one who is in there cleaning up, I usually save them for the kids who come in. Is that bad? I mean, the actual juice isn’t really sacred or anything. Should I be disposing of it in a more respectful way? (Than giving it to thirsty, happy kids?) Should I ask to see a baptismal certificate or at least ask them if they are saved first? 😕
I used to love watching the little kids who ran around the auditorium collecting all the plastic cups into LONG stacks. Not sure what they did with them – maybe licked them out to get that last bit of grape juice.
Curious: When do most fundie churches allow kids to take Communion? I think I was 11 or 12.
The church I grew up attending would let you take Communion as long as you were saved–they didn’t put an age limit on it. Parents were instructed to make sure their unsaved child(ren) didn’t sneak a cup of Welch’s or a Saltine cracker crumb. 😛
All the churches I grew up in you couldn’t take communion until after you had been baptized. I’m not sure what about that act makes you qualified, however.
I was at First Baptist Church Hammond when up in the balcony, the guy sitting next to me (who had been on the bus routes all day and was probably dead tired) fell asleep while waiting for the tray of juice to reach him. When the guy next to HIM handed it to him, he DROPPED IT onto the back of the woman sitting in front of him. Of course a commotion like that was noticed by all, including The Great One (Jack Hyles, not Schaap) and he felt the need to draw everyone’s attention back to the front where God was.
My church uses grape juice mainly because they also host one of the largest recovering alcoholic ministries in the city, and the leadership didn’t want to even present the slightest opportunity for temptation.
Years ago I hosted a Bible study at my apartment, and offered the Lord’s Supper using actual matzoh crackers and Manischewitz wine (figuring that since Jesus was Jewish, this is what He’d be using today). A couple of seriously fundie ladies I was friends with (and still count as friends today) made a big deal about getting lit off of the wine…seriously, Manischewitz????
I don’t see anything wrong with giving the leftover juice to the kids. It’s something Jesus probably would have done, the more I think about it. I do recall recently seeing someone put his empty cup in the collection plate. That was about the tackiest thing I’d seen yet at a church.
That is very tacky! 🙄
Just the very reason why I became a Lutheran.