Thank you for subscribing to UM Now and for inviting others to do the same. In this edition, we reflect deeply on Communion’s meaning and some of our traditions as United Methodists.
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United Methodist Communications offers a video that explains more about the sacrament of Holy Communion.
An open table: How United Methodists understand communion
A UMC.org Feature by Joe Iovino*
During a Confirmation Class, the pastor asked a group of mostly 13- and 14-year-old students to name some things Christians—and specifically United Methodists—do that most other people do not. One of the girls raised her hand and said with a smile, “We dunk our bread in grape juice.”Yes, that is different.
The sacrament of Holy Communion is such a common occurrence in the landscape of our worship that its uncommon richness sometimes gets lost.
Holy Communion is such a common occurrence in worship that its uncommon richness sometimes gets lost. 
TWEET THIS
REGULAR COMMUNIONTWEET THISDue to a lack of ordained clergy in the early days of the church in the United States, a history of receiving the sacrament quarterly (four times per year) is the habit in some places. The vast majority of United Methodist congregations in the United States (97% in the most recent study) now celebrate the Lord’s Supper at least once per month. This Holy Mystery and The United Methodist Book of Worship encourage weekly communion.
One sacrament, several names
The Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, and the Eucharist are all names for this sacrament celebrated by United Methodists. Each of these names highlights an aspect of this act of worship.
According to This Holy Mystery, The United Methodist Church’s official document on communion, “The Lord’s Supper reminds us that Jesus Christ is the host and that we participate at Christ’s invitation.” Jesus invites us to take part in the special meal he ate with his disciples the night before his crucifixion, and other meals he shared in homes and on hillsides.
“The term Holy Communion invites us to focus on the self-giving of the Holy God which makes the sacrament an occasion of grace, and on the holiness of our communion with God and one another,” This Holy Mystery continues.
Finally, “Eucharist, from the Greek word for thanksgiving, reminds us that the sacrament is thanksgiving to God for the gifts of creation and salvation.”
The Services of Word and Table in the front of The United Methodist Hymnal lead us in celebrating the fullness of the sacrament.
"OPEN COMMUNION"
“Ecumenically, the term ‘open communion’ … means that all of the baptized are welcome to receive,” explains the Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards, director of worship resources with Discipleship Ministries. This distinguishes our invitation from some other Christian denominations that may require additional rites before one is welcome to the table.
“United Methodists do not practice ‘wide open communion,’” Burton-Edwards continues. “We are instructed to use the invitation as it appears in our ritual to make clear whom Christ does invite to his table. It is those who ‘love him, earnestly repent of their sin, and seek to be at peace with one another.’ While we serve all who present themselves, not questioning their integrity in response to the invitation, these are actual conditions.”
Invitation
Our communion liturgy begins with words spoken on Jesus’ behalf inviting “all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin, and seek to live in peace with one another.”
There are no conditions for church membership or completion of a class required.
The baptized present are all invited, even if they belong to a different church. Those not baptized are not barred from receiving, but “should be counseled and nurtured toward baptism as soon as possible,” This Holy Mystery advises.In addition, there is no minimum age. Even baptized infants are invited. The Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards, director of worship resources with Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church, explains, “To whatever degree they’re able to participate in the Great Thanksgiving—even if that’s simply being held in their mother’s arms while they sleep—they are there. They are part of what we are all doing together, so they are welcome to receive.”
Confession, Pardon, and Peace
During the next part of the service, we prepare ourselves to offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving by repenting of sin and seeking to live in peace with one another.
After praying a prayer of confession, we share words of pardon that remind us of the grace freely available to all who repent, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!”
The Peace then follows, where we offer one another signs of reconciliation and love, affirming our desire to live as a reconciled community in Christ.
THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNION
The Bread
“It is appropriate that the bread eaten in Holy Communion both look and taste like bread,” This Holy Mystery clarifies. “The use of a whole loaf best signifies the unity of the church as the body of Christ and, when it is broken and shared, our fellowship in that body.”
The Cup
“A single cup or chalice may be used for intinction—dipping the bread into the wine—or for drinking,” This Holy Mystery also affirms. “The use of a common chalice best represents Christian unity, but individual cups are used in many congregations.”
This story uses the word juice over wine because historically, United Methodists have been committed to use “the pure, unfermented juice of the grape.”
“That came out of our involvement in the temperance movement in the 19thcentury and into the 20th century,” Burton-Edwards explains. “It is also out of an ongoing concern for persons for whom alcohol may be a problem.”
The Great Thanksgiving
During the next part of the service, the pastor leads the congregation in a prayer called The Great Thanksgiving.
“Our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving is The Great Thanksgiving,” Burton-Edwards teaches. “That’s why it’s essential that the people participate actively in this.”
We join in the ancient tradition of sacrifice by offering God our praise and thanksgiving for the wondrous gift of salvation (see Psalm 141).
We offer ourselves and our gifts of bread and wine to God with thanksgiving. Then we ask for the Holy Spirit to be poured upon us and these gifts, that they may become for us the body and blood of Christ, nourishing us, who have been redeemed by his blood, to be the body of Christ in the world.
We conclude praising the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—before uniting our voices in the Lord’s Prayer.
Then the bread is broken, and the body and blood of Christ are given to those who come to receive.
Prayer after receiving
Holy Communion brings together our worship and our work in the world.
“Communion is our meal,” Burton-Edwards explains, “It is our feeding. We need that sustenance and we need it regularly.”
In the prayer after receiving, we affirm this. We pray, “Grant that we may go into the world in the strength of your Spirit, to give ourselves for others, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.”
All this is God’s gift to us.
Burton-Edwards continues, “We are fed with the body of Christ by the Father and empowered by the Spirit to live as Christ’s body in the world.”
Dipping bread into juice may seem a little odd, but it is an important sign of our life as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Burton-Edwards summarizes, “What we’re doing in the Eucharist is a double thing. When we receive ‘the body and blood of Christ that we may be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by his blood,’ we are remembering. At the same time, we are also re-membered, put back together again. We pray that we may be ‘one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.’ God’s work of making us one and uniting us with Christ, with each other and in our witness and life in the world—is the ordinary way by which God feeds us, sustains us, and empowers us to live as Christians in the world.”
In the Lord's Supper, “God feeds us, sustains us, and empowers us to live as Christians in the world.”TWEET THIS
A great resource to help you understand the key elements of the theology and practice of Holy Communion in The United Methodist Church is The Meaning of Holy Communion, which can be downloaded FREE on the Discipleship Ministries website.TWEET THISThe official statement This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion can also to be downloaded FREE on the Discipleship Ministries website.
Learn more about World Communion Sunday.
*Joe Iovino works for UMC.org at United Methodist Communications. Contact him by email or at 615-312-3733.
This story was first published on September 23, 2015.
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Photo illustration by Kathleen Barry, United Methodist Communications
Desiring to fill the communion chalice with an unfermented wine substitute, a Methodist Episcopal communion steward launched a grape juice company.
Methodist history: Controversy, Communion, & Welch’s Grape Juice
A UMC.org Feature by Joe Iovino*
You are probably familiar with Welch’s Grape Juice, but you may not know it has ties to the history of The United Methodist Church.In the 1800s, churches faced a dilemma. To combat the epidemic of alcoholism, the temperance movement advocated total abstinence from all alcohol. In celebration of the Lord’s Supper though, the church filled the communion chalice with wine.
Thomas B. Welch developed a process for pasteurizing grape juice to keep it from fermenting. Photo by Roger Scull, of display at First United Methodist Church of Vineland, NJ.
Substituting grape juice seems an obvious solution. “For us today it is such common practice. We don’t know any different,” explains Adrienne Possenti, church historian at First United Methodist Church of Vineland, New Jersey.In the 1800s, however, that was no easy task. Raw grape juice stored at room temperature—home refrigerators were not available until 1913—naturally ferments into wine. This caused a problem for congregations not wanting to use anything containing alcohol.
No suitable alternative
One solution was to squeeze grapes during the week and serve the juice before it fermented, but grapes were not readily available to every church.
“Lots of churches just didn’t have communion when grapes were out of season,” reports Roger Scull, also a church historian at First United Methodist Church of Vineland.
Some creative communion stewards chose to make their own unfermented sacramental wine. One recipe called for adding a pound of hand-squashed raisin pulp—dried grapes—to a quart of boiling water. Later in the process, the “winemaker” was to add an egg white. Doesn’t that sound delicious?
Some churches substituted water for wine. Many in the temperance movement declared water the only proper drink. Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-12) seemed to give the practice a biblical justification.
First United Methodist Church of Vineland, NJ, formerly Vineland Methodist Episcopal Church, is the birthplace of Welch's Grape Juice. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Possenti.
Most churches, however, simply continued to use wine. Not only did it solve the storage problem, it resolved another issue. Many believed the biblical mandate called for the use of wine, and viewed the sacrament as an exception to temperance.Others claimed the wine used at the Last Supper must have been unfermented—not a widely held understanding today—and insisted on receiving the same.
The sometimes heated debate continued for decades.
In 1864, the General Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church entered the conversation when they approved a report from the Temperance Committee that recommended “the pure juice of the grape be used in the celebration of the Lord's Supper.”
Thomas B. Welch, dentist
Four years later, Dr. Thomas B. Welch became a communion steward at Vineland (New Jersey) Methodist Episcopal Church—now First United Methodist Church of Vineland—and vowed to provide his congregation with an unfermented sacramental wine.
“He was so staunch in advocating not having anything to do with alcohol,” Possenti states, “it was reported that he didn’t want to even place his hands on it.” Possenti sometimes portrays Lucy Welch, Thomas’ wife, for schoolchildren and others in Vineland.
Welch's Grape Juice was originally labeled, “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine, Pure Grape Juice, Vineland, NJ.” Photo courtesy of Adrienne Possenti.
Before moving to Vineland, Welch had served as a Wesleyan Methodist preacher. Throat problems that sometimes made it difficult for him to speak curtailed that ministry. In this newly established community, advertised as having a “healthful climate,” he opened a dental practice.Always interested in science, Welch wondered if Louis Pasteur’s breakthrough techniques could be applied grape juice. He experimented to find a way to keep juice from fermenting.
In 1869, he perfected a juice pasteurization process in his kitchen and began selling “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine” to churches preferring an alcohol-free substitute for Communion.
Unfortunately, the idea didn’t take off. After four years, Welch gave up this side business.
Two years later, his son Charles convinced him to produce unfermented wine again. Charles offered free samples of the sacramental wine substitute to churches. He later published temperance magazines that advocated alcohol-free Communion. He also advertised the product with lines like, “If your druggist hasn’t the kind that was used in Galilee containing not one particle of alcohol, write us for prices” (Pinney 389).
Temperance movement grows
At about the same time, the temperance movement and their concern over using fermented wine for communion, was gaining momentum.
By 1876, members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were refusing to receive the sacrament in churches using wine. The WCTU, organized in 1873, consisted largely of women from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Well-known Methodist Frances Willardserved as their first secretary and second president.
Then, the 1880 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church approved two changes to the Book of Discipline that may have been influenced by the work of the WCTU and the growing popularity of Welch’s Grape Juice.
Charles Welch advertised by publishing magazines, and using slogans like, “The lips that touch Welch’s are all that touch mine.” Photo courtesy of Adrienne Possenti.
The first change provided an option. Churches were “to see that the Stewards provide unfermented wine for use in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.” Alcohol-free Communion was to be available in every church.The second change, however, made it effectively mandatory, “Let none but the pure, unfermented juice of the grape be used in administering the Lord’s Supper, whenever practicable.”
“By the 1890s,” one author reports, “annual conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church began including ads for Welch’s grape juice in their published journals” (O’Brien 219).
Welch’s expands
Charles Welch soon grew his new company beyond the church. He marketed grape juice as a health tonic, touting its medicinal uses. One advertisement recommended Welch’s for typhoid fever, pneumonia, and “all forms of chronic diseases except Diabetes Melitus” (Pinney 389).
When Charles offered samples at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the popularity of Welch’s Grape Juice grew even more. Before long, it was advertised as “the national drink.”
Welch's was produced in Vineland until 1896 when the company moved to Westfield, NY, and later to Concord, MA. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Possenti. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Possenti.
Charles Welch summed up his dad and his life’s work in his will:Unfermented grape juice was born in 1869 out of a passion to serve God by helping His Church to give its communion “the fruit of the vine,” instead of the “cup of devils.”
Today, Welch’s is a multinational corporation offering a number of grape and other fruit products. It all started, however, with a communion steward in a Methodist Episcopal church who wanted a suitable, unfermented wine for Communion.
Welch’s Grape Juice started with a communion steward who wanted a non-alcohol substitute for the wine.TWEET THIS
*Joe Iovino works for UMC.org at United Methodist Communications. Contact him by email or at 615-312-3733. This feature was originally published on June 28, 2016.TWEET THISResources:
- O'Brien, Betty A. "The Lord's Supper: Fruit of the Vine or Cup of Devils?" Methodist History. 4th ed. Vol. XXXI. Madison, NJ: General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church, 1993. 203-23. July 1993. GCAH Virtual Reading Room. Web. June 8, 2016. http://archives.gcah.org/xmlui/handle/10516/5998.Pinney, Thomas. A History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition. Berkeley: U of California, 1989. 383-90. Google Books. Web. June 8, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=fmcwfK5G_YkC&dq.
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