Necessary Roughness

Today our congregation worshipped with LSB’s Divine Service I with Holy Communion. The four of us went up to the rail, we kneeled as instructed, and my younger daughter (the twins are five) held out her hand to receive the bread. I smiled, but I had to pull her hand back.

This evening before Compline the older sister asked, “Why can’t children have the Lord’s Supper?” We read the Follow and Do on the Lord’s Supper, which is simply the Small Catechism, illustrated. There was the answer:

Who receives this sacrament worthily?

Fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training. But that person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

Because there are serious consequences for receiving the Lord’s Supper unworthily, our children must wait until they can demonstrate that they know what is going on.

What would it take to have “faith in these words”? I would think you’d have to know something about the God you were dealing with and what he has done for us, you’d have to know what forgiveness is, and you’d have to know what sins are.

I do think the girls are going to have that down long before the customary admission to the Lord’s Table in 8^th grade. Both children recite the Lord’s Prayer.  The older one can recite the Apostle’s Creed, the younger with help. The older one can rattle off the first nine of the Ten Commandments; she has a little problem with manservants, maidservants, oxen, donkeys, and everything that is her neighbor’s.

Until tonight they have not been explicitly taught what is going on in the Lord’s Supper, but now that they’re interested, I may hit that a little more often.

I’ve yet to speak to my pastor about it because I want our girls to have said doctrine down. They probably also need the “What Does This Mean” for the chief parts, and that’s going to take them some time. I used to think maybe they wouldn’t be admitted at the same time, but the younger daughter has progressed so well that it wouldn’t shock me any more.

I am happy, even a bit proud, that they want the Lord’s Supper. “Forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation” are commendable things to desire.  I feel sorry we have to say, “not yet,” but in the adult’s perspective of time, perhaps we could say, “soon.” It would enforce the premise that confirmation is not graduation. We are always learning. We never stop becoming disciples.