I don’t remember my first communion.
Now, my baptism, I do remember, especially because I almost choked to death on a piece of candy less than an hour before the Pastor immersed me.
The adults were having a Bible study the evening I was to be baptized. Because I had met with the Pastor instead of going to my Bible class, I was loitering in the hallway, gnawing on the piece of Brach’s butterscotch candy the Pastor had given me after we had talked once more about my baptism. Suddenly I was choking, the candy having lodged halfway down my throat. With eyes bulging, gasping for air, my face blue, and desperately trying to scarf up the candy, I threw propriety to the wind and rushed into the adult’s classroom, interrupting them, grasping my throat with both hands.
Thankfully, Joe Buck happened to be in attendance. Joe Buck was a former professional baseball player, having played for the Boston Red Sox, and was still powerfully built and fit. He wasted no time in picking up my little nine-year-old self by my ankles (he apparently didn’t know of the Heimlich, but who cares?) and shaking me like a rag doll, he firmly swatted my backside until, quite suddenly, Brach’s butterscotch plopped out. All the adults gasped in adoration at Joe Buck’s deftness, and no doubt wondered how this nine-year-old kid got choked in the first place.
I stood chest high in water less than an hour later as the Pastor immersed me. I think of my baptism every time I see Brach’s butterscotch candy.
Thanks to Joe Buck’s heroics, that baptism event overshadowed any remembrance of my first communion, although two other communions serve as road markers along my spiritual journey.
I first time I administered communion as a Pastor was at Richland Baptist Church in Falmouth, Kentucky, my first pastorate. Nelah Clifford, the church’s matriarch, was convinced I was confused and about to serve the grape juice (most Baptists opt for juice rather than communion wine) before the bread. She need not have worried: I knew more than my novice face must have signaled to her.
The second communion occurred after I retired. For 37 years, since that day when Nelah could be heard across the one-room church nervously muttering from her perch on the front pew, “The bread first, Preacher, the bread first,” I’ve been in the role of SERVING communion rather than RECEIVING it, although technically we ALL receive communion from the Lord. And I always took communion before offering it to parishioners.
But the communion I took after I had retired was different, though the structure was the same.
And then suddenly, it wasn’t.
Lori and I had stepped forward together for communion, so I wasn’t standing alone for the first time in 37 years. We took the bread and juice—individually and as one, together and separately—as the power of God’s grace humbled me once more, then lifted me, leaving me standing on the solid ground of His love.
Instead of closing the service, I walked hand in hand with my wife and then sitting down, I felt strangely warmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. And Joe Buck. Nelah Clifford was with us, too. And all God’s saints surrounded us, joining us as one, where Lori and I sat quietly.
And yes, that included the person who had just administered communion that day—who, as I had done for so many years—had reminded us of God’s gift of grace to those willing to receive it.