Pastor's Page " Come to supper, Bobby Gene!" It's been more than fifty years since I last heard my mother cry out her evening ritual to summon her wandering, playing boy to dinner. Back then, everyone in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, lived in their own houses, with their own yards, so there was plenty of room for kids to roam about in the pre-supper dusk before dinner. Though I hated to quit my play, there was a wonderful comfort to mother's call to come home. The only pre-requisite to a good supper was to wash my hands. God gives us a similar comforting summons at Holy Communion: "Come to supper, Bobby Gene" and all the rest of us, "Come to my supper and share the bread and wine of God's love." I wonder why the early church began to fence off the Lord's Supper. By the second century, as time for sharing communion approached, all non-baptized persons were required to leave the church. That practice seems to me to fly in the face of the open table and inclusive hospitality which Jesus practiced. He told several stories about love feasts and banquets and his emphasis was always upon how utterly welcoming God was. But fence off the communion the church did with various rules and regulations and even curses at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Catholics and Protestants were so damned by the other side and there was no possibility that these evil heretics could be welcomed to the Lord's Supper. All that has been changing in one generation, and on October 3l, l999, at Augsburg, Germany, where the division all began with Martin Luther's 9l theses tacked on the cathedral door, leaders of Rome and of the German Lutheran Church sign a great agreement of reconciliation. The mutual curses which each church placed upon the other more than 400 years ago are now lifted; and a common doctrinal understanding about salvation because of the grace of God is now affirmed. This happy turn of events does not mean that we are as yet welcomed at each other's celebration of the Lord's Table. Roman Catholics are still prohibited from receiving the sacrament from any hands than those of a catholic priest. However, millions of Catholics and Protestants have, in practice, already moved beyond those barriers, willing to go forth to the supper of Jesus in another church when circumstances and contexts of travel or inter-faith celebration make it appropriate to their consciences. We are getting back to the Lord's simple invitation: "Come to supper, everyone!"   Pastor Gene Preston
	The Rev. Gene R.Preston 14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114 E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com

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