Update: I learned in the conversation that has taken place in
the comment section under this post that in fact Dr. Stuckwisch is not
requiring children who are presented to him for first communion to have
committed to memory the basic/primary texts of the Small Catechism,
which are: Ten Commandments, Creed, Lord's Prayer, Confession, Lord's
Supper. I would therefore moderate my support for his comments and
indicate that I believe, as Dr. Sonntag makes clear in one of his posts
below, that clearly our Confessions indicate that such familiarity with
these texts is what our Confessions do expect and require. Therefore, I
would respectfully differ with Pastor Stuckwisch on this point. I would therefore not be communing the six year old child that Dr. Stuckwisch is communing. But,
otherwise, I heartily agree with his pastoral concerns regarding the
age of first communion. I believe Pastor Stuckwisch has done a fine job of making the case for earlier age of first communion, but I believe we are bound together to follow the practice indicated in our Lutheran Confessions of requiring memorization of the primary texts of the Catechism [not the explanations necessarily]. I continue to believe however, in spite of this difference with Dr. Stuckwisch, that the practice of denying the Sacrament to children until after they have completed a two or three year course of instruction is not founded on Biblical or Confessional principles. In the comments that follow this post, you will read how one pastor, William Weedon, is going about these things in his parish and I would agree with his practice]
One of the blessings of the new hymnal Lutheran Service Book is that it puts squarely in front of Lutheran pastors and congregations using it, the opportunity to think more carefully about an earlier age of first communion. Like many of you reading this, I did not receive the Lord's Supper until I was in the seventh grade, after eight years of Lutheran day school education which included extensive instruction in the faith and complete memorization of Luther's Small Catechism. But as I had children and observed them as they were taught the basics of the Christian faith: the Commandments, Creed, the Our Father and as they were taught about Holy Baptism and Holy Communion I came to realize that withholding the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar from them until they had gone through "confirmation" simply had no Biblical or Confessional justification.
I've been thinking for many years now that we really do need to end the practice of using the Lord's Supper as a "carrot" we hold before the "horse" through the confirmation process. Further, I found myself growing increasingly concerned by the overall message we are sending when we withhold the Lord's Supper from children and make it a sort of "graduation" gift, in fact, when confirmation is treated as a kind of "rite of passage" that Lutherans must go through on their way to adulthood.
Then, as I studied Scripture, the Lutheran Confession, Luther and other Lutheran fathers more I realized that our entire system of confirmation really is not rooted in the age of the Reformation and Lutheran Orthodoxy as much as it is rooted in practices that sprang up during the age of Pietism, when it was felt that we need to "do something" to make all these precious realities "more special" and to make sure that people are "really serious" about these things, hence, the process of confirmation became regarded as, in some ways, even more important than Baptism.
I've come to realize that we have this quite wrong. And just about the time I came to these conclusions, I was very sad to realize that a, thankfully small, group of Lutheran pastors had, based on similar concerns, gone too far over toward a solution that called on the Church to give the Sacrament to infants in arms and toddlers. Force-feeding the Sacrament to children who have no awareness of what this Sacrament is and why they come to receive it is a grave error and those who advocate infant communion are doing so in contradiction of Sacred Scripture and the Lutheran Confession. Sadly, the fact that there are some who go to this extreme has a tendency to "spook" others from even wanting to talk about an earlier age of first communion.
I awoke this morning to find this wonderful blog post by the Rev. Dr. Richard Stuckwisch. Pastor Stuckwisch is a thoughtful, deeply pastoral and theological man who brings significant experience as a parish pastor and a parent to bear on this issue (he has nine children!).
I commend his comments to you and invite you to consider them prayerfully. I believe he makes the points that must be considered and I can find nothing in these words that contradict what the assumption is in our Confessions about those who wish to receive the Lord's Supper. This is the most well stated defense of an early age for first communion I've read. What are your thoughts about it? Pastor Rick Stuckwisch offers these comments. Click on the "continuing reading" link.
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