He should have kept his big mouth shut

It was the local church’s annual congregational meeting. I have lost count of the number of these I chaired or otherwise attended over the years. The congregational AGM is a little like going shopping in downtown Ramallah or Baghdad -- you are never sure what’s going to happen, even blood and guts flying around. A congregational meeting can go smoothly and without injury right through to the tepid coffee and ginger nuts -- or it can melt down right in front of you.

In the Parish of Carfin in Lanarkshire, Scotland, where I was minister for a couple of years long ago, the last AGM before I arrived had been broken up by the police.

I don’t attend the local church. But it seems they had yet another instalment of the perennial debate about whether real wine should be served at Holy Communion. My personal view is that the minute that subject appeared on the agenda, everyone with any sense should have risen up and gone home. But no, you don’t do that. What you do is proceed with a pointless, fruitless, largely ignorant wrangle no one wants, in which you absolutely know that someone is going to get badly hurt about ten minutes from now.

And so it was. One of their best senior members, Trev, a bloke of experience and perception, found himself getting pecked to death and vilified for his views, and later decided that was all he was prepared to take of that church. When subsequently his departure was reported to one of the attackers, Fred, the attacker’s response was, “Well, he should have kept his big mouth shut.”

Now, hold it right there... It’s worth pausing to ponder Fred’s remark before we consign it to the oblivion of contempt. This is the Christian Church. It is committed to peace and understanding. It is supposed to be inhabited by mature believers no longer threatened by difference of opinion, creed, race or whatever. It is supposed to have found ways to deal with conflict without rancour or abuse, or alienation of anyone. It is supposed to have learned that every person is fallible, sinful, wounded -- and to have developed the consequent humility.

It is ironic, I think, that Trev’s view on the use of proper wine in Holy Communion was that hospitality requires it to be there, along with non-alcoholic “wine”. The point about hospitality is that it is inclusive. So it is a simple organisational problem to solve, but it is the hospitality that matters, and I entirely agree with that. Hospitality is a major biblical theme, and is most certainly part of our understanding of the Lord’s Table and Holy Communion -- "Eucharistic Hospitality".

It seems that Fred brusquely dismissed this because he is ignorant of it. He thought “hospitality” was something like generously providing booze at some gathering of blokes to watch the footie. Fred assumed Holy Communion was nothing to do with hospitality. It’s religious, don't you know. Hospitality is just generous-minded blokes. Later, Fred seemed unimpressed that his attitude had cost the fellowship dearly -- “Well, he should have kept his big mouth shut.”

Well, sorry Fred. That remark is counter to all that the church might mean. It connotes for me so much of the reason I rarely now go near. The last church I attended regularly prided itself on a large decorative glass screen at the entrance on which was etched: “A house of prayer for all people”. But in the end it wasn’t. Not for some.