How inclusive is the Church ? Or your Church?
Our five year old grandson has been diagnosed with being coeliac which explains a lot in that his growth has slowed down and so we are thankful we now know that there is something we can actively do to help. As I enjoy cooking and baking the challenge is on to make 'Gluten Free' (GF) foods for him, not least Gluten Free Bread as he is a bread lover, especially granddads. So we now have GF mince pies, Yorkshire Puddings and with a change to a recipe some excellent GF biscuits which he likes oh and some GF chocolate brownies. I did make a first batch of bread only to discover that the yeast was not GF so it couldn't be used. It's going to take us sometime to adapt what we do to ensure we enable him to be GF while seeking to make it as normal as possible. Key will always be making sure you don't cross contaminate foods when preparing them. I now have an app to check purchases to ensure they are GF.
During lockdown when we were able to return to 'in person worship' we switched at one of my churches from bread to wafers. It seemed a sensible move to reduce the amount of hand contact that breaking up bread involves as you distribute. While we were at it we decided we would buy gluten free wafers so we could be more inclusive. Having now retired and worshipping in an anglican church, at least one member of the congregation needs to be GF, and wafers are provided for them. But with our grandson being diagnosed it struck me afresh why don't we all just have GF wafers, it would make us inclusive and not hurt anyone?
My wife by chance had a conversation at another church where she was singing when it was mentioned that GF wafers had to have a certain wheat content for them to be allowed. I was shocked and thought that can't be right. But in reading up on various churches we have the madness of a theological position where yes for the bread, and yes wafers, to be allowed for use at communion they have to have a wheat content, because Jesus used such bread!!!! How utterly bizzare that in 2023, nearly 2024, this remains the case in some of the major christian denominations. You can purchase true GF wafers but technically they would not be allowed in some churches, so they use wafers that fall within a certain allowance to be called GF even though they are not. Its a bit like the government knowing from various reports that Rwanda is not a safe country so they pass a law to say that it is, even though it's not!!!! Yes we are in the world of Big brother and 1984.
In a time when the church needs to be inclusive it really needs to follow the lead of the one who calls people into the church. Jesus was a rule breaker. Jesus crossed frontiers of practice to reach all. Would he have cared whether the bread was made of wheat? I don't think so. He would have taken what ever was the staple item of food and blessed it, broken it up and shared it with all so no one was excluded.
Just before Christmas on ITV's 'Good morning' one of the presenters made a real error of judgement. They implied people who are GF should not impose on others their needs and that cross contamination was not a big issue. It got our of hand not least because the truth behind the story was one of love and care. A mother had decided to cook a Christmas meal with her GF daughter in mind. She wanted her daughter not to have to think about worrying about what she ate, so everything was GF. A relative thought this was restricting their rights. The fact that most of what we eat at a meal is GF was ignored. The presenter failed to realise the danger of cross contamination which for many GF people can have serious health consequences. Eventually 'Good Morning' invited Becky Excell (an ambassador for the Coeliac society) on to the programme to show how GF food can be prepared, how cross contamination matters, but that it can tase just as good. It reminded me of how we have a responsibility to our brother or sister in their need and not allow our own rights to over rule theirs.
The church has a responsibility to be the safe place and to reveal to the world how all are to be loved and valued. If it can't even get the sacrament of communion right, a time when symbolically we declare we are one with each other, because we insist on wheat in the wafer, then we have a long way to go. Sometimes it is in the small things we reveal how inclusive or not we really are.
We will work hard to make sure that our grandson feels at the dining table he is special and can enjoy what we all eat, and where appropriate, we will all eat GF foods, and so be one.
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