Because the doc is difficult to navigate to on the net I am posting the file here. Scroll to the bottom to read request for recusal.

(Many UMs will be attracted to this essay because of the upcoming announcement about General Conference.  I will speak to that at the end of the piece, but I am weary of commenting on corruption in the UMC and enjoy being immersed in a life of faith and hope and charity.)

Before we move to specific reforms in Eucharistic practice, we must devote more words than I would like to an elephant in the room. United Methodist worship takes place in an environment of open Communion. Open Communion relieves the pastor and congregation of certain burdens, but it also brings additional burdens. A rite that is used before listeners who are barely familiar with the Christian faith, if at all, needs to be a clearer guide, more precise, and more catechetical–not less. Many denominations practice open communion, but in United Methodist practice the term is too often synonymous with indiscriminate Communion.

“We have failed to be an obedient church…”

I agree. In as much as we have accepted the ecumenical rites and have promulgated them among our congregations, we have failed to be an obedient Church.

“Christ our Lord invites to his table…”

No. He does not.

Christ does not invite. He calls. He commands. There is no common sense of the word by which we may say that any person of the Trinity “invites.” God does not invite, and that is a good thing.

From my childhood I remember the story of a counterfeiter who went undetected for years—not because his bills looked so authentic but because he found a way to make them look very old. He noticed that when people receive a new bill they examine it closely, but if the bill looks old—like it has been accepted by many people before—they barely glance at it. The same is true with ideas. If a concept looks new, then we study it carefully. If it sounds like it has been around a while and used by many others, then we accept it and pass it along.

As a pastor I know that we can sometimes become too familiar with a passage of Scripture or the observance of a Holy Day. We can fall into the error of over analyzing or the converse error of assuming the congregation already knows this stuff and they require no analysis. It is helpful to hear how others have treated a subject. I make this offering of meditations on the seven last words of Christ not with expectation that others will duplicate it, but that others will build on it and make it better.