Generational Sin: Who says I'm guilty?

God stores up misery for [the wicked man's] children?
Let him repay [the man himself] so he will experience it!

                                                - Job 21:19

Job is a man who knew God.  Throughout his long, often angry lament in a book many Christians tend to avoid for its dismal tone, we see a deeply hurt man, abandoned by the God whose relationship he valued above all else, progressing through the stages of grief in a way most all of us can relate to.  Struggling to understand how the Godly wisdom he's always embraced has failed him, he has to deal with the fact that everything he's ever known could be wrong… except that he knows God, and he knows that he has lived a life in intimate relationship with Him.

One of the things Job questions is what we tend to refer to as "generational sin" - the idea that children are punished for the sins of their parents.  This is not a new concept nor, to be clear, is it an old and outdated concept.  It's still widely taught and/or accepted as a basic truth that generations after us will suffer for our treatment of the Earth.  A man who gambles away his inheritance is making a decision for his children - albeit often not consciously - about what kind of economic status they will grow up in.  In the Hebrew mindset, where there are no coincidences and every experience revolved around one's relationship with God, these two examples would both be seen as God's just judgment on the children of the "sinful" parents.  Still, it makes us grind our teeth to think that there's nothing we can do to get out from under the "curse" put upon us by previous generations.  And every so often, perhaps not so rarely as we might think, someone will "beat the odds" and rise above the predispositions (social, economic, intellectual, or spiritual) set on them by their parents.

What is God's role in all of this?  For Job, quoting the well known concept, it's a source of frustration that God won't "face him like a man" and prove that his sin was worthy of his punishment.  Certainly, it shouldn't have been put upon his children!  From the start, all he's wanted to know is "Why is God doing this to me?"  And instead of telling him, God has instead stored up misery for his children?  This well-known principle is just one more aspect of "wisdom" that Job disagrees strongly with, but is it valid throughout the rest of the Bible?  We see it in Exodus 20:5 ("… For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.") and again in Exodus 34:6-7 (…“The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”)  Achan's entire household was put to death for his sin (Joshua 7:24-25).  Jeremiah prophesies that in the coming days (but noticeably, not in the "here and now" of his original audience), "they shall say no more: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge."  The concept isn't absent from the New Testament, either.  In John 9:1-3 the disciples ask whether a man was blind because of his own sin or because of his parents'.  Furthermore, it's still the thought in the minds of the mob calling for Jesus' crucifixion, when they cry "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" (Matt 27:25).

Against all of this (and not surprisingly, if you know the history of frustration regarding the relationship between the book of Ezekiel and the Torah), you have Ezekiel 18, an entire chapter devoted to Yahweh's explicit order to stop quoting the proverb Jeremiah references.  A man and his son will be judged SEPARATELY on the basis of their own actions (and relationship with God).  Through Ezekiel, God angrily confronts the proverb-makers, the people we would see today scribbling on subway walls, saying God is judging us for our father's sins.  In context, it's not hard to see why they would believe that.

When you look at the Book of Kings, you see that Manasseh, the horrible Southern king who sets up Assyrian idols in the temple and (it is traditionally believed) butchers Yahweh's prophets, is the final straw for God.  The Babylonian captivity happens because of him.  But it doesn't happen during his reign.  In fact, this wicked king reigns longer than any other in the Southern Kingdom and dies peacefully!  Two generations later, King Josiah hears about this judgment and panics.  Desperate to reconcile the nation to Yahweh, he initiates a major repentance - undoing the traditions and practices associated not only with the idolatry of Manasseh, but all the way back to Solomon, and Jeroboam (influences from the northern, now dispersed, kingdom of Israel).  But no matter how sincere, he cannot get the judgment revoked. 

The generation after him goes into Babylonian captivity, saying "Yeah, we're sinful - we admit it - but we're nowhere near as bad as Manasseh.  Yet we're bearing Manasseh's judgments."  It's in that context that "Ralph" was writing (1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings), and his account shows the pattern of how God has always worked.  Act bad and bad things will happen - if not to you, then to your children.  This is the principle of how the world works (Except, of course, when it doesn't… like in Job's case).  If everything in your world is influenced, even caused, by your relationship with God, then God causes bad things to happen.

In Ezekiel 18:2, God says, "No! Absolutely not."  There is no other way to read this; it's not ambiguous at all.  God will NOT punish children for the sins of their fathers.  There are four ways the Jewish commentators deal with this apparent conflict.

1.         Rationalistic view: The Torah is negated because UNTIL NOW it has been this way, but from this point on, it won't be.  In other words, Ezekiel is writing in a different age, to a different people.  No longer are they a unified "country", they are now dispersed in exile and so the rules have changed.  This explanation is well and good, but given that the idea continued into the New Testament period, it has its problems.  Not only that, but what kind of age and people are we now?  What parts of the Bible are relevant to us today?  This view puts the entire Bible on shaky ground.

2.         Mystic view: Ezekiel, with God's approval, changed the theology presented in Torah.  This view says that Ezekiel looked around and said, "We'll never get out from under all the sins that got us here.  If I tell the people to repent, they'll say, 'Why bother?'"  So instead, he says "Let's start from scratch!" and God backs him up in order to preserve the integrity of the Israelites. This means that man decided he had a better idea than God, and God said, "Okay, we'll change my plan because yours is better."  I'm not fond of this interpretation.

3.         Limited theology view: Never read the prophets as a systematic theology.  They are books about what is said to a real person at a real time in history.  They are historical and reveal God's character, but they're not for the development of theology.  Like the first option, this is also a problem if you have a high view of scripture.  Essentially it says that anything we can learn from the prophetic books is not applicable to us today.

4.         Cohesion view: There is no intergenerational punishment permitted in human courts, even in Torah, but God himself does punish intergenerationally.  God alone is equipped to judge whether the next generation will follow/is following the sins of the previous.  Ezekiel is giving an example where the later generations are righteous.  This is the dominant view and it makes the contradictions coincide, but accepting this brings us right back to the problem Job has - What about when wisdom doesn't work?  What sins did Job's sons die for, when Job himself was righteous and there's no reason to believe his sons weren't righteous as well?

So if none of these interpretations of Ezekiel really work, how do we deal with the question of why God says in one place that he punishes children for their parents' sins, and in another place that it is absolutely not okay to say that, and yet in another place that children are punished along with their father even when no sin has been committed! For this, we need to go back to those places that seem to say that God does this, because they are certainly more ambiguous than Ezekiel 18, which clearly and vehemently states that he does not.

"… For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me." (Exodus 20:5) and "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7) 

If you sin together, you're guilty together.  If you are part of an organization/group (like a family), then you are a representative of that group.  When they sin or stand for something sinful, even if you were not there or actively participating, it is YOUR sin.  Unless you cut yourself off from that group, you as a representative bear both the blessings and curses of that group.  Also note that "those who hate me" and "the guilty" do not, by grammatical structure or otherwise, exclude the future generations.  In fact, Exodus 34:6 begins with the statement that these are the very people God will forgive!  But removing themselves from the sinful organization (in this case, family) is a precursor to seeking that forgiveness.  This is seen all throughout the Old Testament when foreigners become Yahweh worshippers, enter into (circumcision) covenant with Yahweh, and leave their old lives and gods and traditions behind.*

God held individual Israelites responsible for the national sin of Israel.  Everyone who was a part of that unit was sent into Babylon, including the righteous.  Daniel is a perfect example.  But note that even while in captivity, Daniel enjoyed God's blessings in the midst of experiencing the penalty for corporate sin.  This is important when dealing with the matter of corporate repentance.  The church (always) has some repenting to do.  We ALL bear the responsibility for that repentance, even those of us who weren't part of or even opposed the actions of our own generation or those before.  This doesn't mean we have to forever live under the guilt and shame of something our ancestors did.  It means simply what it says: we repent, and we move on.  When we screw up again, as we will do, we repent again.  And God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

With this understanding, the other scriptures mentioned above only need to be addressed briefly: The death of Achan was an overzealous response to a command by Yahweh that the man (NOT the household! God was explicit in v. 14 that it was not the tribe, not the clan, not the household, but the individual person) and his possessions would take the place of the "burnt offering" God had demanded from Ai.  Whether or not God would have included the man's wife and children as part of his possessions is a matter up for debate; it's clear how they understood it at the time but that doesn't make it truth.  Jeremiah's prophecy is in the midst of Babylonian conquest where, yes, the Israelites are experiencing the ramifications of political decisions made generations ago.  It's the natural order of things; consequences often don't come to fruition in a single lifetime, as anybody concerned about climate change will tell you.  The blind man in John 9 was born that way, not because of his own sin or the sins of his parents (although I'm sure that he, like Job, had countless "friends" to offer their opinions on why he couldn't see!) but "that the works of God should be revealed in him." (John 9:3)  Job himself, the picture of righteous suffering, endured his trials to progress to a level of understanding about God and how He views suffering that he could've never achieved while he thought, like his friends, that the whole world was governed by retributive justice ("Act good, good things happen; act bad, bad things happen").  As for Job's children, I am still not entirely convinced that the messenger wasn't mistaken when he said they were all dead, but if they did die, who am I to speculate on how God restored them?  The text simply doesn't say, beyond the fact that Job started with 7 sons and 3 daughters and a whole bunch of stuff, and ended with twice as much stuff, 7 sons, and 3 daughters.  (Job 42:13)  God could've resurrected them from the dead for all I know.  The point is, they were restored.

Lastly, then, is the cry at the crucifixion: "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" (Matt 27:25).  I thank God daily that we are able to be forgiven for the horrific miscarriage of justice not only in Jesus' death, as well as all the other martyrs throughout the centuries we have executed in the name of God.  We, I boldly state, because I am part of the family unit known as the church and in the generations before the Reformation, there was only one name we went by: Catholicism.  I, as an individual, belong to the family unit of humanity that crucified Jesus, and forever bears the ramifications.  I, as an individual, repent for the execution of William Tyndale, Joan of Arc, John Huss (and his wife), and countless thousands of others, and wonder what more we could know about God had they been allowed to live full lives, contributing more and more to our understanding until they died of old age.  I, as an individual, acknowledge the complacency of the church during the Holocaust, and mourn for its victims still.  And I, as an individual, stand boldly before the throne of grace and say, "God please have mercy."  Because in spite of all these things I/we have done, for which we bear the guilt and consequence, there is no other family I would rather be in than the one that seeks God even in the midst of our massive screw-ups.

*Note: Lest I give the wrong impression, this has nothing to do with whether or not you should divorce your unsaved spouse when you become a Christian.  God values families, especially marriage covenants, and I've seen more people come to Christ through their partner than by any other method.  The dynamics and difficulties of a saved/unsaved couple is a completely separate issue which will be discussed in a later entry. 

"Escalating Revelation": As a scholar, I am convicted.

"The case of Spinoza: One of the suggested reasons for his [Jewish] excommunication, in Amsterdam on 27 July 1656, was that he thought that 'the soul dies along with the body', a shocking opinion amounting to a form of sheer atheism…If this was a factor in the excommunication of the distinguished Spinoza, it is clear that immortality of the soul was a serious matter in Jewish life. 

"Well, the reader may say: this may be so, but of course it is only because these Jewish traditions had imported the concepts of Greek philosophy.  Yes, perhaps.  But this is just the point.  People have not only been using a crude and questionable opposition between Hebrew and Greek thought, but they have been implying that the Hebrew thought, thus identified, is perfect and complete. [emphasis his]  As it is depicted by many writers, it leaves no problems, no insoluble dilemmas; it contains no contradictions and it answers all the questions.  This being so, if anyone was attracted to elements of Greek thought, it is because they were fools or knaves.  Having a perfectly adequate mode of thought, they were willing to spoil it through the introduction of faulty and inadequate ideas from Plato or others, ideas which could only wreck the entirely satisfying totality that already existed. 

"All this has been an illusion."

James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, p. 46

I am guilty of this illusion.  I didn't realize just how guilty of it I am - or, rather, how hypocritical of me it was to hold this illusion - until it was put this way.  It is my primary frustration with the theology of the church as a whole that they adopt this same narrow-minded, prohibitive view of Christianity, "implying that the [early church fathers'] thought, thus identified, is perfect and complete."  Indeed, "as it is depicted by many writers, it leaves no problems, no insoluble dilemmas; it contains no contradictions and it answers all the questions", to the complete and utter exasperation of those of us not satisfied with the problems, dilemmas, contradictions, and unanswered questions of the Incarnation, Trinitarianism, the Doctrine of Original Sin, and countless other dogmas.  We scream, "Why is God not permitted to give new revelation?  Why is the understanding of men two thousand years ago so superior?"  And all of our frustration falls on the deaf ears of our fellow conservative Christians because "if anyone is attracted to elements of [new revelation], it is because they are fools [and heretics]." 

Conservative Christians face a dilemma.  If we cannot simply be content with re-explaining the "perfectly adequate mode of thought" presented by the Early Church, over and over again ad nauseum, in the hopes that one of these days, we can make these inexplicable doctrines more palatable, we must abandon our conservative values altogether and join the far left, where words like "heresy" hold no significance.  If we are "willing to spoil it through the introduction of faulty and inadequate ideas from [modern revelation, in all its forms], ideas which could only wreck the entirely satisfying totality that already exists," then we must do it without recognition of our personal and intimate relationship with God, a high Christology or, me genoito,* a high view of scripture!  Joining the world of "Progressive Christianity"** means we gag on at least as much there as we do in our conservative circles, AND we're branded as "fallen away ones".  But at least we'll be free to seek God.  Is it worth it?  Or is it better to just plunge our heads back into the sand?

The fact of the matter is, NO perfect theology exists - not then, not now.  God is infinite and he has given us an eternity to spend learning about him.  We will never - in all of that experience in all of that eternity - know him completely.  That should tell us something about our few thousand years on earth, let alone the experience we as individuals have in developing our PERSONAL theology.  Instead, God utilizes what I will henceforth term "escalating revelation", building line upon line and precept upon precept just the way he always said he would.  And it looks a bit like this:

1. He revealed himself in the Torah.  
2. Then he revealed himself through the prophets in a way which (to the anxiety and egregious discomfort of those Jewish scribes trying to determine whether or not to throw out the book of Ezekiel) developed, influenced, and, yes, CHANGED Torah and our perception of it. 
3. Then he revealed himself through Hellenism (I choke… but I'm becoming convinced of this) and changed the way the Jews read the Torah AND the Prophets.  This was the environment that Paul was born into, seeing the Jewish scriptures NOT from a "Hebrew-not-Greek" perspective, but from the perspective of a Hellenized Jew.  Accepting this will help us to understand why Paul seemed to hold ideas about the guilt of women, the inherent danger of sex, the nature of original sin, and many other ideas not easily verified by direct comparison with the scriptures about which he is offering commentary and interpretation.
4. Then he revealed himself through Jesus and the New Testament and now the Christians have a new way of looking at Torah, the Prophets, and Hellenistic Judaism.  (ie, it's canon) 
5. Then he continued to reveal himself, but we already had a canon!  Unable to add to it (thank God!) with the searching by the early church fathers, as God continued to reveal himself in ways that REINTERPRETED PAST REVELATIONS, we venerated the searching of the early church fathers to a new category known as "dogma" - not quite scripture, but equally authoritative.
6. Then came the so called "Dark Ages" and God never spoke again.

WHAT?!

Because we needed order to early Christianity, we formalized our acceptance of all four revelations up to that point (Torah, Tanakh, Hellenism, New Testament) and forced them (sometimes with great difficulty!) to be seen as one perfectly congruent mass.***  Note that Jews did no such thing.  Torah is Torah - primary and unchanging (and no, I'm not willing to enter into the Moses/JEDP tangent here).  Later books (Tanakh) offer further revelation and explanation, but there is a distinct difference between "the law" and "the prophets".  In fact, the idea of escalating revelation is fundamentally built on Judaism's treatment of Torah, Tanak, and Midrash.  The Torah - indeed, the entire Bible - subject to reinterpretation three, four, five times over, was not suddenly fixed in an unchangeable stasis field because we called a council and defined canon.  God did not die, or suddenly lose his ability to speak, after the Early Church Fathers were done with their contribution to revelation.  It has continued.  How arrogant are we to think otherwise?  If God is done revealing himself, let's just end the world and be done with it! Incidentally, this is precisely what they expected to happen.  But it didn't.  So let's accept that our perspective and capacity for understanding God's plan for humanity is MORE ADVANCED (in years) than theirs and come up with a more viable solution to how we should have been viewing God's revelation of himself ever since Jesus didn't return when he "should have."

On a more personal note, and coming back to what struck me about this topic in the first place, is my own arrogance in failing to recognize God's hand in developing the understanding of himself through Hellenism and, indeed, Greek philosophy.  They did NOT get it completely right and, in fact, may have royally screwed up some theologies in the process of coming to the deeper truth on others.  But focusing ONLY on what they screwed up has prevented me from recognizing any value to the contributions they did make.  I am willing to say that God talked to them as he indeed talks to us, and their revelations should be evaluated with respect in the pursuit of our deeper understanding today.  But the danger in saying this is that I fear my "giving ground" will be taken as a recantation of all (or any) previous or future statements about what they got wrong.  They got things right AND they got things wrong.  And the things that don't seem to match what comes before OR what necessarily comes after cannot be accepted as absolute truth simply because we have spent 2000 years believing them without question. 

We need a new way of evaluating God's escalating revelation, and I ask other Christians and scholars to join me in the efforts to further an understanding that neither discards scripture nor venerates the mistakes and misunderstandings of past theologians.

*me genoito, usually translated as something like "God forbid" or "certainly not" is an emotion-filled expression repeatedly used by Paul, most accurately (if socially inappropriate to our modern church) translated, "hell no!"

** This term has been claimed by a movement which dispenses with scripture and/or the centrality of Christ and simply becomes a "feel good" sort of Unitarian universalism, as seen here.  For a view closer to my own, see instead, for example, this concerned blogger. Note the problem of how all of these things are lumped together as part of the same movement; if you ascribe to one (specifically, #3 and #4), you must claim them all.  A high view of scripture and a high Christology/soteriology has no place in a classification such as this.  See also here for another theologian's experience and wrestling with this same issue.

*** Because of my personal view of scripture, based primarily upon the fact that I don't believe God would have allowed a faulty representation of him to be provided for future generations, I believe that is it safe to accept what is found in Scripture as truth.  The Bible is uniquely a living word, and God can reveal new things - progressively - over and over again through it.  And this is precisely the point: When the canon was closed, it was closed, and it - not any later interpretation - MUST be the composite sketch we reckon with in evaluating new escalating revelation.

Christianity's covenant renewal: Worthiness and communion

Christianity's covenant renewal: Worthiness and communion

Church views on communion - what it is and what it means - vary widely.  Traditionally, we acknowledge three views.  Two are sacramental (meaning they are a means of dispensing grace to humans from God) and one is symbolic (meaning it merely reminds us of what Christ did on the cross).  The first two are far more concerned about I Cor 11:29: For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.  After all, if you are flippantly consuming what is ACTUALLY, in substance and meaning, the flesh of the crucified messiah, could there be a greater insult?  The third view seeks a variety of ways to interpret that verse.  Most that I have heard focus on defining one of three words: worthy, judgment, and body.  What does it mean to be worthy, what kind of judgment are we talking about, and what is this cracker and grape juice about anyway?  In asking these two question, the meaning of the verse is often summarily dismissed.  You're worthy by virtue of belief in Christ (what that actually MEANS is another discussion altogether), the judgment ranges from "your prayers won't be heard" to "you look like a fool" but is usually not really substantial, and I cannot tell you how many times I've heard a pastor include in a communion sermonette the disclaimer, "This is just a cracker and some juice."  Now that all of my Zwinglian communion-partaking friends are up in arms at the suggestion that they disregard scripture, I will politely ask that you offer a more accurate representation of your definition in the comments if you have one.  It's not my view, and it's been crammed down my throat in the Pentecostal/Non-Denominational Church for the past thirty years, so I freely admit, I am biased.

With that said, I'm not sure I entirely agree with my Catholic or Lutheran friends either.  At least, not on the sacramental bit.  I'm more inclined to trans/con-substantiation (it's a technicality to me, really) than symbolism not on the basis of church tradition or anything to do with sacraments, but because of John 6:51-58:

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven–not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”

And, most importantly, verse 66:

From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

Jesus used some very crude, offensive language in this passage.  Eat his flesh?  Drink his blood?  How revolting to a Jew with strict dietary laws!  This wasn't a surprise to him; he knew how difficult these words would be to accept.  He could have used a metaphor less offensive to his Jewish brothers if he meant for it to be metaphorical.  He could've easily said, "My blood is LIKE drink" or corrected their misunderstanding by saying, "This is a parable."  Or started out by saying, "Here's a parable"!  Instead, he turns to his disciples and says, "Do you want to leave me, too?"  You can't say he didn't KNOW they would be offended, or that there was no other metaphor he could have used.  Therefore, if you say that Jesus didn't mean his words quite literally, you're saying that he deliberately led all of these people astray.

A necessary disclaimer: Yes, this is the book of John and the words of Christ are viewed through the lens of later reflection.  But let's be clear, this was NOT something added in by a Catholic church trying to substantiate its view of communion.  No matter how much we may want to throw this away on the basis of "later church addition", it's in the earliest manuscripts.  The Fourth Gospel writer(s) wrote it and it survives as scripture. 

Back to the topic at hand: a proper interpretation of communion worthiness.

I am a strong advocate of interpreting our Christian traditions on the basis of their Jewish origins.  The corresponding Jewish tradition in this case is quite obvious: Passover.  Passover is a renewal of the covenant between God and Israel.  I see communion as a renewal of the covenant between God and me (or us, rather, since Passover is definitively about community identification).  So if this is the case, what about that pesky verse in Corinthians?

"For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." I Cor 11:29

It wasn't really an option for the children of Israel to partake in Passover unworthily.  The unworthy person (who would "eat and drink judgment" because they didn't discern the significance) was strictly prohibited from participation.  There wasn't even a penalty stipulated ("If he eats it, you shall do this.")  It was just NOT going to happen.  No foreigners were to partake of the Passover.  PERIOD.  A foreigner is identified, very explicitly, as someone not in covenant with Yahweh (ie uncircumcised).  If a foreigner wishes to become an Israelite, let him be circumcised into covenant, then he can participate in Passover.  (Exodus 12:43-50)

This doesn't feel good to our modern sensibilities.  Everyone should be allowed to participate in communion, right off the street!  This isn't some cult ritual only for the special elect ones!  Well… no.  True, it's not our job to regulate a man's relationship with God.  If he says he's in covenant relationship - his heart has been circumcised - we really have to take him at his word.  Whether or not someone is "saved" is the one thing we can't judge.  But God can.  People need to be aware that by participating in communion, they are proclaiming, "I am in a lifelong covenant with God."  Lying about that in order to have some crackers and juice is something no sensible person would do unless they didn't realize what they were saying.  Our job is not to regulate who can and cannot receive communion, it is to make certain all participants understand the significance of what they're doing.  At that point, it's between them and God.

One final note: what about children?

Some children are born into covenant.  Their parent(s) have a covenant with God that extends to them until they reach an age (different for each child) where they have the maturity and understanding to make their own covenant with God and become directly accountable to him.  Personally, I see no problem with these children partaking in communion that is MEDIATED by their parents.  The children in the household were permitted to participate in Passover and, in fact, their questions about "Why do we do this?" form the basis of the tradition being passed down from one generation to the next. 

Some children are not born into covenant.  These children come to the church "off the street", either out of a well-meaning parent's efforts to instill morality through Sunday School or they are friends of covenant children who tag along.  I am NOT proposing that these children are not important to God; they are VITAL to expansion of the kingdom.  But they have no context for understanding communion/Passover, and are the very definition of foreigners.  When they become old enough to initiate their own covenant with God (again, a different age for each child) then the significance of communion/Passover should be explained to them.

Because any Sunday School has a mix of these two groups of children, it is best if communion isn't offered as part of Sunday School worship.  But it need not be denied to children in "grown up" service whose parents accept the responsibility for their education and understanding of what they're doing.