A quaking Quaker trying to live adventurously!

My Quaker view on baptism & communion - Worship today

This morning (18th Sept. 2011), amongst a group of Mennonites, Catholics and a Baptist, I lead worship in the manner of Friends (Quakers). We started with a silence, and then I mentioned that it is often mistaken that we Quakers do not believe in baptism and holy communion. We do not believe in the outward rituals, instead many of us believe in spiritual baptism and a communion at a spiritual level.

I personally believe in the spiritual baptism of the holy spirit’s power to open our hearts, that allows us to be in constant conscious fellowship with God & Christ. I think of Pauls’ letter to Galatations, Chapter 2, verses 19 -21, where we are reborn in the spirit which then guides us.

¹⁹ “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. ²⁰I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

(I see Jesus of Nazarath as a son of God, a Rabbi, come to teach us and lead us back towards God).

When I think of spiritual communion, I no longer think of breaking of the bread and drinking of the wine although Jesus did break bread and drink wine and ask us to remember him. For those that need need this ritual to remember Jesus, please carry on.

As someone who needs more than an occasional communion in a church with a “priest” and I being of a church where we believe in the preisthood of all believers, I remember Christ, every time I sit down and eat with others.

I think of letting in the spirit of Christ. that allows me to commune with those around me, to reach into their hearts and let them into mine. I think of the biblical books of the acts of the apostles and the especially the book of revelations that lets us commune together and the spirit of Christ guides us and helps us to listen to each other.

Revelations 3, 20

²⁰ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

Being here in the occupied West Bank at the moment, as key part of what we do is making time to drink tea, talk and commune with people. It is during these moments that the people often open up. I like drinking tea, and maybe this is also part of what I am called to do, to create a tiny space for peace and justice. I may never see the results of what I do here, but that does not matter, I am not in control (and I don’t want to be) and it is not about me it is about the people, some of whom are caged in by their own fears and use the Hebrew 1st testament scriptures to back up their fears, and then their are those that are physically trapped in a small piece of land because the physical occupation.

When the physical military, economic and structural occupation by the Israelis ends, there will have room to challenge and work on those fears.

I hope these last few weeks, I have allowed the spirit of Christ, to knock on peoples hearts, so that they will let it in and feel the presence and an inner peace. The spirit of Christ is open to us all, regardless of our faith tradition.

18 September 2011 ·