Meditation on 1 Timothy 1:1-14 (MSG)
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford
World Communion Sunday: Oct. 5, 2025
Earlier this week, families with young children received a letter from me. I told them that today, on World Communion Sunday, we would be celebrating Communion early in the service, immediately following a children’s story called, The Greatest Table by Michael Rosen.
I had never thought to do this before—to change the order of the service when we celebrate Communion. For I learned when I was studying to be a Presbyterian pastor that we share the word before we celebrate the sacrament. They are done side by side. This is the usual order of our worship services. However, Presbyterian worship has a great deal of flexibility, particularly when it comes to the order of the parts of the service.
And the problem with waiting to celebrate the sacrament until after we share the word is that the children are no longer in the sanctuary. They are in their Sunday School classes. They always miss the celebration of Communion, and would have, even today on World Communion Sunday, when the emphasis is on the wide welcome of the Lord’s Table, the unity of the Body of Christ, and our sharing in the meal with believers around the globe.
We have been celebrating World Communion Sunday since 1936 throughout the Presbyterian Church. The tradition was started in 1933 by Hugh Thomson Kerr who ministered in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside Presbyterian Church. “Dr. Kerr first conceived the notion of World Communion Sunday during his year as moderator of the General Assembly (in 1930),” Dr. Kerr’s youngest son, the Rev. Dr. Donald Craig Kerr, pastor emeritus of the Roland Park Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, told the Presbyterian Outlook some years ago. Donald was sixteen in 1933. It was an “attempt to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity,” he said, in which everyone might receive both inspiration and information, and above all, to know how important the Church of Jesus Christ is, and how each congregation is interconnected one with another.”
World Communion caught on quickly with other denominations around the nation and then across the globe.
So, back to the question of or problem with us always celebrating Communion when the children are out of the room and in their Sunday School classes. When I met last summer with Lori Yastrub, our Faith Formation Ministries elder, and the two Sunday School teachers, Kathy Seymour, and her daughter, Jessica Carbonara, we talked about my desire to invite the children to participate with their families when we partake of the bread and cup.
They told me that some people, especially people who have been in the church for a long time, might question that practice of including young children. Traditionally, some congregations had the children wait until after they were confirmed in their faith, usually when they are teenagers. Maybe this is your experience here?
I thought more about this, and I prayed about it. And, finally, I asked Lori, Kathy, and Jessica, if I could send a letter explaining why the children will be invited, including what we believe as Presbyterians about Communion. At the same time, I assured the parents that if they wanted the children to refrain from eating the bread and drinking the juice, that would be completely up to them. If they felt that the children should be older, then that would be their choice. But I wanted the children to be present when we shared the bread and juice on this day, in the context of the Communion liturgy, just as I want the children to be present with us when we baptize and to participate through the filling of the font, the asking and answering of the questions of the children, and the presentation of the children’s Bible to the parents.
Well, Lori, Kathy, and Jessica thought the letter, story, and invitation to the children to fuller participation in their church’s worship and sacraments were all good things.
This is how I explained what we are doing for today, on World Communion Sunday, with our parents:
“Are they old enough?” you ask. “Isn’t that what they do after they are confirmed?” That might have been the church’s tradition to wait, but the understanding and practice of the sacraments in the PCUSA have changed. In short, we believe that Christ comes down to us as we are raised to him during the sacrament by the Spirit, as Reformer John Calvin taught. Why, then, would we refuse to serve Communion to all who come to the table joyfully and willingly, no matter their age, seeking to know Christ more and be strengthened to serve the Lord as Christ’s Body for the world?
The rest of my message is for all of you who are parents or grandparents or great grandparents, or you have a parent or grandparent who taught you the faith and love of Jesus.
In Paul’s letter to the young man he is discipling as an evangelist and church planter, the apostle tells Timothy, whom he loves as his own son, “to be bold and loving and sensible” with the gifts that God has given him for ministry and to guard the good treasure, the precious thing that is the faith that was passed down to him from his grandmother to his mother and to him.
Paul wasn’t the first person to teach Timothy the faith, just like the pastor or the Sunday School teachers are not the first people to introduce your children to the faith. You are! The first place where Timothy’s faith is learned is in his home. Now Timothy’s father was a “Greek” or a Gentile at the time, and not a Christian, but he allowed his son to be raised in the faith of his Jewish Christian mother and Jewish Christian grandmother.
This is the calling of every Christian parent and grandparent. And if your children have grown up, moved away, gotten married and now have their own children, then your first job is to pray for the faith of your children and grandchildren.
This is what Paul does when is no longer with Timothy; he makes a point to pray for the young missionary, not just daily, but “practically all the time.” And not because he has turned prayer into a work and thinks that the more he prays, the more effective his prayers will be. But because he loves Timothy, and he loves the Lord, and this is what he wants for the young man more than anything, to carry on sharing the gospel and building up the Church when Paul has gone home to be with the Lord.
I hope that you have grace for me, with my doing a few things in worship that may never have been done before, especially when they have to do with my welcoming the children to participate in the Sacraments more. When I was preparing to be a pastor, years ago, I never thought I would be doing this. I am as surprised as you are. But I think the Spirit is leading me.
I just have a feeling, when I am stirred to do such things as send a letter to the young families of our church about welcoming the children in our celebration of Communion, that something important is happening here.
My prayer and I hope this is your prayer, too, is that these children will be the leaders of our Church someday. I can imagine each of them, especially the more talkative ones who obviously have leadership gifts, becoming elders, deacons, trustees, and perhaps even ministers.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?
Dear friends, remember what Paul says to Timothy. Let us do the same. Be bold in using all the gifts for ministry that God has given you. And guard your own faith and love, rooted in Christ, as a treasure, a precious thing.
Will you pray with me?
Loving God, thank you for the Sacrament of Communion, for your Son’s wide welcome to all people at his table, where we partake of the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Thank you for your Spirit that comes to us in Communion and that comfort, heals, unites, and equips us to take our faith out to love and serve as we leave this place and be Christ’s Body for the world. Thank you for this day when we celebrate our unity as believers around the globe. Lord, we lift up our church and ask for your help as we seek to nurture our next generations in the faith and love, rooted in Christ, a faith that, as the apostle Paul taught young Timothy, is a priceless treasure, a precious thing to be guarded. In Christ we pray. Amen.
Sharing God's Love and Grace 