Early in my life as a believer, I attended two churches in Bloomington: Trinity Episcopal Church, and the now defunct ecumenical Center for University Ministry. The Center for University Ministry, which I started attending first, had communion once a month and practiced an open table, that is, not requiring a worshiper to be baptized before receiving communion.
At Trinity, the bulletin stated that communion was open to all baptized Christians. I clearly didn't meet that standard, so I did not take communion. My preparation for baptism included an explanation of the theology of baptism and the sacraments in the Episcopal Church. I never felt excluded.
I even considered not taking communion at the Center for University ministry. Instead, I ended up taking more of it. As I learned about the concept of the real presence of Christ in communion, I became increasingly troubled by the fact that whatever was left over of the bread at the Center for University Ministry ended up in the trash can.
Presbyterians have their own view about what communion is and isn't, I'm sure, but both then and now it offended by sensibilities that we adopted an item for a sacred purpose only to throw it away. So on the Sundays we had communion, I would volunteer to clean up afterwards, and sit in the church kitchen eating sometimes three-quarters of a loaf of Hawaiian King Bread. As an unbaptized person, did I do the right thing? I think so.
I find it hard to get too worked up about the communion without baptism debate in the Episcopal Church. Despite my experience, I tend to be a traditionalist. Our existing sacramental theology on these matters makes a lot of sense to me, and I see no need to change it. But I also know that The grace of God found in the sacraments isn't bound by our canons. Some rules are just made to be broken sometimes. I think this is one of them.
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