Not quite a month ago, on the evening before Thanksgiving, I attended an ecumenical worship service here in Albert Lea. Music was provided by piano, organ, a brass ensemble and a mass choir made up of singers from the churches participating. There were greetings from one bishop (a Methodist) and a sermon by another bishop (a Lutheran). There were prayers and readings. And Communion was also part of the experience. It all felt just right.

This worship service was amazing, far more moving and meaningful than I had expected. Truth be told, I was present only because the pastor I’m married to wasn’t leading worship, and none of the rest of us was singing in the choir; it was one of the few times parents and children could sit together in a pew. But I found myself wishing I had dressed up — my jeans and flannel shirt didn’t feel appropriate — as if what we wear against our skin really matters all that much to God.

What makes this worth writing about (as opposed to the theme for a sermon) is what made this so moving for me. In a country so fractured by acrimonious, divisive forces, so many different people had gathered — people who took the Lord’s supper together despite their differences. Like most of those present, I grew up in a world which seems to find joy in splintering and disrupting community. The rules and doctrines churches use to define who cannot share a meal is symbolic of that, echoes of our disputes about things like gay rights or abortion or justice for the poor.

It was not always that way. In the beginning, long before there were Lutherans and Roman Catholics and Presbyterians and Greek Orthodox and Methodists, there were just followers of Jesus meeting in homes to tell stories about him and share in a meal together. Those people were different, too, men, women, Greek, Jew, Roman, children, grandparents, rich, poor, even slaves and their owners.

The path from that meal to the Lord’s supper as it is celebrated, as it is segregated, in our own time would take us on a complicated, bitter journey, better left to a historian or theologian. Not being one of those, during and after that Thanksgiving worship service, I found myself thinking about what Christians do today.

Who “owns” the rights to Communion? Is there some sect who owns the copyright to the liturgy? Is there a church that controls the trademark and logo?

Or is it possible that Communion doesn’t really belong to any human being or human institution?

Consider this: As a Protestant I’ve been invited to “not” take communion more than once at Roman Catholic churches — politely or blandly, or even bluntly. As a current member of the ELCA, I’m barred from communion at Missouri Synod worship services. As a child with my family on a summer camping trip, my family was stared at by worshippers and told by a pastor in a whisper to sit back down when we went up to the altar during the celebration of the Lord’s supper. We didn’t try going to church again on that or future trips.

Why so unfriendly? Why so many barriers? Who gave any humans — any so-called Christians — the right to claim “their” celebration of the meal was the only right one or that we have to be in perfect agreement about what it means to sit at table together? Perhaps God doesn’t care if it’s wine or grape juice or water or even sake. Perhaps we don’t have to use unleavened, home-baked bread or wafers with Greek letters on them or hearty whole wheat loaves. Perhaps the exact words we say or the status of the presider aren’t as important as we think they are.

Perhaps what I was wearing that night a few weeks ago and what I actually “believed” about the meal didn’t matter, either. Or the clothing and beliefs worn by our neighbors in the pews — who were also neighbors in the other way since we sat with families living on our block (a wonderful coincidence in itself, since we’d never worshipped together before).

I’ll say it again. I don’t think it mattered whether we all were in perfect agreement about what the meal together meant or what “happened” to bread and wine. It also didn’t matter whether we were Republicans or Democrats or independents or rich or poor or whatever else divides us up into groups. It was the “Lord’s” Supper — it was about Jesus, and not really about us at all.

David Rask Behling teaches at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and lives with his wife and children in Albert Lea. His column appears every other Tuesday.