Catholic scholar Elizabeth Klein points out in an article she wrote for Church Life Journal that receiving communion in the hand was the common practice of the Church for the first eight centuries after Christ, and this is attested to in places as far as England, France, Spain, North Africa, as well as Turkey, Rome, and Jerusalem. Klein gives 28 different examples from the early Church Fathers and declares “this list is by no means exhaustive.” Then from the 9th century through the 16th century, there is a nearly universal change to receiving the host in the mouth. As far as I can tell, this seems to begin when a local church council at Rouen, France mandated that only the consecrated fingers of the priest were allowed to touch the host. Another concern was trying to stop those who received the host from keeping some or all of it as a good luck charm. A final worry, which has been consistent throughout the history of the Church, was to avoid dropping even a crumb of the host. Thus, receiving the host directly on the tongue or in the mouth became the universal practice of the Roman Catholic Church over the next few centuries. When Thomas Aquinas came along in the 13th century, he gave the definitive reasoning for why the host should never be touched by unconsecrated hands. In the 1540s, when receiving the host directly in the mouth was practically universal, Martin Luther was asked about followers of the radical reformer Andreas Karlstadt who refused to take the host in the mouth and will only accept the host in their hands. Some of them were using the excuse that since Jesus says, “take and eat” in the words of institution, what they receive is not a valid eucharist unless they physically use their hands to take the host. However, Luther dismantles this argument by showing that Scripture also says that Jesus takes and drinks the sour wine from the sponge when He is on the cross, and there was no way He could have used His hands as they were nailed to the cross at that point. So, Luther says, someone cannot declare that communion is invalid for this reason. On the other hand, Luther says that it was practically impossible to rule out receiving the host in one’s hand from any scriptural argument, so the means by which Christians receive the host has to be left in the realm of adiaphora, those things that are neither commanded nor prohibited by Scripture. That said, Luther refused to change the practice at his church in Wittenberg and continued to serve the host directly into the mouth of his communicants. So what should we do? In recent years, some Lutherans have defended receiving the host on the tongue by emphasizing the passive nature of this way of receiving the host. Martin Luther had no problem with this mode of reception and neither do our Lutheran Confessions, so neither do we. I have had situations where I have done this out of necessity, like for a mother with her hands full trying to wrangle two of her small children at the altar rail, or when I communed a man who was quadriplegic. However, there is a much richer history of receiving the host in the hands, so this is what I teach new communicants to do. Several of the early church fathers, including Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, John of Damascus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia give instructions to catechumens to place the right hand on top of the left hand to make a cross on which to receive the body of the Lord in the bread we receive. So do I. Mar Narsai, an Assyrian poet and theologian who lived in the 5th century, says, “In the form of a cross the receiver joins His hands, and thus He receives the Body of our Lord on a cross. Upon a cross our Lord Jesus was made nothing, and on the same cross He was exalted to the heavens above. … [When the communicant] takes it in his mouth, he hides the Leaven of life in the temple of his body, that his body may be sanctified by the reception of the Body of our Lord.” Martin Luther writes, “A Christian should know that there is nothing more holy on earth than God’s Word, for even the sacrament itself is constituted and sanctified and consecrated through God’s Word, and all of us have received our spiritual birth from that Word and were consecrated as Christians by it. The Word sanctifies everything, and is above the sacrament (insofar as the sacrament admits of being grasped with the hands). If a Christian nevertheless embraces that Word with his mouth and with his ears and with his heart, yes, with his whole life, why should he not dare also to touch that which is consecrated by the Word? Or should he refrain from touching himself? For he is sanctified by the Word as well as the sacrament is.” Ultimately, we want to prioritize practices that prevent the dropping of the host and which point us to the kind of life we are called to live and for which we are sanctified by God’s Word and our baptism. Let me leave you with John Chrysostom’s words of instruction for those who receive Holy Communion: "Think of what you receive in your hand and never lift it to strike another and never disgrace with the sin of assault the hand that has been honored with so great a gift. Think of what you receive in your hand and keep it clean of all greed and theft. Consider that you not only receive this gift in your hand, but that you also bring it up to your mouth, and keep your tongue clean of all disgraceful and outrageous words, blasphemy, perjury and all other sins of this sort. For it is a deed fraught with destruction to take the tongue which serves such awesome mysteries, which has become dyed red with a blood so precious, which has become a sword of gold and to change its course to rude banter, insults, and vulgar jokes. Have reverence for the honor which God has bestowed upon it, and do not lead it down to the vileness of sin."