The first third of the essay is laying the groundwork, providing the metaphor through which the point of the essay will be made.  I like the metaphor of messiness (struggling with it to a certain degree as I do).  I remember more than a few exhortations from my parents to clean up my room as a youngster!  This metaphor is then applied in the next third of the article.  Messy people are not necessarily bad people, and messy Christians are not necessarily bad Christians.  McBrayer tackles the assumption often found in evangelical and reformed theological traditions that true Christians look and act a certain way.  If you don't fit the mold, there's a good chance you haven't really been saved.  What you need is a little more faith, and then you'll fit the mold.  

This is a brutal expectation.  It's full of cultural assumptions as well as theological problems.  While Christians are exhorted to avoid certain behaviors and follow others, it's also understood that this is a continuum, that lots of variables will affect where one appears on the continuum, and that being in one place rather than another is not tantamount to a condemnation of one's faith.  We are all works in progress.  We are all unique  creations and new creations through the work of the Holy Spirit.  McBrayer is dead on in his critique here.

The last portion of the essay is a synopsis of a modern parable that is supposed to describe (and condemn) churches and the religious.  This is where things get complicated.

What is the central action of the parable?  The boy's encounter with Jesus.  But what is the context?  It's a feast.  A banquet.  In church parlance, this is universally going to be associated with the sacrament of Holy Communion.  This is the feast in which Christ's believers participate with him in this world, a foretaste of the feast to come.  Since someone who does not know and confess Jesus as savior would not be invited to join the table of believers when Christ returns, the parable must point to the meal we share here and now.  

The words of the crowd member to the boy are very good - Jesus is the host of the feast.  He did open the door to invite us in.  He does love us.  The question is, does the author of the parable understand these assertions in the historical Biblical way?  Does he see it the same way as the historical Christian church - up until the last 200 years or so - has understood it?  I suspect not.  The orthodox Church has always confessed exactly what this parable guest says - Jesus is the host of the feast, therefore, he determines who is invited and who is not.  We do not make this decision, Jesus does.  Participation in the Lord's Supper is contingent on an awareness of who is hosting the feast and one's relationship is to Him.  Jesus did open the door through his incarnation, death, and resurrection, but that door is the door to faith itself, through which we gain access to the Savior here and now as well as for eternity.  We have done nothing to receive the blessings of the feast both now and in eternity, and as such, we have no right to impose our standards on them.  Jesus does love us - but love has an objective sense of meaning that is widely lost in popular usage today, even in the Church.  Love is not being nice.  Love is not tolerance.  Love is far bigger and stronger and more radical than sentimentalized, consumer definitions.  Love is obedience.  Jesus loves us, and we demonstrate our love for Jesus in obedience.  Outside of obedience to our Savior, there can be no love for Him.

The parable attempts to marginalize the guest's actions, even as it gets right the words.  The guest wants to stop the child from entering and joining.  I'm not aware of any orthodox Christian congregation that would require a profession of faith in (or even an intellectual awareness of) Jesus Christ as a prerequisite for attending worship.  This can't be the point of the parable.  If it is the point, it's off-base from the start.  The Church has always welcomed unbelievers to attend.  If there are congregations that openly and actively discourage non-Christians from attending worship, they are the exception, not the norm.  But inviting non-believers to attend worship does not demand that those visitors participate in the exact same way or to the exact same extent as those who already profess faith in Jesus Christ.  Simple honesty would preclude that, in fact!

Rather, the parable is criticizing those Christian denominations (and one could easily argue these are the most historically faithful denominations) that welcome non-believers to worship, yet deny them in one manner or another access to Holy Communion.  The parable writer - and McBrayer - is criticizing Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and other conservative denominations (such as LCMS Lutherans) who have communion policies that require some shared confession of faith or membership.  

In this parable, the guest is wrong.  The 'child' who ignores the guest and continues to the feast meets and recognizes Jesus as the host.  Faith is found, despite the misguided intentions of the guest who sought to bar the child's access.   The child's faith is rewarded, the guest's lack of faith is condemned.  There are several things at play here that we need to recognize.

First of all, 1 Corinthians 11 has a lot to say about how and who should receive communion.  The upshot is that there is a lot going on in communion that has serious ramifications.  It would be very unloving of a group of Christians who profess belief in the Bible as God's inspired and revealed Word to ignore this passage.  Which means that any faithful congregation of believers needs to decide what Paul is getting at here and how to address it.  Communion is something we are commanded to do by Jesus Christ, so we don't have the option of just avoiding the issue entirely.  If we are going to follow His command, we need to also allow Scripture to inform us as to how we will follow it.  

Is it possible that an unbeliever can be moved to faith by partaking in Holy Communion?  Certainly.  The Holy Spirit is free to act in any way He chooses.  Does this render as invalid 1 Corinthians 11?  Certainly not.  The Holy Spirit is free to do what He wants, how He wishes to do it.  He is God.  We are not.  Therefore, we do not operate with the same freedom to supercede God's Word in favor of our own interpretation and practice.  I cannot claim to be acting in God's will if I am violating His expressed will in any way.  

I'm happy to listen to and respect any Christian congregation that comes to a policy or way of handling Holy Communion that is informed by 1 Corinthians 11.  I'm also willing to acknowledge that their policies may differ a great deal from mine and from the historic Christian tradition.  I think that this fact ought to give congregations pause in their policy, but there's certainly some room for interpretation here.  

However to assert that such a faithfulness to the Word is essentially sinful (in that it would prevent or seek to prevent someone from coming to faith in Jesus Christ) is in itself erroneous and dangerous.  If we ignore Scripture's teachings on Holy Communion in the hopes that more will be brought to faith, what else do we ignore about Scripture with an eye towards drawing in more people?  How wise is it to gut the substance of what you are asking people to believe in?  Why should anyone place their faith and trust in something that a congregation of professed believers is already disregarding for the sake of inclusivity?

The concluding paragraph spells out the author's ultimate aims more clearly - the religious guest doesn't know Jesus, but the child now does.  Yes, people meet Jesus in all sorts of ways and situations, certainly as often outside of a congregational worship service as in it, perhaps.  Jesus is amazingly persistent in how he seeks the lost.  However, He is not rewarding the seeker, because the seeker is already being prompted by the Holy Spirit!  If God is rewarding the efforts of the seeker, then how do we explain Romans 4?  If the seeker is being rewarded for seeking, then they are contributing to their own salvation.  This is a form of heresy known as Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism, which was condemned by the church hundreds of years ago.  

In reviewing the author's web site, it seems that he has an ax to grind with church and religion.  His books advocate the 'emergent', hip theme of Jesus=good, Church=bad.  I'll happily rail against the blindness that all too often results in congregational life through adherence to local traditions or the corporate world or any number of other issues that place new manacles on the freed children of God.  But to rail against the Church itself, as though it is not the very body of Jesus Christ, imperfect yet still holy, is dangerous.  Jesus instituted the Church (Matthew 16:17ff), and this has to be kept in mind any time we critique it.  Our goal is not to abandon it, but to continually call it back to faithfulness.  That faithfulness has a source, however - Scripture.  

The Church's traditional teachings on Holy Communion are rooted in Scripture itself.  It isn't that the modern church has left it's Scriptural and traditional roots to lock people out of Communion.  Rather, many churches are abandoning Scripture and the historic practice of Christians as far back as we have documentation, in the name of being welcoming or seeker sensitive or any number of other euphemisms.  

I love people.  I love Jesus.  I want every person possible to meet Him.  But there are limits to how I can facilitate that faithfully.  I am called to obedience to those limits, even as I am called to confess that God is free to act outside of them for His purposes.  I admit to having been enamored of certain ideas in the emergent church movement early on.  But the more I see and read and hear, the more convinced I am that while some of the ideas may be on target, as a whole the movement is off-course and moving away from Scripture and tradition, even as it claims to reinterpret these things for it's own purposes.