A Sketch of an Argument for the Logic
of the Traditional Discipline
Introduction & PART I – Baptism and Jesus’ Disciples at the Last Supper
PART II – Inclusion vs. Renewal and Incorporation
PART III & PART IV – Community vs. Association & Fellow Citizens
PART V – Under Judgment
PART VI & PART VII – Transformation & Whose Table?
PART VIII – Hospitality
Conclusion
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Virginal Conception and Other Preposterous Things
It has become traditional this time of year for some clergyperson or theologian to confidently declare that “modern” people can no longer believe in such a thing as the virginal conception (virgin birth) of Jesus. It goes against the way we know things work.
The virginal conception does seem preposterous. It always has. I doubt Joaquim and Anne found it any less preposterous when their daughter first tried to explain it to them. I don't believe it glibly. I've had and will have my reservations, questions, and doubts about this and other aspects of the Creed. But, I figure, once you believe in something as preposterous as resurrection or that God loves you and is able to do something about it, you're in for a pound, you might as well toss in the penny.
But, preposterous as the virginal conception sounds, I find other things more preposterous and harder to accept given how we know the world works:
Jesus is the measure of all things? The turn-the-other-cheek guy from Nazereth who got himself crucified?
I must love my enemies and pray for them, repaying evil with good?
We are expected to live nonviolently in such a world as ours? Peace is always better than violence?
Forgiveness is always better than revenge or resentment?
Money is "unrighteous" and dangerous to my soul? That my best investment is to give it all away?
All people are created equal? Is there any other "truth" that is less self-evident or more easily contradicted by reason and scientific evidence? The closest I can get to that is we are all of us equally created in the image of God, equally loved by God, and equally the objects of Christ’s redeeming. It’s still pretty hard to believe from a purely empirical perspective.
Humility is a virtue?
Heck, believing that the Mystery at the heart of it all chose to become incarnate in a particular time and place from a particular girl named Mary without the usual male contribution is a relative piece of cake. In truth, most of the time I am only able to entertain these other preposterous things precisely because I believe God has done something so preposterous as being born of the Virgin Mary.
The virginal conception does seem preposterous. It always has. I doubt Joaquim and Anne found it any less preposterous when their daughter first tried to explain it to them. I don't believe it glibly. I've had and will have my reservations, questions, and doubts about this and other aspects of the Creed. But, I figure, once you believe in something as preposterous as resurrection or that God loves you and is able to do something about it, you're in for a pound, you might as well toss in the penny.
But, preposterous as the virginal conception sounds, I find other things more preposterous and harder to accept given how we know the world works:
Jesus is the measure of all things? The turn-the-other-cheek guy from Nazereth who got himself crucified?
I must love my enemies and pray for them, repaying evil with good?
We are expected to live nonviolently in such a world as ours? Peace is always better than violence?
Forgiveness is always better than revenge or resentment?
Money is "unrighteous" and dangerous to my soul? That my best investment is to give it all away?
All people are created equal? Is there any other "truth" that is less self-evident or more easily contradicted by reason and scientific evidence? The closest I can get to that is we are all of us equally created in the image of God, equally loved by God, and equally the objects of Christ’s redeeming. It’s still pretty hard to believe from a purely empirical perspective.
Humility is a virtue?
Heck, believing that the Mystery at the heart of it all chose to become incarnate in a particular time and place from a particular girl named Mary without the usual male contribution is a relative piece of cake. In truth, most of the time I am only able to entertain these other preposterous things precisely because I believe God has done something so preposterous as being born of the Virgin Mary.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Baptized into Eucharist, Conclusion
Conclusion
The Eucharist is the central sign and practice of the body of Christ. The normal way of becoming a member of that body is through baptism. To reserve Eucharist for those who are baptized does not limit God. As Luther insisted, Jesus – risen and ascended – is present everywhere and can surprise us in our cabbage soup if he so desires. While he is free to surprise anyone anywhere, the promise the Church claims is that he will not surprise us by not being present to his body, the Church, as Redeemer and Judge in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. God is free to surprise us by working outside the norms as has surely happend with some who have participated in the Eucharist before being baptized (cf. Take This Bread by Sara Miles).
Because God remains free to surprise us there is no need for hyper-vigilance to protect the purity of the Eucharist. But if we are not to be hyper-vigilant, that doe not mean that distinctions and norms are irrelevant or unnecessary. The discipline of reserving Eucharist for those already baptized is not about protecting anyone’s purity. It is about maintaining the very boundaries of identity that make a place in which to be formed as a community that can actually practice hospitality.
It is also about being honest about who we are called to be as the members of the body of Christ, what kind of God we have gotten caught up with. It is about being respectful of the real otherness of those who are not yet committed to the loyalties and commitments of this communion.
The body of Christ is a Eucharistic community with all that that entails and we are baptized into Eucharist.
The Eucharist is the central sign and practice of the body of Christ. The normal way of becoming a member of that body is through baptism. To reserve Eucharist for those who are baptized does not limit God. As Luther insisted, Jesus – risen and ascended – is present everywhere and can surprise us in our cabbage soup if he so desires. While he is free to surprise anyone anywhere, the promise the Church claims is that he will not surprise us by not being present to his body, the Church, as Redeemer and Judge in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. God is free to surprise us by working outside the norms as has surely happend with some who have participated in the Eucharist before being baptized (cf. Take This Bread by Sara Miles).
Because God remains free to surprise us there is no need for hyper-vigilance to protect the purity of the Eucharist. But if we are not to be hyper-vigilant, that doe not mean that distinctions and norms are irrelevant or unnecessary. The discipline of reserving Eucharist for those already baptized is not about protecting anyone’s purity. It is about maintaining the very boundaries of identity that make a place in which to be formed as a community that can actually practice hospitality.
It is also about being honest about who we are called to be as the members of the body of Christ, what kind of God we have gotten caught up with. It is about being respectful of the real otherness of those who are not yet committed to the loyalties and commitments of this communion.
The body of Christ is a Eucharistic community with all that that entails and we are baptized into Eucharist.
Baptized Into Eucharist, PART VIII
PART VIII – Hospitality
1. Who is the Host and Who the Guest?
The practice of inviting all to the Eucharistic table without regard to baptism is often expressed in terms of “radical hospitality”. Hospitality is certainly a basic gospel virtue. The God revealed in the history of Israel and the ministry of Jesus is an hospitable God. We are encouraged to “welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed [us], for the glory of God.” (Romans 15:7). While that particular exhortation is about members of the body of Christ welcoming one another, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages a broader hospitality, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels” (Hebrews 13:2). Hospitality is thus unquestionably an essential mark of any church. But it is not clear that opening Eucharistic fellowship to the unbaptized is necessarily a good means of practicing such hospitality or that it is actually hospitable or all that radical to do so.
Thinking of the Eucharist in terms of hospitality calls for some reflection on who is the host and who the guest when we gather at the altar. The ultimate host of the Eucharist is, of course, God. But this is not the generic “higher power” as each one understands it. Our divine Host is revealed in the self-giving love of the Trinity, manifested on the cross in the sacrificial self-giving of Christ. To eat at the table of this Host is to participate in the life of this God who wills to reconfigure us in the image of Christ.
Along with being guests responding to the invitation of God, the penultimate host of the Eucharist is the body of Christ that is re-membered in the practice of Communion. But, to host anyone we must have a sense of identity and place:
If we are not clear about our own identity and the identity-forming nature of the Eucharist, we have nothing to offer but what Henri Nouwen named “a bland neutrality that serves nobody” (Reaching Out, p.99). It confuses mere pleasantness for deep hospitality. And since it avoids the scandal and offense of particular, bounded identity it is not very costly or radical.
If the penultimate host of the Eucharist is the Church, who is the guest? In a word, God. Paradoxically, in the Eucharist, the baptized are both guest and host and the divine Host is also the divine Guest. We invite the Holy Spirit to descend upon the gifts that they may be the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant”. Because the Guest is nothing less than the Holy Mystery at the heart of all, we pray that we might be sanctified by the same Holy Spirit “that we may faithfully receive” this Guest in the “gifts of God for the people of God”. It is significant that in the gospels Jesus is rarely the host, but rather most often the guest at the table of others. And as Zacchaeus and Simon the Pharisee discovered hosting Jesus brings us face to face with the expectations of Jesus. As those incorporated into the community of hosts through baptism, we have some inkling of who our Guest is and what expectations that Guest places upon the community that seeks to keep his company.
If, as has been argued above, participation in the Eucharistic feast entangles us in particular loyalties and implicates us in a web of mutual expectations and accountabilities, then inviting people to participate who are not already so entangled and implicated by baptism and without alerting them is neither faithful to our own identity nor respectful of their otherness.
2. Hospitality in a World of No Place
Elizabeth Newman has observed that
This is particularly true in contemporary America where our hyper-mobility means few of us live in the communities in which we were raised, surrounded by and connected to family and neighbors with whom we have long history and a sense of place characterized by particular customs and traditions. Absent that sense of place, we are reduced to detached individuals roaming context-less space as tourists and consumers. The public space of the shopping mall is the clearest manifestation of this condition, but it is pervasive. We have been deeply formed to think of ourselves as individuals and trained to be consumers living in space but with no sense of real place. If we are not careful, our worship will reflect and reinforce that formation and that training.
In such an environment, what does our practice of Eucharist signify? Inviting anyone to participate wherever they are on their spiritual journey reinforces the ideology of the individual-as-consumer. It signifies that a church is like other public spaces where individual consumers go to satisfy a felt need. The church is then like a sort of religious restaurant with spiritual food on the menu catering to individual customers who come and go through its public space. Is it really all that costly or radical? Should it not rather signify that here is a place where people belong to one another with mutual obligations and to God who gives them an identity as members of a diverse body with many members and many gifts reinforced by the Communion Meal? As William Cavanaugh suggests:
Church buildings function both as public space and the space where the body of Christ takes place. As public space, church buildings are open to many people coming and going – sometimes literally as tourists. But, of course, other times as servants and those who are served, as visitors and seekers, as those in need shelter, food, clothing, etc. It is space where the Christian community practices (or should practice) costly hospitality.
But the hospitality the members of church practice in the public space is rooted in the place of the body of Christ “made” in baptism and Eucharist. The community so made should be practicing among itself a hospitality – a hospitality of radical responsibility for, and accountability to, one another in light of the gospel. That we treat fellow members of the body of Christ more like acquaintances than with the deep hospitality due sisters and brothers is a scandal that makes inviting everyone to the communion rail seem trite.
Next: Conclusion
1. Who is the Host and Who the Guest?
The practice of inviting all to the Eucharistic table without regard to baptism is often expressed in terms of “radical hospitality”. Hospitality is certainly a basic gospel virtue. The God revealed in the history of Israel and the ministry of Jesus is an hospitable God. We are encouraged to “welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed [us], for the glory of God.” (Romans 15:7). While that particular exhortation is about members of the body of Christ welcoming one another, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages a broader hospitality, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels” (Hebrews 13:2). Hospitality is thus unquestionably an essential mark of any church. But it is not clear that opening Eucharistic fellowship to the unbaptized is necessarily a good means of practicing such hospitality or that it is actually hospitable or all that radical to do so.
Thinking of the Eucharist in terms of hospitality calls for some reflection on who is the host and who the guest when we gather at the altar. The ultimate host of the Eucharist is, of course, God. But this is not the generic “higher power” as each one understands it. Our divine Host is revealed in the self-giving love of the Trinity, manifested on the cross in the sacrificial self-giving of Christ. To eat at the table of this Host is to participate in the life of this God who wills to reconfigure us in the image of Christ.
Along with being guests responding to the invitation of God, the penultimate host of the Eucharist is the body of Christ that is re-membered in the practice of Communion. But, to host anyone we must have a sense of identity and place:
A welcoming place is rich with stories, rituals, and a history. It is valued, and nurtures life. It is never simply a physical space, but a place alive with commitments and relationships.
Boundaries help define what a household, family, church or community holds precious. However, the modern world is deeply ambivalent about boundaries and community. Although we yearn for home and a place to belong, often we find ourselves more comfortable with empty space where we can “sing our own song” and pursue our own plans. Hospitality is fundamentally connected to place – a space bounded by commitments, values, and meanings. Part of the difficulty in recovering hospitality is connected with our uncertainty about community and particular identity.
- Christine Pohl, Making Room, p. 135 -136
If we are not clear about our own identity and the identity-forming nature of the Eucharist, we have nothing to offer but what Henri Nouwen named “a bland neutrality that serves nobody” (Reaching Out, p.99). It confuses mere pleasantness for deep hospitality. And since it avoids the scandal and offense of particular, bounded identity it is not very costly or radical.
If the penultimate host of the Eucharist is the Church, who is the guest? In a word, God. Paradoxically, in the Eucharist, the baptized are both guest and host and the divine Host is also the divine Guest. We invite the Holy Spirit to descend upon the gifts that they may be the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant”. Because the Guest is nothing less than the Holy Mystery at the heart of all, we pray that we might be sanctified by the same Holy Spirit “that we may faithfully receive” this Guest in the “gifts of God for the people of God”. It is significant that in the gospels Jesus is rarely the host, but rather most often the guest at the table of others. And as Zacchaeus and Simon the Pharisee discovered hosting Jesus brings us face to face with the expectations of Jesus. As those incorporated into the community of hosts through baptism, we have some inkling of who our Guest is and what expectations that Guest places upon the community that seeks to keep his company.
If, as has been argued above, participation in the Eucharistic feast entangles us in particular loyalties and implicates us in a web of mutual expectations and accountabilities, then inviting people to participate who are not already so entangled and implicated by baptism and without alerting them is neither faithful to our own identity nor respectful of their otherness.
2. Hospitality in a World of No Place
Elizabeth Newman has observed that
a pervasive feature of late modernity: a gnawing homelessness, a lack of a sense of place. If we are truly to envision and embody a faithful hospitality, we must see how deeply our current understanding and experience of “home” and “place” have up to now perverted us from living a profound hospitality.
- Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality, p. 34
This is particularly true in contemporary America where our hyper-mobility means few of us live in the communities in which we were raised, surrounded by and connected to family and neighbors with whom we have long history and a sense of place characterized by particular customs and traditions. Absent that sense of place, we are reduced to detached individuals roaming context-less space as tourists and consumers. The public space of the shopping mall is the clearest manifestation of this condition, but it is pervasive. We have been deeply formed to think of ourselves as individuals and trained to be consumers living in space but with no sense of real place. If we are not careful, our worship will reflect and reinforce that formation and that training.
Worship informed by such assumptions will be unable to offer Christian hospitality, a practice that relies on a sense of place, a shared tradition, one in which we are not strangers in the universe (or to each other) but part of God’s good creation, created so that God might love us and so that we might I return love God, each other, the stranger, and even the enemy.” - Newman p.44
In such an environment, what does our practice of Eucharist signify? Inviting anyone to participate wherever they are on their spiritual journey reinforces the ideology of the individual-as-consumer. It signifies that a church is like other public spaces where individual consumers go to satisfy a felt need. The church is then like a sort of religious restaurant with spiritual food on the menu catering to individual customers who come and go through its public space. Is it really all that costly or radical? Should it not rather signify that here is a place where people belong to one another with mutual obligations and to God who gives them an identity as members of a diverse body with many members and many gifts reinforced by the Communion Meal? As William Cavanaugh suggests:
[M]uch of what passes for Christianity in our culture today is addressed to fulfill the spiritual needs of individual consumers of religion. . . . The practice of the Eucharist is resistant to such appropriation, however, because the consumer of the Eucharist is taken up into a larger body, the body of Christ. The individual consumer of the Eucharist does not simply take Christ into herself, but also is taken up into Christ.
- Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, p. 54
Church buildings function both as public space and the space where the body of Christ takes place. As public space, church buildings are open to many people coming and going – sometimes literally as tourists. But, of course, other times as servants and those who are served, as visitors and seekers, as those in need shelter, food, clothing, etc. It is space where the Christian community practices (or should practice) costly hospitality.
But the hospitality the members of church practice in the public space is rooted in the place of the body of Christ “made” in baptism and Eucharist. The community so made should be practicing among itself a hospitality – a hospitality of radical responsibility for, and accountability to, one another in light of the gospel. That we treat fellow members of the body of Christ more like acquaintances than with the deep hospitality due sisters and brothers is a scandal that makes inviting everyone to the communion rail seem trite.
Next: Conclusion
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The Earth is the Lord's
“You formed us in your own image, giving the whole creation into our care, so that, in obedience to you, our Creator, we might rule and serve all your creatures.”
- Eucharistic Prayer D, Book of Common Prayer, p. 373
As the leaders of the nations deliberate in Copenhagen, may they make wise decisions and firm commitments to address global climate change. And may we all seek to be better stewards and servants of God's creation.
At St. Barnabas, we have made reusable grocery bags with this logo available as one small effort to be good stewards:
- Eucharistic Prayer D, Book of Common Prayer, p. 373
As the leaders of the nations deliberate in Copenhagen, may they make wise decisions and firm commitments to address global climate change. And may we all seek to be better stewards and servants of God's creation.
At St. Barnabas, we have made reusable grocery bags with this logo available as one small effort to be good stewards:
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Recipe Diem – Receive the Day
On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence. ~ William Jennings Bryan
One of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book is one from the Order for Compline:
It is a reminder that the world in which we live, the lives we live – all that we are and all that we have – is all the sheer gift of God. It is not something we can seize or hold. We can only receive and give thanks. This receiving is not passive but rather an active attentiveness to each moment as the irreplaceable, intimate gift of God. We thank God who wonderfully created us and still more wonderfully redeems us. It is no accident that the central practice of the Church is the Eucharist the root meaning of which is thanksgiving.
The prayer from Compline is also a reminder that we are dependant on each other’s toil. The notion of an autonomous individual, rugged or otherwise, is a false one. It is fundamentally absurd. We are born into, and dependent upon from start to finish, a web of relationships. We always and only live at the hand of others. Part of the discipline of active, attentive gratitude is giving thanks for everyone else. Margaret Visser writes, “Gratitude is always a matter of paying attention, of deliberately beholding and appreciating the other.”
Thanksgiving is a good reminder to be paying attention and deliberately beholding and appreciating others as we acknowledge our dependence. So, this Thanksgiving, thank God for his unfailing sustaining providence. And thank all those other folk on whose toil your life depends. Thank family and friends. But also thank everyone who had a hand in making your Thanksgiving feast possible: those who planted, those who harvested, those who processed and packed, those who drove the trucks and those who loaded and unloaded the trucks, those who stocked the shelves and those who checked out the groceries. Thank the power company electrician who makes sure the power gets to your home – sometimes in inclement weather. And thank sister turkey and brother pig for the sacrifice of their lives for your nourishment. And thank all who participate in one way or another in the web of mutual dependency.
Of course, the third Thursday of November is but a particular, public reminder of our dependence on God and one another. May we learn the discipline of active attentive gratitude day in and day out. Recipe diem.
One of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book is one from the Order for Compline:
O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Book of Common Prayer, p. 134
It is a reminder that the world in which we live, the lives we live – all that we are and all that we have – is all the sheer gift of God. It is not something we can seize or hold. We can only receive and give thanks. This receiving is not passive but rather an active attentiveness to each moment as the irreplaceable, intimate gift of God. We thank God who wonderfully created us and still more wonderfully redeems us. It is no accident that the central practice of the Church is the Eucharist the root meaning of which is thanksgiving.
The prayer from Compline is also a reminder that we are dependant on each other’s toil. The notion of an autonomous individual, rugged or otherwise, is a false one. It is fundamentally absurd. We are born into, and dependent upon from start to finish, a web of relationships. We always and only live at the hand of others. Part of the discipline of active, attentive gratitude is giving thanks for everyone else. Margaret Visser writes, “Gratitude is always a matter of paying attention, of deliberately beholding and appreciating the other.”
Thanksgiving is a good reminder to be paying attention and deliberately beholding and appreciating others as we acknowledge our dependence. So, this Thanksgiving, thank God for his unfailing sustaining providence. And thank all those other folk on whose toil your life depends. Thank family and friends. But also thank everyone who had a hand in making your Thanksgiving feast possible: those who planted, those who harvested, those who processed and packed, those who drove the trucks and those who loaded and unloaded the trucks, those who stocked the shelves and those who checked out the groceries. Thank the power company electrician who makes sure the power gets to your home – sometimes in inclement weather. And thank sister turkey and brother pig for the sacrifice of their lives for your nourishment. And thank all who participate in one way or another in the web of mutual dependency.
Of course, the third Thursday of November is but a particular, public reminder of our dependence on God and one another. May we learn the discipline of active attentive gratitude day in and day out. Recipe diem.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Baptized into Eucharist, PARTS VI & VII
PART VI – Transformation
The sacraments can be understood as where the body of Christ “happens”. In baptism a new member of the body is “made” by incorporation. In the Eucharist the body happens in more ways than one. It is the feast by which we remember the life, death, and resurrection of the one whose historical body was broken for us. It is the feast in which the bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ. And it is also the feast by which the body of Christ, the Church, is both re-membered and fed on the body of Christ in the bread and wine.
This understanding of Eucharist as transformation is expressed on page 316 of the Book of Common Prayer, “[I]n these holy Mysteries we are made one with Christ, and Christ with us; we are made one body in him, and members one of another.” To partake of the Eucharist is to submit to the process of being both ingodded and inothered. This is what Augustine was getting at in his well-known exhortation, “Behold what you are. Become what you see: the Body of Christ, beloved of God.” (Homily 57, On the Holy Eucharist). Augustine adds that when we consume the body of Christ in the bread and wine, we do not so much transform that food into our bodies, as we are transformed by it into his body.
Participation in the Eucharist is not simply about experiencing God’s consolation. It is that. But it is much, much more. It is about transformation. It is part of our conversion process on the way to what the Eastern Christian tradition calls theosis – our being made capable of being “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 2:4) - capable of bearing the absolute love, goodness, beauty, and joy of God. We expect to be transfigured, or as Dante would have it, transhumanized into glory.
We cannot, and dare not, expect that transformation, while good and desirable, to be easy or painless. Indeed the imagery of scripture suggest otherwise. Through Jeremiah, God promises, “Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do, because of my people?’” (Jeremiah 9:7, Cf. Zechariah 13:9 & Malachi 3:3). I suspect that, however wonderful the image of beautiful silver, shining brightly might be, the ore does not necessarily welcome the heat of the crucible. In John 15:5, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” But, before that, in verse 2, he promises, “Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, God takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit God prunes, that it may bear more fruit." We rejoice in the promise of more fruitful lives. But, does the branch necessarily welcome the pruning? In truth, we do people a disservice if we invite them to the Eucharistic table as if there was no promise (and warning) that it entails refining, pruning, and transformation.
PART VII - Whose Table?
It is sometimes suggested that since the Eucharistic table is God’s table it is not for us to decide who can participate. But, given the logic of the liturgy, one might more reasonably suggest, that because it is God’s table, we should not be glib in our own participation nor in inviting others to participate. Indeed, one might wonder if an open invitation is not more presumptuous in its certainty of our own adequate knowledge and goodness, or at the very least, that it presumes a particularly cheap grace. It suggests a notion of God that is altogether domesticated and sentimental.
Annie Dillard famously warns against presuming that God is tame:
If, as we often claim, we “believe what we pray” (lex orandi, lex credendi – the rule of prayer is the rule of belief), we would do well to attend to the logic of the liturgy which suggests a certain caution in coming to the Lord’s Table. As Moses drew near to the strange sight of the burning bush, he was commanded to remove his sandals for he was on holy ground. Just so, symbolically as we move through the Eucharistic liturgy, we stop periodically to remind ourselves that we are approaching holy ground and that doing so is an awesome thing. The One into whose presence we are coming is awe-inspiring and, while not wholly unknown, remains a mystery beyond our comprehension. We are aware that in our ignorance, we are like children playing with nitroglycerine. We are also aware of our failure to live lives of love and truth and trust, and thus of the distance between us and God. As noted before, the Exhortation found before the Rite of Holy Communion found in the Book of Common Prayer warns against coming to the Eucharistic table unprepared.
The liturgy is like an elaborate spiral dance in which we symbolically circle around and around the altar drawing closer and closer to the great mystery of the Eucharist. At intervals along this spiral dance, we stop to "take off our sandals" and acknowledge our ignorance and sinfulness. And we ask for God’s mercy as we proceed deeper into the holy mystery. In the Collect for Purity, we ask God to cleanse the thoughts of out hearts that we may perfectly love God and worthily magnify his holy Name. And we dance a little closer. Then we sing the Gloria, the Kyrie, or the Trisagion; each of which asks again for God’s mercy. And we dance a little closer. After hearing God’s word read and proclaimed, we confess our sins against God and our neighbor and receive the promise of God’s forgiveness. We exchange the peace, recognizing that we cannot go to the altar of the Prince of Peace unless we are being and making peace ourselves. And we dance a little closer. In the Sanctus we declare that we know the one in whose presence we are is holy. And we dance a little closer. Before the breaking of the bread, we say the Lord’s Prayer in which we again ask for forgiveness. And we dance a little closer. Again and again, we acknowledge that we do not really know what we are up to, that the One with whom we are dealing is holy, and that we are ignorant, sinful and broken people in need of mercy. By God’s amazing grace we are invited and encouraged to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). But that confidence is born in baptism and is not the same as presumption. Our liturgy reminds us that we are all always in need of mercy if we are to gather in the Presence.
As "stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Corintians 4:1), it is indeed the Church's vocation to see that those who come to those mysteries are aware of what they are doing and assure that they are prepared through initiation into those mysteries via baptism.
Next: PART VIII, Hospitality
The sacraments can be understood as where the body of Christ “happens”. In baptism a new member of the body is “made” by incorporation. In the Eucharist the body happens in more ways than one. It is the feast by which we remember the life, death, and resurrection of the one whose historical body was broken for us. It is the feast in which the bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ. And it is also the feast by which the body of Christ, the Church, is both re-membered and fed on the body of Christ in the bread and wine.
This understanding of Eucharist as transformation is expressed on page 316 of the Book of Common Prayer, “[I]n these holy Mysteries we are made one with Christ, and Christ with us; we are made one body in him, and members one of another.” To partake of the Eucharist is to submit to the process of being both ingodded and inothered. This is what Augustine was getting at in his well-known exhortation, “Behold what you are. Become what you see: the Body of Christ, beloved of God.” (Homily 57, On the Holy Eucharist). Augustine adds that when we consume the body of Christ in the bread and wine, we do not so much transform that food into our bodies, as we are transformed by it into his body.
Participation in the Eucharist is not simply about experiencing God’s consolation. It is that. But it is much, much more. It is about transformation. It is part of our conversion process on the way to what the Eastern Christian tradition calls theosis – our being made capable of being “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 2:4) - capable of bearing the absolute love, goodness, beauty, and joy of God. We expect to be transfigured, or as Dante would have it, transhumanized into glory.
We cannot, and dare not, expect that transformation, while good and desirable, to be easy or painless. Indeed the imagery of scripture suggest otherwise. Through Jeremiah, God promises, “Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do, because of my people?’” (Jeremiah 9:7, Cf. Zechariah 13:9 & Malachi 3:3). I suspect that, however wonderful the image of beautiful silver, shining brightly might be, the ore does not necessarily welcome the heat of the crucible. In John 15:5, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” But, before that, in verse 2, he promises, “Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, God takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit God prunes, that it may bear more fruit." We rejoice in the promise of more fruitful lives. But, does the branch necessarily welcome the pruning? In truth, we do people a disservice if we invite them to the Eucharistic table as if there was no promise (and warning) that it entails refining, pruning, and transformation.
PART VII - Whose Table?
It is sometimes suggested that since the Eucharistic table is God’s table it is not for us to decide who can participate. But, given the logic of the liturgy, one might more reasonably suggest, that because it is God’s table, we should not be glib in our own participation nor in inviting others to participate. Indeed, one might wonder if an open invitation is not more presumptuous in its certainty of our own adequate knowledge and goodness, or at the very least, that it presumes a particularly cheap grace. It suggests a notion of God that is altogether domesticated and sentimental.
Annie Dillard famously warns against presuming that God is tame:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” - Teaching a Stone to Talk
If, as we often claim, we “believe what we pray” (lex orandi, lex credendi – the rule of prayer is the rule of belief), we would do well to attend to the logic of the liturgy which suggests a certain caution in coming to the Lord’s Table. As Moses drew near to the strange sight of the burning bush, he was commanded to remove his sandals for he was on holy ground. Just so, symbolically as we move through the Eucharistic liturgy, we stop periodically to remind ourselves that we are approaching holy ground and that doing so is an awesome thing. The One into whose presence we are coming is awe-inspiring and, while not wholly unknown, remains a mystery beyond our comprehension. We are aware that in our ignorance, we are like children playing with nitroglycerine. We are also aware of our failure to live lives of love and truth and trust, and thus of the distance between us and God. As noted before, the Exhortation found before the Rite of Holy Communion found in the Book of Common Prayer warns against coming to the Eucharistic table unprepared.
The liturgy is like an elaborate spiral dance in which we symbolically circle around and around the altar drawing closer and closer to the great mystery of the Eucharist. At intervals along this spiral dance, we stop to "take off our sandals" and acknowledge our ignorance and sinfulness. And we ask for God’s mercy as we proceed deeper into the holy mystery. In the Collect for Purity, we ask God to cleanse the thoughts of out hearts that we may perfectly love God and worthily magnify his holy Name. And we dance a little closer. Then we sing the Gloria, the Kyrie, or the Trisagion; each of which asks again for God’s mercy. And we dance a little closer. After hearing God’s word read and proclaimed, we confess our sins against God and our neighbor and receive the promise of God’s forgiveness. We exchange the peace, recognizing that we cannot go to the altar of the Prince of Peace unless we are being and making peace ourselves. And we dance a little closer. In the Sanctus we declare that we know the one in whose presence we are is holy. And we dance a little closer. Before the breaking of the bread, we say the Lord’s Prayer in which we again ask for forgiveness. And we dance a little closer. Again and again, we acknowledge that we do not really know what we are up to, that the One with whom we are dealing is holy, and that we are ignorant, sinful and broken people in need of mercy. By God’s amazing grace we are invited and encouraged to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). But that confidence is born in baptism and is not the same as presumption. Our liturgy reminds us that we are all always in need of mercy if we are to gather in the Presence.
As "stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Corintians 4:1), it is indeed the Church's vocation to see that those who come to those mysteries are aware of what they are doing and assure that they are prepared through initiation into those mysteries via baptism.
Next: PART VIII, Hospitality
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