Category Archives: Eucharist

Embittering the eucharist

Posted by on March 30, 2011 15 comments

I’ve heard it said many times in various theological discussions that, given the divided state of the church, the eucharist should taste “bitter” to us when we partake of it. What was supposed to be a sign and sacrament of our unity out to taste bitter and penitential, given our manifest disunity. Seems straightforward enough, and on one level I don’t mind such assertions. Certainly we should never minimize the sin of refusing fellowship to one another in disobedience to Christ’s work of making all things one in his Crucified body.

But, really, should the current ecclesiastical state of affairs really make our experience of the eucharist more “bitter” than it would otherwise be? Should the sign of Christ’s complete and total self-giving for us and our salvation be an occasion in which we, bitterly, reflect on our ecclesiastical shortcomings? On one level, sure, its never a bad thing to lose sight of where we stand before God, but this would be the case whether or not the church was structurally united. If there is any bitterness in the eucharist it cannot be any bitterness other than our sorrow at being those who crucify the One who loves us utterly. Whatever bitterness the eucharist has does not derive from our subsequent ecclesiastical failures, but from the event of the crucifixion itself in which we are the crucifiers.

To leap too quickly from the proper, Christologically-founded penitence that should attend our remembrance of Christ’s self-giving to an ecclesiological lament over the church’s sundered structure seems to me to be something of an adventure in missing the point.

Supersized eucharist?

Posted by on March 23, 2010 5 comments

According to one study, it looks like over the last thousand years or so our artistic representations of the Last Supper have seen the food portions get bigger and bigger:

Has even the Last Supper been supersized?

The food in famous paintings of the meal has grown by biblical proportions over the last millennium, researchers report in a medical journal Tuesday.

Using a computer, they compared the size of the food to the size of the heads in 52 paintings of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death.

If art imitates life, we’re in trouble, the researchers conclude. The size of the main dish grew 69 percent; the size of the plate, 66 percent, and the bread, 23 percent, between the years 1000 and 2000.

Probably doesn’t mean all that much. Still a bit odd and amusing though.

Cavanaugh on the Eucharist

Posted by on May 25, 2009 1 comment

William Cavanaugh has an article in the Other Journal on torture and the Eucharist in America. It won’t be anything new to folks that have read any of his books, but its worth a look if you haven’t. Here’s a quote:

The Eucharist is not just about seeing the world in a certain way, but about acting. Social imagination is not merely a mental act. The Eucharist is about the construction of a social body — the Body of Christ — that is capable of resisting the imagination of the state when resistance is called for. In the early Church, the term anamnesis was not a recalling to mind, but a re-membering of Christ’s body, that is, an action that knit together the members of the Body of Christ. 

This image is used over and over again by Paul. The idea of individual bodies being members of a larger social body is not new to Paul, but is found in the ancient Greek idea of the body politic. For the Greeks, the idea of a body politic tended to stress order and obedience, especially the obedience of those excluded from citizenship, namely women, children, and slaves. In the Church, by contrast, all these are included in Christ. Moreover, for Paul, “[T]he members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor” (I Cor. 12:22-3). Most importantly, in the body of Christ both pain and joy are communicable. “When one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (I Cor. 12:26).

In this reality of shared pain, we see the distance between friend and enemy overcome. For the sharing of pain goes beyond a sharing with other members of the Church. If the Church is the Body of Christ, the sacrament and sacrifice for the world, then we are to be broken and given away as food for others. The Church is, as Paul says, to “make up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24), by suffering together with the victims of violence. If it is the case that the Eucharist makes the Body of Christ, then the Church does not simply commemorate God’s “no” to violence, but embodiesGod’s answer to violence in the world. We ourselves prefer to absorb the violence of the world rather than to perpetrate violence.

The Church as Apocalyptic Event, Baptism, Eucharist, and Discipleship

Posted by on February 27, 2009 1 comment

Continuing this series of responses to Steve Long‘s queries about “filling out” some of the details of what conceiving of the church as apocalyptic might mean, here is his third question:

Would [an understanding of the church as apocalyptic event] acknowledge the necessity of the relation between baptism (and thus a commitment to a life of discipleship) and the Eucharist?

The first point–which has been made in other ways in regard to the first two questions–is that an apocalyptic conception of the church places its primary emphasis on the centrality of God’s prior action in Christ singular historicity. What is central about an apocalyptic conception of the church is that it seeks to consistently bear witness to the radically interruptive and transformative action of the Trinitarian God in and for the world. As such, the supreme characteristic of the church is its struggle to adjust their vision, as it were, to the radical new world that God has wrought in Christ. And apocalyptic conception of the church requires us to think the church in distinctly responsive and active terms, because the church lives “after the event”, seeking to discover what it means for us to live in light of the great transformation that God in Christ has effected.

So, bearing that in mind, baptism and Eucharist name gifts of the Christ’s Spirit to the church, through which the church shapes its life in a manner fitting to the great transformation of the world in the apocalypse of Christ. Baptism is a sign of the new world that has been created in Christ, through the singular outpouring of God’s Trinitarian agape. Baptism is the gift of Christ’s Spirit who, in the midst of our own contingent histories, translates us into Christ’s own singular historicity by drawing us, in baptism, into God’s own radical love. From an apocalyptic perspective, the strongest possible connection between baptism and discipleship is drawn. For, baptism names the Spirit’s action of drawing us into Christ’s own apocalyptic victory over the powers, effecting liberation for slavery and death. As such, baptism is fundamentally our pneumatological induction into what Christ has apocalypsed–the transfigured creation in which God comes to dwell with humankind and be their God. Being such an induction, baptism translates us into a whole mode of life, the life of being engrafted into God’s radical love. The admonitions of the New Testament often follow these lines: “Welcome one another as God in Christ has welcomed you” (Rom 15:14).

Now, in regard to the connection between baptism (and the life of discipleship) and the eucharist, there is much to say indeed. The first thing to be noted is that from an apocalyptic perspective, the Eucharist’s quality as anamnesis is of the utmost importance. The Lord’s Supper is fundamentally an act of remembrance of Christ’s historical action for our salvation. The Eucharist is the constant embodied remembering of God’s singular apocalypse which is our salvation. As such the  Eucharist remembers and reenacts Christ’s own dispossessive love for us unto death, the same love into which we are inducted in baptism. The Eucharist constitutes our continual reimmersion into the agapeic pattern of Christ’s life into which we are called as disciples.

Moreover, the Eucharist is also to be understood as a modality of Christ’s presence to the church. As such it recalls Christ’s promise to be with his disciples to the end of the age (Matt 28:20) in their missional vocation to proclaim the gospel. Thus, Christ’s Eucharistic presence is helpfully understood as his empowering accompaniment, in the Spirit of his missional church. In the Eucharist, Christ abides with his church through the Spirit, leading the church in its missional vocation to embody the radical love of God. From an apocalyptic perspective, Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist is not separable in any sense from his promise to, through the Spirit, accompany and empower the church in its missional encounter with the world.

So, what, in a nutshell is the connection between baptism and Eucharist? In baptism we are inducted in the radical love of God, in which our lives are reshaped according the cruciform image of Christ. In the Eucharist Christ we remember the agape of Christ into which we have been inducted in baptism, and Christ himself, through the Spirit is present to us in the sacramental act, accompanying us in our missional vocation to embody the irruptive and transformative agape of God in all the world. There is certainly a great deal more that should be said about the sacraments and their relation to apocalyptic, but for now, I hope this at least begins to shed some light on how we might understand some key aspects of their connection.

Eucharist, Eschatology, and World in the Ecclesiology of Bulgakov

Posted by on September 30, 2008 3 comments

My own installment of the 2008 Bulgakov Blog Conference has just been posted over at Land of Unlikeness. I have re-posted it here, but please direct all comments to TOU to support the discussion over there. My thanks to Dan for all his hard work of organizing and patience with us contributors. Here is my post engaging Bulgakov’s ecclesiology.

Sergei Bulgakov is unique among Orthodox theologians, Russian and otherwise for all manner of reasons, not the least of which involves his distinctive ecclesiology. Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb provides perhaps the most innovative work in Orthodox ecclesiology in the twentieth century. In what follows, I will attempt to make a provisional exploration into the fabric of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology looking particularly at a constellation of coordinates that are operative in the shape of his thought. I hope to explore the way in which Bulgakov’s ecclesiological thought is a dynamic theological articulation, which circulates between the nodal points of the Eucharist, eschatology, and the world. Bulgakov’s ecclesiology is, through and through informed by a dynamic conceptual interplay between these three major foci. My aim in this essay is limited simply to the observance of some of these dynamics. I hope that in so doing I will illuminate some of the key contributions of Bulgakov to the ecumenical task of exploring the nature of the church and its place in the shape of redemption.

It should be noted at the outset that I am no expert on Bulgakov and those more knowledgeable about his thought than I will certainly be in a good position to correct any imbalances and misapprehensions in what follows. In the interest of space and focus, I am here taking my cues from two of Bulgakov’s works alone, his shorter dogmatic treatises, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist and his massive treatment of ecclesiology, The Bride of the Lamb. In both of these works Bulgakov binds together an integrated view of the redemption, originating in the Christic self-oblation of the Lamb.

The first thing to be noted in approaching this endeavor is found in Bulgakov’s treatment of “The Holy Grail.” Herein, Bulgakov engages in a form of inquiry that is rightly described by the translator as “mystical lyricism” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 9). Here Bulgakov attempts a “dogmatic exegesis” of John 19:34 which recounts Christ’s side being pierced by the spear of Longinus and the blood and water flowing forth from the wound. Bulgakov recounts the standard legends of the Holy Grail, which culminate in the Arthurian poems of the Middle Ages, but then goes on to theologically reimagine the idea of the Holy Grail from a radically different point of view. According to Bulgakov, the Holy Grail is not a chalice, which caught the blood and water from Christ’s side, but rather is the world itself into which Christ’s shed blood and water flowed.

The blood and water that flowed from Christ’s side on the cross of course represent Baptismal water and Eucharistic blood in Bulgakov’s view. However, he makes a radical point of distinction here. There is a crucial difference between Christ’s poured-out blood and water and the elements of the Eucharist and the waters of Baptism shared in in the church. The differentiation is not a substantial one, but a differentiation of mode. For Bulgakov, “the blood and water that came out of His side were not Eucharistic in intent” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 33). What is crucial for Bulgakov is that the blood and water which poured from the wound of Christ, though identical to the Baptismal and Eucharistic elements substantially, is different in that it is not offered to the faithful for communion, but rather is poured out into the substance of the world as such (see The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, pp. 34ff). The blood and water that are poured out into the Holy Grail, the world, are not given “for the communion of the faithful but for the sanctification and transfiguration of the world” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 34).

Here is Bulgakov’s key point, the Eucharistic and Baptismal elements, Christ’s blood and water are poured out on the cross and remain in the world. Bulgakov insists that this outpouring of Christ’s wound on the cross indelibly alters the fabric of the world, binding it forever to Christ, sanctifying it and preparing it for its final transfiguration at the parousia. For Bulgakov the very metabolism of the world, its cosmological fabric is transmuted by the flowing forth of Christ’s water and blood into it. There is a real sense for Bulgakov that Christ’s own human substance remains diffused into the world through his self-oblation. The world, in Christ’s outpouring is “Christified”, permanently bound to Christ, united with him and impelled on by this union towards its eschatological transfiguration by the Spirit. Indeed, for Bulgakov it is the fact of Christ’s blood and water pouring into the heart of the world that even makes it possible for the earth to sustain, to bear the Pentecostal coming of the Spirit whose eschatological epiphany is recounted in radically apocalyptic terms. The biblical images of the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood in the day of the Lord (cf. Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:17-31) are the manifestation of this pneumatological intensity, which the world can only endure on the basis of its Christic reconstitution through being transfigured into the Holy Grail. (see The Bride of the Lamb, pp. 419-421)

In short, for Bulgakov, Christ’s passion and resurrection radically transfigures the reality of the world in a distinctively eschatological and Eucharistic manner. The world is, in a sense Eucharisticized and Baptized by the blood and water of Christ’s body in a manner that inclines it to, and sets it on the path toward its eschatological destiny. Christ imparts his divine humanity to the world itself, allowing his blood and water to remain in the earth. In so doing he binds himself to the world, making it a place upon which his presence can rest in its epiphanic, eschatological fullness. “This blood and water made the world a place of the presence of Christ’s power, prepared the world for its future transfiguration, for the meeting with Christ come in glory” (The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 44). Thus, for Bulgakov, “the reception and the sending down of the Holy Spirit into the world depend upon the Incarnation, upon the profound, radical transformation of the world’s natural being”. Only thereby does “the world become capable of bearing the Pentecost, of receiving the fire of the Holy Spirit without being consumed by it.” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 419).

What Bulgakov here presents is a vision of redemption that is at once apocalyptic and Eucharistic (see The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, p. 45). In Christ’s passion the world is constituted anew as the place of his presence, on which his Spirit rests, impelling the world towards it eschatological future, the transfiguration of creaturely reality in the union of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem (see The Bride of the Lamb, p. 522-524). The whole shape of the world, constituted by Christ’s blood and water is Eucharistic. It is this construction of the world in and through Christ’s blood and water that make the coming transfiguration of the world into a cosmic redemption rather than a cosmic holocaust. Christ’s suffusion of the world with his very humanity renders the world a place capable of bearing the weight of the divine glory even as it transfigures the world in a purgative cleansing fire. The world is destined to “undergo a catastrophic trancensus: on the one hand, it will perish in a cosmic fire; on the other hand, it will be transformed inwardly.” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 417) Thus, the Christic outpouring of Christ’s humanity into the fabric of the world is what renders possible the Pneumatic mission of the Spirit to renew and transfigure. “It is precisely the Holy Spirit who accomplishes the transfiguration of the universe: the energy of the Holy Spirit destroys the sinful, imperfect old world and creates a new world, with the renewal of all creation. This is the power of the Fire that burns, melts, transmutes, illuminates, and transfigures.” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 421)

For Bulgakov this dynamic vision of the redemption of the world, which is at once Trinitarian, Eucharistic, and apocalyptic is grounded in the ecclesial reality which exists in the world, seen preeminently through the sacramental life. It is the church that is the center of God’s eschatological outpouring of purgative, transfiguring grace, which proclaims and anticipates the eschatological destiny of the redemption, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Bulgakov’s ecclesiological vision is thoroughgoingly cosmic in scope, seeing in the Eucharistic life of the church the future of the world, which was pre-accomplished in Christ’s kenotic outpouring of his humanity into the world, constituting it as the Holy Grail, the chalice of God’s grace, transfigured by the fire of the Spirit and offered up to the Father as a divine sacrifice of praise.

These observations, of course, do not sink very deep into the riches of Bulgakov’s ecclesiology, most notably they fail to explore the connection between Bulgakov’s configuration of eschatology, Eucharist, and world and his Sophiology, which begs exploration and analysis. That is a task I leave to others and to ensuing conversation.

True Radicality

Posted by on May 6, 2008 Comments Off

“What is truly radical…is not that God rewards those who help the poor; what is truly radical is that Jesus identifies himself with the poor.  The pain of the hungry person is the pain of Christ, and it is thus also the pain of anyone who is a member of the body of Christ.  If we are identified with Christ, who identifies himself with the suffering of all, then what is called for is more than just charity.  The very distinction between what is mine and what is yours breaks down in the body of Christ.  We are not to consider ourselves as absolute owners of our stuff, who then occasionally graciously bestow charity on the less fortunate.  In the body of Christ, your pain is my pain, and my stuff is available to be communicated to you in your need… In the consumption of the Eucharist, we cease to be merely ‘the other’ to each other.  In the Eucharist, Christ is gift, giver, and recipient; we are simultaneously fed and become food for others.”

–William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 56.

Trinity and Hospitality

Posted by on February 15, 2008 8 comments

Most of us have seen Rublev’s ikon of the Hospitality of Abraham in which the Trinity is portrayed as three angelic persons in communion around a table.  Now, of course many of us are predisposed to immediately point out the theological problems with the ikon, the most glaring of which is its seeming portrayal of the persons of the Trinity as three separate individuals.  However, to enforce such theological specificity into an ikonic witness to the Trinity is to make a distinctly Western theological mistake, namely the mistake of thinking that we can univocally represent God in any form whatsoever, be it verbal or pictorial.  What I find more illuminating and provocative about this ikon is actually its name.  This is not simply an ikon of the immanent Trinity (how I think it is usually read), but of “the hospitality of Abraham.”  I find a couple of insights in that.

First, the ikon is making a statement about how we encounter the fellowship of the triune God.  In the ikon, we encounter the persons of the Trinity in and through the practice of hospitality to the stranger.  Abraham’s encounter with God as recounted in Genesis 18 takes place in the context of the extension of table fellowship.  The ikon seems here to be making a profound statement about where and how we are going to experience the life of triune communion.  It seems to be implied that it is in extending hospitality to the stranger, opening up one’s life to the outsider that we commune with the triune persons.

Second, the table as portrayed in the ikon is clearly eucharistic in nature.  This seems to say something about the eucharist and about hospitality.  First, it seems to say that something central about the eucharist is the reality of hosting and being hosted by the triune God.  The eucharist is an event of divine and human hospitality.  While the ikon is of Abraham’s hospitality to the three strangers, the presentation of the ikon has the front end of the table open to the reader of the ikon, beckoning the reader to see himself as being invited to the table.  The eucharist, then is simultaneously the act of God’s hospitality, of welcoming created persons into fellowship with God’s triune life and the church’s act of opening our lives to God, offering him our gifts and begging him to remain with us.  Conversely, the ikon also seems to be saying that hospitality is eucharistic.  It seems to intimate that the offer of hospitality to the stranger is itself a sacramental and eucharistic reality in which the triune God comes to meet us.  In and through the offer of hospitality and the act of eating together in peace, the reality of the Trinity is present among us in and as our koinonial and agapeic fellowship. 

What I find most compelling about the Rublev ikon is the way in which it rightly portrays the relationship of giving and receiving hospitality to the fullness of the Christian mystery.  For us to know the life of the Trinity in our midst is to live a life that embodies the traversal between the giving and the receiving of hospitality.

What Makes a Sacramental Theology “High”?

Posted by on January 24, 2008 10 comments

One of the things that often gets kicked around in ecclesial discussions is the issue of a “high” versus a “low” sacramental theology.  However, there are some interesting ambiguities that I note in most of these discussions.  In the first place, I find it odd that whenever we are talking about “sacramental theology” we are invariably talking almost exclusively about the Eucharist and very little else.  Especially when discussions of sacramental theology interface with questions of ecclesial unity, the question of Eucharistic communion is pretty much the central question.  However, in the New Testament is is Baptism, rather than the Eucharist which is the common sacramental marker of the church’s unity: “One Lord, One faith, One baptism”.

Also interesting and odd is the way in which “high” sacramentology is equated with a certain sort of stress on the mode the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist.  In other words, one’s theology of Eucharistic presence seems to often be the only way in which we ascertain whether one’s sacramental theology is “high” or “low”.  I find this a problematic tendency because it is myopic.  If we allow theologies of real presence to be the litmus test for what constitutes a “high” sacramental theology, it seems to me we will always end up with reductive accounts of sacramental theology as a whole.  We end up with a sacramentology gives inadequate attention to baptism, the proclamation of the Word, and the reality of the gathered people of God as central elements in what constitutes a truly high sacramental theology. 

This is not to say that the Eucharist is not the “sacrament of sacraments”, only that it can never be considered in isolation, and that our theologies of Eucharistic presence do not establish our sacramental theologies as “high” or “low”.  Only a full-orbed understanding of the sacramental practices of the church presented in their wholeness and intimate innerconnection can give an adequate picture of what constitutes a truly high sacramental theology.

Eating and Death

Posted by on January 22, 2008 3 comments

One of the issues that is often glossed over in reflections on the Eucharist is the reasoning behind the fact that through our eating a meal together, we proclaim the death of Jesus.  Today, one would not normally associate death with a celebratory meal; meals are an instantiation of life, not context of commemorating a death.  The question for Christians goes to the theological significance of what eating means and how such an action can me construed as a symbolum of the death of Christ.

The reason why such a connection is difficult for us to often see is, I contend, largely due to the particularly modern sort of necrophobia which attends our understanding of death.  (Though, of course, this skittish necrophobia is but the flip side of a pervese necrophilia.)  Our cultural understanding of death is based on a particular ontology if you will, and ontology of possession and violence.  Personal identity is construed in modernity as the distinctive possession of the individual person.  I have that which I am.  To be alive is to posses myself, be in control of myself, etc.  Thus, for the world today, death can only be understood as a form of radical and catastrophic violence.  Very few today think of death as a “change” or “going to sleep”, rather death is seen is a catastrophic mutilation, a horrific dispossession which destroys and violates.  It is to be avoided at all costs, for if we believe in identity-as-possession, death ultimately means the complete and total undoing of our being.

On the basis of such an understanding of death, the idea that a celebratory meal should proclaim and commemorate a death is irrevocably scandalous.  And it is precisely the logic of identity-as-possession that is subverted by the Eucharistic logic of celebration.  Jesus’ life and death subvert the narrative of possessed identity; Jesus’ entire life was one in which rather than maintaining and preserving his life, he continually expended it for others in a pattern of self-giving which had its culmination is his death.  Throughout his life, Jesus defied the idea of possessed identity by receiving his life totally from outside himself, from the Father, and by expending that life as gift for others, even to the point of death.  For Jesus, identity is not possession, rather is is pure gift, which is always and only received and must always and only be given away.  Jesus’ death is not the catastrophic mutilation, or erasure of his identity by forces from without, rather Jesus chooses to die.  “No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own accord.”

We are given, in Jesus a very different paradigm and practice of death.  For Jesus, death is not a final robbery, a last destruction, but the culmination of self-expending love which is the eternal life of the triune God.  Jesus’ complete self-expenditure culminates in him being completely and utterly used up.  His death is not something forced on him, but rather characterizes the very shape of his entire life of total self-giving which nourishes and engenders the life of the triune God in those who are joined to Christ by the Spirit.  Christ’s death is his total giving of himself for the sake of engendering and communicating life to others.

That is why the Eucharist proclaims the Lord’s death.  For in eating we are nourished; in eating, life is communicated to us.  The bread and wine of the Eucharist do not so much represent Jesus’ being killed, as his total self-expenditure, culminating in death through which we are nourished, sustained, and transformed.  Eating signifies death, not because death is violent mutilation, but because it is the form of the radically prodigal, self-expending love that is the divine life which is given to us in Christ.  The Eucharist embodies the transformation of identity from possession to gift.  It proclaims a logic of redemption in which life, rather than needing to be secured as a possession, can be given away to the fullest.  It proclaims that the ultimate ground of all being is the infinitely fruitful life of the Father, who suffuses all things with infinite life, such that the giving away of life, even unto death no longer need terrify us.  For in the bosom of the Father, death itself is transformed in to vivifying and luminescent life.

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