Sarx

HEN I Sat down to sketch out this series, I thought to do it in the order presented: Trinity, Incarnation and Eucharist. It made sense thinking from the top down. But as I considered this series I realised it was important to actually do it in historical order: the Eucharist came first in the life of the Church, then the understanding that Jesus was God and then the understanding of Trinity. Although it is clear that the sketch of an idea of Trinity was present from the end of the 1st Century, it’s not until the theological crises of the post-Constantine council era that we begin to see the firming up of this doctrine.

I do not mean to say that the Holy Spirit wasn’t considered divine before that time: rather the conception of Trinity or of Dual Divinity or even modalism wasn’t firmed up. Arianism alone shows that, in some way, there was a debate not about Jesus divinity, but rather about what it means and how it happens. So I will begin with Eucharist. Next I will proceed with Incarnation and then Trinity; but then I will turn around, ending where I begin. In the later Church, it is clear that our understand flows the other way and so I will need to draw the line but from us upwards (Eucharist, Incarnation, Trinity) and then grom God down to us (Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist)
Eucharist comes first: our understanding of Jesus follows and then our understanding of God proceeds outward from this point.

It is important to always bear this Chronology in mind. Equally important is one other part of history: the Eucharist was being celebrated before the Gospels were written by the Church, before the Epistles were written to the Church. As the Bible was drawn together by the Church into its canonical existence so the Church was drawn together by the Eucharist.

Before there the all the saints wrote about the divine bread, before Justin mixed up the historical procession (attributing to the Gospels the ideas of “memoirs”), the Church celebrated Eucharist. The earliest rites (for example the Didache and the rite of Addai and Mari) do not even have the magical “words of institution” in them. These words are early, yes – by the middle of the 1st century – but they are not in widespread use in the Church. They take a slow evolution to spread. If the scholarship of some is valid and the text of St Melito Peri Pascha is a Eucharistic Hagadda then well into the Second Century the Johannine Church did not use the words of institution (as is also evidenced by the absence of them in the Gospel text).

Before there was a conception of “Hocus Pocus” or some kind of special words to say over the bread and wine, the church was making Eucharist. Long before Hocus Pocus was wide spread, all Christians made Eucharist.

Stories of Jesus life in the Gospels and other Traditions of the Church offer us the image of feasting repeatedly as a sign of Jesus ministry. In this he was in line with the Prophetic ideas of Justice and Gods Kingdom. To the ancient world, the idea of the feast as a sign of abundance, as a sign of wealth and prosperity and joy, was also an evident sign of God’s blessing.

The people of Israel told stories about God feeding them in times of distress – manna for the tribes wandering in the wilderness and an inexhaustible jar of meal for Elijah. After Abraham had won a great battle, the mysterious “Melchizedek king of Salem, brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God most high” (Genesis 14:18). This legendary use of bread and wine in cementing a relationship between two ethnic groups is but one example of a ritual meal pointing to God’s concern for diverse peoples. Another appears among the prophecies of Isaiah:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wine strained clear. (Isaiah 25:6)

Note that in this vision of the banquet all the nations, tribes, and clans of the earth are God’s guests. No one is to be excluded.

The vision of God’s banquet in Isaiah, may have inspired the story that is most often told in the gospels – Jesus feeding the multitudes, either four or five thousand at a time. In these stories, Jesus lays down no conditions for participation, establishes no barriers to the meal. At his last supper with his disciples, Jesus invited all twelve to share in the bread and wine, although not one of them had yet developed any faith in him. Of the twelve – one betrayed him, one denied him, and the rest ran away. Following the example of Jesus, we think that all people present should be offered bread and wine whenever the church celebrates the Lord’s Supper. As they share the ritual meal, they participate in the vision of a just world where all people live at peace.

The “banquet” that always begins with the bread and wine has been a symbol of inclusiveness and reconciliation throughout the Jewish and Christian traditions. How ironic it seems that the church for centuries has used communion as the symbol and tool for divisiveness, often creating complicated rules, laws and policies about who can receive the communion elements and who cannot. And yet many of our favorite stories of Jesus’s life are about his open table, his table of fellowship, and the wonderfully strange and unique people with whom we find him “breaking bread” and dining.

This prophetic sign was joined with the the Mediterranean cultural idea of the Symposium: the teaching meal. We see one of these in Plato, of course, but it was a tradition widespread in both Jewish and Pagan cultures. Rick Fabian, in Worship at St Gregorys, condenses the history thus:

Recent Jewish scholarship has resolved a half century’s debate over the ritual context of this meal. Because the Gospels fix Jesus’ death at Passover time, many have assumed that his Last Supper was a Passover meal, or Seder. Yet the Christian eucharist shows no trace of Seder ritual before the ninth century, when Alcuin and others “restored” (in fact, introduced) such Passover elements as unleavened bread, which they assumed had got lost.

In The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) Dom Gregory Dix argued that the Last Supper could not have been a Seder, since Jesus died before Passover; instead, the eucharist derived from the Chabûrah, or Feast of Friends, which rabbis kept regularly with their close disciples. C. Kucharek’s The Byzantine-Slav Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, (1971) and L. Mitchell’s The Meaning of Ritual, (1977) match Chabûrah procedure with the early Christian liturgy described in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or Didachê.

Yet Dix’s argument drew opposition, notably from J. Jeremias in his The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (1966) who conjectured a different Palestinian calendar for Passover; and indeed Jewish scholars have established that Passover calendars varied then. Moreover, our sources for Jewish Chabûrah ritual date from Christian times, and likely reflect Christian influence.

Now Jewish research shows that these models are not alternatives, but only chronological stages in the history of the same meal. This was no Jewish ritual at all, but rather the Hellenistic Symposium: originally a banquet eaten without alcohol, followed by a drinking bout with philosophical discussion. Among Jews and Christians it evolved as the formal discussion gradually invaded the dinner, and focussed on the symbolic meaning of the foods eaten. The Last Supper story portrays an early stage in this evolution; the Didachê and Chabûrah, intermediate stages; and the modern Seder, the final term. J. Tabory’s Towards a history of the paschal meal (NAAL paper 1998), cites many publications from 1907 to the present in this regard. A companion paper The Last Supper and the anti-chavurah meal by A. Rosenberg shows early Chabûrah rules required exclusive purity — but of the diners, not of the ceremony or the food, where rabbinical legislation focussed later.

It was this gathering together to feast in the Risen Life of Christ, to share his teachings, to enjoy fellowship – this was the constitution of the Church. Without the Eucharist there is no church at all. Even traditions that downplay the whole idea of “sacrament” and “liturgy” have fellowship meals, agape meals, in the manner of Early Christians. Only later, when the focus on the “bread as body of Christ” arises do we misplace the idea of the gathered community as Body of Christ.

This sharing of food – which was at once the Founder’s ordinance as well as a clear mark of what we would later call socialism – is the path to justice. As rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, single and married all gather together, to share what they have and what they can, the kingdom is manifested in their midst. Even today, groups know the best way to get to know one another is to eat together. The best way to draw in new members is to eat together.

It is one of the most intimate things you can do together in public (in most places). It is the surest sign of fellowship: whenever something troubling arises at work, my boss insists the two or more parties “go to lunch”.

Without all the baggage of transubstantiation and hocus pocus, without all the arguments over open or closed communion, it is Eucharist, that is our beginning.

But what is Eucharist?

Paul tells us to make Eucharist in all things. Εν παντι ευχαριστειτε: In All things, “eucharisteite”. Generally translated as “give thanks”. Or “Make thanksgiving”. To use new-speak (from the liberal seminaries) it says “In all things, Make Eucharist.” or even “Do Eucharist.”

One of the Jewish teaching documents of this period specifically forbade the offering of prayers that begin “we thank you” (rather than the traditional “Blessed are you”)…

Giving thanks, making Eucharist, is what Christians do. As I said, this was being done before we even had the words: but I don’t need to pretend to be writing in that era! The Christian – each of us – stands at the altar of her heart, in the center of her world making Eucharist. She is priest, offering to God all that she has and thanking God. In return, God gives all back transubstantiated – transformed, anointed; in some way it comes back to each of us Christed, participating in God’s self.

This can happen to anything – παντι “Panti” comes from παν “Pan”. It means ALL. All means all. Everything, total. We are commanded to make Eucharist with all things. But this transubstantiation cannot happen without the offering: that which is not offered is not redeemed. That which is held back is condemned. This is, I think, one of the meanings of such lessons as “The Parable of the Talents.” The man who took what he had and buried it was condemned. The men who, as it were, kept their talents out of the closet were blessed. Every thing, παντι, must be offered to God.

In Philippians, St Paul says that we shouldn’t worry about anything because we can make known our supplications (deesis) to God in Eucharist. The Greek word translated as “prayer” in this verse the KJV was also used in the Jewish community to indicate a place set apart for prayer. One almost wants to hear “lay aside all earthly cares, and come to the place set apart for prayer, making supplication in the eucharist.” That would be too high a theological construction for this period, but again, I write from where and when I am. St Paul’s meaning is clear: make thanksgiving. Do Eucharist. Offer this concern or (whatever it is) to God. We hear it meaning that we should offer everything to God just as the Church offers bread and wine.

This is the centre of the Christian life: Εν παντι ευχαριστειτε In all things, Eucharist. Eucharist is more than the Divine Liturgy, more than the Mass, it is to be our life: it’s what we do with hot dogs on Memorial day. It is to be what we do with our Job no matter what it is. Eucharist is what we make at the grocery story when the clerk takes too long, or when grandma in front of us writes a cheque. We are to transubstantiate the clutch in that standard we can afford (when we really want the zippy automatic sports car). We need thanksgiving when we loose the lottery and when we divorce. We make the body of Christ present in the world even when all we have is TVP chilli and some Coca-Cola.

This constitutes the Church. Thanking, versus blessing: we do not bless God as a slave to a master. Rather we thank him as Sons and Daughters to their Father, as fellow heirs to their elder Brother, as friends with the Son of God. It’s when we can’t make Eucharist that we fail: forgetting to thank the Maker for all that you have comes from Him. When we forget that, we forget to share all that we have with everyone. We fall out of the Kingdom.