Sarx

ITH THE Last post in this series we began a look at Eucharist. I’d like to broaden this out now, seeing Eucharist in places we might normally see it.

Before there was the idea of “Mass” - of a ritual eating divided out from the community meal - there was the reality of the Agape Feast. All the community comes together and feasts in Jesus’ name and memory. They share all that they have: those who have much feed those who have nothing. Those who have nothing experience the abundance of God’s generosity in the actions of their brothers and sisters.

This table fellowship is the sign of the kingdom and the gospels are filled with such signs: Jesus eating or feeding others; Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors and Prostitutes; Jesus eating with the rich - people who would have rejected him! Jesus eats with strangers - 5,000 of them plus their women and children - in a time when eating with strangers (who might have been Gentiles, or worse!) was never done. And not only did Jesus eat with them - but his followers did as well: not asking if that person over there was a sinner. Jesus was feeding everyone - it was ok.

This feasting in abundance is the sign of the kingdom that Jesus gave us. But early on it got abused. Paul is seeing it at the very beginning: rich people getting drunk before their poor brothers and sisters can even get there. From the beginning the world’s politics and priorities invaded the Church and made her forget her action as God’s Kingdom. To correct the problem, Paul and others bring us the symbol: bread and wine as symbolic of the entire meal. Let us share the basics, the stuff of life - things common Romans and Jews would have had in their houses, available. Say the blessing over bread and wine - then get on with any extra meal later. In the story of his martyrdom, Polycarp is transformed into the Eucharistic Bread and Wine - and his parts are shared with all the Christians.

So far so good: I think feasting on bread and wine (with, perhaps, a little cheese and fruit) is sheer joy! It’s hard to be a glutton here! This is the same tradition of hospitality that we see in Asian Countries serving tea or chai or in the South (aka Dixie) where no one would dare refuse a stranger and no stranger is welcomed without copious amounts of Iced Tea (aka Sweet Tea or “the house wine of the South”).

There is (and has been) extensive discussion within the Jewish tradition about the meaning of “neighbour”. Some feel it is anyone, some that it is only Jews. Indeed, the “only Jews” understanding is born out by the context of the verse in the Torah. But Jesus makes it clear (in “The Good Samaritan” and elsewhere) that his feeling is anyone - without regard for doctrines - is a possible Neighbour. Followers of Jesus’ teaching thus have an answer to that question. It is not just to members of “our tribe” that we are responsible.

In the Gospels, Jesus uses this word for love: αγαπαω “agapao”. It means “to entertain”. In other words, to show hospitality. It’s not a matter of agreement (as in doctrine) or of mere camaraderie: hospitality is to invite into your home, to share food with, to “break bread together”, to defend even to the loss of your own life and person (see an extreme version in Lot’s offering of his daughters in place of his guests to the people of Sodom). From this word comes the more-familiar “Agape” or Divine love. This word - agape - is the word used in the invitation to the Eucharist. So, literally, you are invited forward trusting in God and showing hospitality to your neighbour.

Let me be clear: Agape comes from Hospitality. This is the opposite of “closing communion” to only “the right people” for fear that God would strike others dead.

Imagine an unconditional hospitality. This is a shared concept among many cultural traditions - certainly the Aramaic, Jewish and Arab cultures of the Middle East. Jesus would have known of it. In the Celtic traditions, agapao is the “bottomless cauldron”: it’s what the host owes to the guest less the host become too embarrassed to show his face in public. I’ve been heroically hosted in Ireland and Canada within this tradition.

My own experience of living out this commandment is in the second person. I’ve never been very good at it, but a lot of people have made me their neighbour or else have “been neighbours” where I could see them.

Jesus made this the mark of the Kingdom - and the Church carried it forward. But over time the entire thing increasingly became focused on the bread and the wine rather than the eating of the bread and the wine. The Church was the Kingdom of God on earth - divine hospitality her mission and message - following in the footsteps of Rabbi Jesus. But over time Jesus became God (we’ll get more about this in the next essays on “incarnation”) and the Church stopped being his body in the way it was intended. But in Paul’s letters the Church is the body of Christ the exact same way that the bread is described later. The church is the soma - the body, the flesh, the corpse… It’s not a symbolic meaning. And the Bread is a communion of the body… of us.

The eating together makes us what we are.

This is what saves us and this is why Eucharist is important to our salvation. Salvation means, as I noted in the first post, to be made whole. No one is saved alone: walking the hills on a sunny day may be salvific - but it’s not how you get saved. You have to be, must be, in a community of people. No one is saved alone. (Sorry to all the introverts out there: go sit in silence witha group.) It’s not “do your own thing” - but there is something more. We’ll get there.

Salvation is êxactly this being together, this sharing, this grinding of our rough edges down into smooth edges and the polishing of our facets like stones in a river (or a rock tumbler). Only later do we confuse this revolutionary idea with “not going to hell”.

I think that’s an important point: the merging of ideas about Jesus’ Divinity and the importance of the Bread and Wine in themselves seems to track identical paths. As we move away from the revolutionary ideas of sharing our wealth to the idea of ritual qua ritual, from the ideas of Orthopraxis to Orthodoxis… well… more on that next time.

Tags: eucharist, incarnation, s=tie, salvation, trinity