Sarx

Continuing our series on “The Big Three”, Trinity, Incarnation and Eucharist. The Menu for the entire series is there in the sidebar. The first posts went “inward” on this Journey, from Eucharist to Incarnation to Trinity. Now we go the other way – outward…

When Jesus said that we are to Love God and our Neighbour he wasn’t setting out two different commands: but the same one in two modes. The scripture says humanity (in the plural sense, not each individual per se) was created in God’s image. The Greek word used in the Septuagint (the OT Scriptures known to the Early Christians) is “ikon”. And Icons occupy a very special place in traditional Christian teaching: these are not just pictures or statues. The church teaches that since God has become man (in Jesus) we may now depict his image. God’s actions might be shown in the person, life and teaching of Jesus and these scenes might also be recreated in artistic form. The honour paid to the type (picture) passes to the prototype.

The incarnation restores humanity’s connection to God. The icon may be damaged in each of us, but it is blessed, it is real. The honour I pay to you – an icon of the living God – passes to God. Likewise the dishonour I pay to you passes to God. Since the incarnation, loving my neighbour is loving God. The Gospel underscores this with the parable of the sheep and the goats – “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me…” St John underscores it teaching us that we can not love God, whom no one has seen, if we do not love our neighbour whom we do see daily, moment by moment, on the Subway, driving next to us on the freeway, sitting next to us in the theatre, taking too much time to write a check in the grocery store, stumbling around our garden drunk at 3:00AM after a frat party, stopping us on the street to pitch a hustle and hit us up for fifty cents: who the hell knew that God could be so damned annoying? And smelly? Dirty? Needy?

St Benedict says that when a stranger comes to the guest house he should be greeted by a prostration as if he, himself, were Christ. Because he is. Personally, I find it much harder to remember that my family member, spouse, coworker, boss, or fellow parishioner is also God. Strangers are kind of easy compared to familiars. That’s God there, demanding me to try a little harder or get fired, that’s God there asking me to mow the lawn, that’s God there, voting the wrong way on Vestry, that’s God there getting a raise that should have gone to me.

Regardless of who we love as God, it is the incarnation that breaks down the barriers that divide us from one another.

The Trinity is God-as-Communion. The Incarnation is God-as-Communion reaching out to form humans into the same communion. The Eucharist is God-as-communion in each of us being communion between us.

Sticking to the hypothetical history written earlier: the Eucharist, the community eating together was the first way the community came to see itself as the body of Christ. Eating together was a radical act of equalization. Everyone was in this together – there were no boundaries between in and out, clean and unclean, us and them. SHowing up at the table was a mark that God had called you to the table. But even then, there was trouble: the sharing of food, the earliest covered-dish suppers, quickly changed to an all-you-can-eat festival of gluttony. The early church changed the focus to symbolic foods – bread and wine – and shortly thereafter the feeding of each other lost the import and the eating together of the symbolic foods was the sign.

I’m ok with this history – and I’ve no need to go backwards in time and “restore what we used to do” because I think the symbolic foods keep enough of their theology of feeding each other: provided we do actually feed each other. Personally, I rather like the covered-dish supper that obscures the “mystery” part of communion. But we can get to that in a minute.

It is the feeding of each other with the bread and wine, which we label the Body and Blood of Christ, that makes us who we are. The Eucharist is the meal that consumes us. We are, therein, transubstantiated. You are what you eat, as the saying goes, but in this case, “you are whom you feed.” We refer to the Eucharist as a sacrifice to God which, after blessing, we promptly offer to our neighbour (that is, to God). The Eucharist – provided we go through the motions of feeding each other – becomes at least equally (if not mostly) about the giving away of the Holy Mysteries rather than the reception of them. When I attend Eucharist with you, it is not so important that I eat the bread and drink the wine as it is that I offer the bread and the wine to you. The reverse is also true: it is the reception of the elements from the hand of my neighbour – that is God – that is as important, indeed, more important, than the elements themselves.

This is not to deny the power of the Elements of Bread and Wine: the basic foodstuffs of all our cultures. But I think we have evidence that focusing on these two out of the entire meal is a symbolic act, itself. It is intended to make it easier to hospitably share in the feast. Essentially, one who has had just a nibble and a sip has had the whole thing. Come late, come early, but get the symbols. It is as we draw away from that action of hospitality and focus only on the symbols that they get “spooky”.

This is the most exoteric of the “Big Three” doctrines because it is what happens publicly, before the eyes of the world, between us and our neighbour. This is where the rubber meets the road, theologically. This is where the world should point at us and say, “See how they love one another.”

In other words, this is the big failure of Christianity: that we refuse to eat with each other, refuse to make the offering to each other as God’s icon, present and active in the world.

And this is where our salvation starts and ends. Here it is that we find not only our failure, but our glorious wholeness as humans. When we can sit down in love and charity – not only with those who love us, but also with those who hate us, with those whom we or they name our enemies – then we are saved and the kingdom of God is come a little closer.

But not until then.

We are not saved alone. We have only one sign available to us to prove that we are not alone in this world: divine hospitality before others, spreading a table before them in the presence of . Without it all else is useless, all doctrine empty and all rites diabolical.