Sarx

O WE WERE Sipping tea in the church, a clergy friend and I, relaxing in that most Orthodox of fashion: making Eucharist and fellowship with our ginger beer and crisps after a really smashing pot luck. We were discussing “What makes it Christian community” – that is a church or a meal or whatever. And I found myself suddenly quoting an old friend and sometime reader of these pages, Donald, who caught me in my frustration one day, in the parish office. He offered the following answer to that question:

We gather in Christ’s name to do the things he commanded us to do.

Suddenly I understood it – in the saying of it. It’s not a doctrine or a credo, but it cuts past all of those things. It allows for inclusion or exclusion (I can imagine a group doing things that clearly are not what Jesus commanded) and yet… and yet… it seems to make the widest space possible around God’s table whereat each of us is guest and all of us are host.

The question really is, can one stand as Guest and Host at Christ’s table knowing that someone next to you or on the other side of the room, or somewhere, might or, indeed, does hold different ideas about this 1st Century Rabbi?

That is the issue there, “hold different ideas”. Even though I’m a big banner-waving sort for Nicene ideas about the Trinity and Incarnation, and even though I’m quite willing to draw direct lines from non-Nicene ideas to mistaken assumptions about people, things and God (and thence to bad actions in those regards), that stands not at the heart of the Christian life but rather at the furthest periphery. What we teach about God says more about who we are than about who God is. It is what we do in the name of that teaching is what counts.

Our doctrines about God, and the stories we tell about God say more about us than about God: show me the God you worship and I can easily infer the way you try or want to treat persons around you. I may be wrong in my inference – because you may be weak in your faith. But if the God you worship is a judgmental, punishing sort that has condemned the vast majority of humanity to eternal fire for no other reason than major or minor differences in theology, I can wager a guess about how you feel about them as well. If the God you worship gave birth to all creation from the waters of her womb, I can make a wager about how you feel about all creation.

If we tell stories of a God who loves us so much that, despite our divisions from him, he, himself, came among us as one of us to repair those divisions and bring us to a different end, then I can make certain assumptions about how we should want to treat our neighbour. Although we may fail through our own weakness.

And, of course, I’ve drawn these pictures to favour the image I prefer. Your mileage may vary. Do the stories we tell about God say anything about God’s ontological reality? If I may be excused from using a Cappadocian doctrine in a rather Palamite way, do our doctrines tell us anything about God’s essence or only about God’s energies active in the world? I’m going to wager only the latter.

It is our actions drawn from those doctrines and stories that are important. Hear the words of the invitation from the older Anglican rite:

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort…

Come to this table if you’re sorry for the divisions before and want to lead a new life.
Come to this table if you’re willing to follow the commandments of God (Love God, Love your Neighbour as yourself – feed, clothe and comfort them as you would your own self, your own family).
Come to this table if you seek strength to continue in that path all your days.

Yes, I know the irony of quoting those words – from a service when only Anglicans were invited to the table (not even “all baptised Christians”). We stand in a different place now.

St Maria of Paris rather famously said,

The bodies of fellow human beings must be treated with greater care than our own. Christian love teaches us to give our brethren not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt, our last piece of bread must be given to them… The way to God lies through love of other people and there is no other way. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked if I was successful in my ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers. I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked… Christ’s love does not know how to measure and divide, does not know how to spare itself. Our love should not be any different

Neither, I trust, will we be asked about our doctrines or our Orthodoxy, Nicene or otherwise. We’ve added traditions of men onto our faith – our trust in God – over and over again. Even St John, who wrote that you can not deny Jesus came in the flesh, gets trumped up into meaning “That means God, incarnation, theotokos, etc…” No, it means Jesus was a fleshy (sarx) human like you and me, nothing more, nothing less. Don’t read into it the theology of 500 or 2000 years later.

Can you stand at table in Jesus’ name with someone who does or does not hold that 500 or 2000 year doctrine? Can you do with those people the things Jesus commanded us to do – even if you disagree with those people at the same time? You know: love God, love your Neighbour as yourself – feed, clothe and comfort them as you would your own self, your own family.

I struggle with this. I want doctrinal purity so much that even the illusion of it (as in those Churches that claim to have it) is attractive. Even this last Sunday, visiting an OCA parish in Toronto, when the Archbishop started to hear confessions I knew all I’d have to do was go to confession… and say goodbye to fellowship with Christians whom I know and love. There is no way to go back down that road again even for the illusion of purity.

I firmly believe that the incarnation allows for the veneration of the Holy Icons. But it does not command such. Likewise I cannot demand such of my friends who seek only to praise God and feast at his table. Your errors about God annoy me far more than my own sins. Your mistakes in theology and liturgy drive me up a freaking wall. I mean, I know I’m wrong in some places, but I can name at least 7 heresies in your last sentence and I’d much rather judge you for them than feast together at Jesus table and figure it out.

I do believe the liturgy of the Church is there to lift us to doctrinal orthodoxy – again because it says more about us than about God. If the liturgy is changed to suit our petty feelings or individual desires, our theological meanderings, again – it’s more about us than about God. I firmly believe that Arianism (as common in many modernist liturgies) and the other heresies lead us to incorrect assumptions about the person and personhood of ourselves and others and our communal salvation.

Can we jointly work out our salvation in fear and trembling? Can we feast together at God’s table, dancing as Jesus leads us beyond the divisions of Male and Female, Slave and Free, Arian and Nicene, Protestant and Catholic, Iconoclast and Iconodule?

Again – the answer says less about the God we worship than about us.

Do holding those doctrines destroy the possibility of their salvation? I trust God that is not so, for I know no one who is doctrinally pure, even by their own, first-person standards. That’s not the issue, though, is it?

We fear that fellowship with those people will make us somehow impure. We fear that sharing Jesus’ table with a sinner will contaminate us. We are Pharisees, pure and simple – and we look at Jesus fellowship with drunkards and prostitutes either in envy or else in horror. We wish we could do that. We fear the consequences. We have no faith in the God who saves us that he can save us at all. So we better keep away from contaminants.

That’s what our closed table doctrine say about us.

What makes this – or any – church a Christian Community? We gather in Christ’s name to do the things he commanded us to do: we break bread and share it. And in the Breaking and the Sharing we find Christ in each other to seek and serve him in those around us.

Forget the doctrine. Hold the doctrine. Whatever. Jesus calls us.

Come to this table if you’re sorry for the divisions before and want to lead a new life.
Come to this table if you’re willing to follow the commandments of God: Love God, Love your Neighbour as yourself – feed, clothe and comfort them as you would your own self, your own family.
Come to this table if you seek strength to continue in that path all your days.