Sacred Mess: Crumbs at communion and discerning the body

Disclaimer: I am neither a sacramentologist, nor the son of a sacramentologist. Take the following with a grain of salt. For lightly salted bread is delicious.

When celebrating the sacraments, some Christians focus on the holiness of the elements (bread, wine, water).* And this is good. It is beneficial to stop and reflect on the ways that everyday objects can speak to us of divine realities of grace, forgiveness, promise and fellowship, even to wonder at the sacredness of all creation in pointing to God's beauty, mystery, wisdom and power. We worship a God who became flesh and blood, ate bread and wine, washed in water and shared the very air we now breathe. The incarnation is thus the main theological grounding for refusing to draw a sharp line between the physical and the spiritual. The divine Spirit sanctifies physical objects to point us towards and bring us into the presence of, and union with, Jesus.
*Leaving aside for the moment the question of how many sacraments there are and proceeding on the minimalist assumption of the two on which nearly all agree: Holy Communion and Holy Baptism.

Yet too much focus on the elements themselves can lead to some sacraments being exercises in holy carefulness, lest the body and blood of Christ be wasted or disrespected, lest any be dropped, lost or inadvertently trodden underfoot. At its extreme, only priests can handle the elements, bread-like wafers replace everyday bread, the boisterous unpredictability of children is excluded until such time as they are able to participate with due solemnity, a special plate is held under the mouths of communicants to catch any wayward pieces, and sometimes lay people are not trusted with the cup at all.

But this is not the only way of conceiving of the holiness of sacraments. Instead, or perhaps alongside, of the Spirit sanctifying everyday objects, perhaps we may also speak of the Spirit sanctifying human actions. The washing of baptism and the sharing of communion (or the thanksgiving of the eucharist, depending on linguistic preference) become enacted parables of the kingdom, pointing in the performance of them to the spiritual realities of spiritual cleansing through immersion into the life of Christ, spiritual feeding upon the saving death of Christ. If so, then it is not such much the bread and wine themselves that are special, but the eating of them in thankful fellowship, remembering Christ's death and embracing the promise of his coming.

And if we thus shift the focus from holy elements to holy activities, then we may end up with a different set of assumptions about how to proceed. If we think of holy washing (baptism) and holy sharing/thanksgiving (communion/eucharist), then the human acts are foregrounded, rather than the physical objects used in doing them. God is manifest not simply in the atoms of alcohol, simple carbohydrates, water, ethyl acetate and so on, but in the act of drinking in fellowship with others. And if we make this shift, then rather than ensuring nothing is done to conceivably dishonour the elements in any way, the focus is on honouring the actions.

When sharing a meal with friends, you're not going to deliberately dump the food on the floor, but you're also not going to obsess over avoiding any tiny spill or mess. What is important is that the food mediates joyful, honest, reciprocal relationships. A meal in which everyone is doing their utmost not to leave a skerrick or morsel wasted or out of place is probably not a meal in which everyone is enjoying one another's company.

Exegetically, this distinction turns upon the two meanings of "body" in 1 Corinthians 11.29:

For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves.

Traditionally, many interpreters took "body" (soma) to mean the presence of Christ in the elements. Thus, those who fail to discern the body are unbelievers, or those who lack due reverence for the elements. The corollary is that it is better to fence off communion from the young, the ambiguously repentant, the partially orthodox, lest we encourage them to eat and drink judgement upon themselves. Better to accidentally exclude someone who could have been included than include someone would ought to have been excluded. And better to ensure that no one fails to show due respect to the body and blood of Christ, even by accident, than to open the possibility of mess.

But we must read verse 29 in the immediate context of verses 17-22, where the apostle Paul scolds the Corinthians for failing to acknowledge one another, with some (likely the wealthy) stuffing themselves at the holy meal before others (likely the slaves) had a chance to turn up. His criticism is not that they were disrespecting the body of Christ through disrespecting the elements, but disrespecting the body of Christ through disrespecting their fellow believers. They show "contempt for the church God" through "humiliat[ing] those who have nothing" and through the divisions and factions they have allowed to form within the body of believers. The entire letter emphasises this problem, from the opening salvo in 1.10-17 through to the famous "body of Christ" passage in 12.12-31, which in turn leads into the even more famous love-poem in 1 Corinthians 13 (which is more about how Christians are to treat one another as a church than about a healthy marriage, despite its near ubiquity in weddings). Therefore, in both the immediate context and the context of the whole epistle, it is far more natural to read "body" in 11.29 as the body of believers. Thus, those who eat and drink judgement upon themselves are those whose celebration of the holy meal is insufficiently interpersonal, insufficiently attentive to our neighbour, insufficiently focused on the act of eating in fellowship and thankfulness. On this reading, it is better to include some who perhaps ought to have been excluded than to exclude anyone who really ought to have been included. Ironically, the reading of "body" that emphasises the holiness of the elements can itself sometimes be the cause of our failure to honour one another or the holiness of the sharing Paul (and Jesus) invites us into.

Bottom line: when it comes to celebrating sacraments, the more the merrier. Share with children. Share with the ambiguously faithful, the confused and doubting, the seeking and struggling. Share with the sick and with those whose hands shake so much that they might spill. Obsess less over what ends up on the floor and more on the faces with whom we share a gracious feast of love.

Baptisms should leave the floor wet. Communion should leave holy crumbs.

Multiplying fears: Islam and the demographic freedom of the church

I saw this video a few weeks ago and was shocked. Not so much at the demographic claims (which have been around for a while), but at the manipulative attempt to scare Christians/Americans (the groups are treated as almost synonymous) into reproductive action. This video is little different from the tactics used to perpetuate the White Australia policy during the first three-quarters of last century, in which the fear of Chinese or Indonesian hordes descending onto our country to fill our wide open spaces was the justification for encouraging a higher birthrate and restricting immigration from those outside of the preferred race.

I am all for married people having children where possible and think that the loving and sensitive evangelisation of Muslims (and western nationalists) is a duty and a privilege of the church. But I found this video disturbing in its implicit theology and its barely concealed racism.

Christian honouring of the gift of singleness (based in Jesus' own life and the teaching of 1 Corinthians 7) is, amongst other things, an affirmation that the church is not reliant upon biological reproduction for the gospel to be passed on from generation to generation. As a missionary faith, it is not the natural children but the spiritual children who are our next generation. Of course, being raised in a nurturing Christian family is a great way of passing on the faith, but our hope is not in demographic trends. Children are a wonderful blessing and gift from God, but they are not a strategy that we employ in order to preserve a culture.

Indeed, the church is not bound to any single culture (whether European, American or Australian) and if it diminishes amongst some groups during the next few decades, that would be sad, but not the end of the world. This century the church will be far more African, Asian and South American than European or North American, and perhaps God may use this to bless the church and the world through fresh vigour and creativity in obedience and love.

I love the Australian cultural heritage in which I have grown up, but it is not sacred. It has its own many blind-spots and weaknessess. May God use our brothers and sisters around the world to help us notice and repent of the cultural sins that we drink in with our mother's milk.

One of those sins is a deep fear of those who are not like us, whose beliefs, habits and loves differ from our own. We are right to love what is good in the familiar arena of our own history and current society. And when something we love seems threatened, it can be right and good for some concern to be part of our response. But may God teach us also to love the alien and the stranger in our midst, for we too are aliens and strangers.
UPDATE: This post by Matt also seems highly relevant to this discussion.

God is dead

The madman.-- Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" --As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? --Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves."

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science:
with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs, §125.

Holy water

Frank Emanuel over at Freedom Log has posted on What is Sacred?. More needs to be said, of course, but this is worth saying (and reading).

Frank has also just written a paper on the ethics of bottled water, a topic I had never much considered. I've never been a fan of bottles and this paper gives plenty of reasons (health, economic, environmental) to back up my prejudice. I feel justified in now called it a post-judice. For me, perhaps the most interesting point in his paper was a brief comment noting that the habitual consumption of bottled water dulls communal motivation to maintain quality tap water. As usual, it will be the poorest who suffer from this move. Water is not a commodity.

Finally, to complete this Frankophile post, this lovable Candian pastor has also just joined Thom Chittom as co-moderator of the large and active Jürgen Moltmann Yahoo group.
Eight points to the first non-theologically trained reader to name the psalm in which this image figures prominently.

Kierkegaard on hermeneutical thrombosis

How many no longer want to read this post because of the offputting title? Would it make a difference if I had said 'Kierkegaard on how not to read the Bible'? Thrombosis is where circulation of the blood is slowed or stopped by a local hardening/coagulation of the blood flow.
How not to read the Bible

...the Bible has often had a harmful effect. In beginning a deliberation, a person has certain classical passages fixed in his mind, and now his explanation and knowledge consist in an arrangement of these passages, as if the whole matter were something foreign. The more natural the better, [however, particularly] if he is willing with all deference to refer the explanation to the verdict of the Bible, and, if it is not in accord with the Bible, to try over again. Thus a person does not bring himself into the awkward position of having to understand the explanation before he has understood what it should explain, nor into the subtle position of using Scripture passages as the Persian king in the war against the Egyptians used their sacred animals, that is, in order to shield himself.

-Søren Kierkegaard (or rather, his pseudonym: Vigilius Haufniensis), The Concept of Anxiety: A simple psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin, 40.

This is a great image: in the siege of Pelusium, Cambyses, the Persian king, placed animals sacred to the Egyptians in the front of his army. Sometimes, we take key biblical passages hostage as sacred animals in order to thwart attacks on a cherished theological position. Haufniensis wants instead a more 'natural' reading, where we submit even our long-established beliefs to 'the verdict of the Bible' time and time again. This means looking at problem passages and letting them loosen our grip on those we feel we know and love. This seems to be the complement to the usual hermeneutical principle of reading difficult passages in light of easy ones: re-reading familiar passages in light of difficult ones.
Ten points for the name of this famous ancient copy of the Bible. And ten for being able to pick the passage.
I've joined a new reading group attempting to tackle Kierkegaard/Haufniensis' Concept of Anxiety. We've set up a blog for the group to discuss the text here.
In other news, Barth CD II/2 arrived today.