The celebration of the Eucharist is a type of the life in the next world. Theodore of Mopsuestia, one who perhaps more deeply than any of the Fathers understood the typological character of the Church emphasized this. The sacraments were given for to be able to learn to live after the manner of "Citizens of the Kingdom of God".
In other words, when we celebrate the Eucharist we are learning something about how life in the next world will be. I think one aspect of the Eucharist is the very special sense of communion we experience in it. As I wrote in my last post, it is not a communion with people we are similar to, with people we like or get along with. Rather, it is a communion with people we in this world find it difficult to love.
We we go to the altar to receive bread and wine, we are, within the borders of this ritual, allowed to let all those things we normally base our appreciation of other people go. When we gather around the table things like class, race, gender, political affiliation, manners, personality - all such things are of no importance because the communion is not based on human love but on divine giving. Within the ritual we carry out a kind of pre-practice of how we should relate to other people in real life. Because we have the safe framework of the ritual we can experience this kind of "heavenly" communion here in life, and then slowly learn to take this experience into our daily life and let it transform our relationships to those we meet.
The Threat to Democracy
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5 comments:
I've been meaning to mention to you that you might be interested in Darrel Pursiful's blog. He's on my blog roll as "Disert Paths".
Take care & God bless
Thanks!
Patrik
this is an excellent series...I am curious if you might rephrase the sentance:
"when we gather around the table things like class, race, gender, political affiliation, manners, personality - all such things ar of no importance..."
I agree with the claim that it is about God's giving, and I also agree with the argument. However, it seems to me that it is often the caucasian theologians who are arguing for the irrelevence of particularity at the table (Zizioulas) while theologians of non-caucasian background often push for the centrality and necessity of particularity (James Cone).
How do we reconcile the universal identity in eucharist and the particular identity of culture? it seems a difficult balance. i look forward to your response...
John, I am not familiar with Cone's argument. Could you give a little mor info on it?
I freely admit that I write from a European perspective, and I do not try to formulate some universal theology. Of course, for westerners, Particularianism has been supiriorism for a very long time, so for us, to embrace the fact that people that are different from us are as relevant to us as our friends and relatives is important.
When I say that things like class and race are of no importance in the Eucharist, what I mean is that the community experienced there is not based on unity within such groups, but it is a unity that trancends them. It is not an argument against cultural multiplicity. It is not a denying of us being different, it is love in spite of it.
Thanks for pointing out this perspective!
Well, I am certainly not a Cone expert, but I will attempt to give a bit more detail to what I was mentioning...
Essentially, Cone argues that the particularity of Black Experience precedes the universality of a multi-cutural christian experience. His "God of the Oppressed" is, perhaps, the most crucial work to this end. There he argues for a reorientation of themes such as liberation, reconciliation, truth, suffering, ethics and even Christ...he seems to be responding to the calls for reconciliation from white christians that fail to adequately repent of the continued oppression of the black community...the argument is much more complex (and eloquent!) than I could articulate here...
nonetheless, for Cone particularity always precedes universality...the black experience (especially as oppressed by whites) must be named and repented of before the body of christ can become one body...
once again, i have limited exposure to Cone's work and do not agree with him on all points. But I think his voice is one that must be heard in the theological community (especially in America) if we are to overcome the racism and classism that continually seeps into the church...
does this help???
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