Monday, June 21
Ch. 8-How the Eucharist Nourishes Spirituality
Interact with Ancient-Future Spirituality! Thanks for the many responses. They will result in an interactive book. Part II of the book deals with nourishing Christian spirituality through the church (ch. 5), worship (ch. 6), the Word (ch. 7), Eucharist (ch. 8), prayer (ch. 9), and the disciplines (ch. 10). Each chapter deals with (1) the current crises. (2) The ancient understanding and practice. (3) Nourishing baptismal identity (union with Christ), and (4) Nourishing the baptismal pattern of spirituality (dying and rising). Don't try to comment on the whole chapter. Concentrate on one or two aspects of the chapter, especially where you have an observation or example. Thanks!
Ch. 8-How the Eucharist Nourishes Spirituality
A. Crisis. We have emptied the Lord's Supper of its mystical union with divine presence. Refusing to get behind "the thing" (bread & wine), we have lost the divine reality it represents. By reducing bread and wine to common bread and drink, we have "de-mythologized" the union of bread and wine with the divine and relegated communion to the human action of memory. Eucharist thus becomes an action of self, not an action of God. Working out of a "doctrine of real absence," we practice the Lord's Supper infrequently, tack it on to the end of the service, create an atmosphere of guilt, fail to celebrate the resurrection, and find little, if any, relation of the Eucharist to the spiritual life.
B. What do we learn from the ancient church?
The early church embraced and practiced an incarnational faith and practice. Because they confessed the Incarnation to be the union of the divine and the human, they fought the Gnostics who rejected creation (2nd Century), affirmed the humanity of God in Jesus (Nicene Creed), and embraced the union of the human and divine in Jesus "without confusion, without change, without division and without separation" (Chalcedon Creed). The presence of the divine at bread and wine is a Christological issue. Rationalism rejects the union of the human and divine in the incarnation, in the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in spirituality. Mystical union affirms the union of the divine with the human retaining the full properties of each. So it is with the Eucharist.
C. How does the Eucharist affirm our spiritual identity?
Baptism and Eucharist are inseparably linked. The Eucharist proclaims and enacts that God became humanity for us to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The experience of divine presence at the human elements of bread and wine signify the divine reality grasped by faith. Eucharist is the continual reminder that our real spiritual identity does not arise from a self-generated relationship with God, but a relationship rooted in God's action of union with Jesus the second Adam through whom we, in union with him, are united to God.
D. How does Eucharist affirm the spiritual pattern of dying to sin and rising to Christ?
The Eucharist nourishes the journey of daily dying to sin and rising to Christ. It does not do so in an automatic or mechanical way-we must bring understanding and intention to the reception of the Eucharist. In taking bread and wine we take into ourselves the perfect humanity of Jesus united to divinity. The act of ingestion is to be accompanied by an intention to continually choose the life we take in. We are nourished to be like him, to choose his way of being, the life of love of God and neighbor.
In sum, the real presence of Christ at bread and wine is a presence that nourishes our transformation of life to be like Jesus.
What are you thinking? Please interact with me. Write me at: rwebber@northern.seminary.edu
Bob Webber
Myers Professor of Ministry
Director of M.A. in Worship and Spirituality
Northern Seminary—www.seminary.edu
(See Northern's M.A. in Worship and Spirituality and D.Min. in Worship by clicking on the website.)
