Looking Way Back
Growing up Communion was a guilt ridden, anxiety driven moment as I searched my heart and memory in light of the pastors warning: ”Eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in the right way. Don’t do it in a way that isn’t worthy of him. If you do, you will be guilty. You’ll be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord" (I Corinthians 11:27 NIRV). What if I find a sin? Will I have the courage to pass the plate and not take the cup or bread? What if I take it anyway? I might actually be condemned as one who drank the cup unworthy and crucified Jesus all over again; even worse, a perhaps unforgivable sin?'
Even as a kid I thought in theological catagories and like all children, as a literalist. To my child's perspective the ritual was on me and about me; my worthiness instead of God's initiative in making me worthy. Fortunately, in those days, Communion only happened about four times a year and a quick glance to the front of the Sanctuary could assure that 'today will be a service I can enjoy.' What could be sadder?
Perhaps more tragic is that it would be decades before this little boy could testify to a sin worthy of such condemnation. Fortunately by my time of complete betrayal I genuinely understood that God was coming to me, remembering in song;
"Alas and did my Savior blesd.
And did my sovereign die?
Would he devote that sacred head
for such a worm as I?"
A Recent Sunday
Each part of worship felt annointed; a mixture of revivalist music complete with joy filled dancing, then pastoral discipling (nurturing) finely tuned and a refreshing openness in practice and invitation to the Lord's table—as a nurturing sacrament, a saving encounter with Jesus. In my spirit was an intriguing question I've been wrestling with for at least a decade as to the "Real Presence" of Jesus in the moment. It was triggered anew by my Pastors qualification that we don't believe these signs actually become the literal body and blood of Jesus but do believe Jesus is fully present. I used to say, "We don't get caught up in the science of it all but simply know Jesus is here, his Table is open to everyone, as you come genuinely, ready to follow. My pastor's invitation was a shade more open than mine usually were. His is the more Biblical position I think. I smiled.
Protestant pastors who understand communion sacramentally as God initiating and coming to us, rather than a devotional witness from or within us, nevertheless use the language of The Spirit when talking about the real Presence of Jesus. We speak as though it is the Spirit who in and with us fills this celebrating moment of the passion and death of our Savior. Now that is at least true in that it is The Spirit who forms in us the ability to follow and intimately know him. May I suggest now, however, it is the lesser truth, leaving out the very real and sensory Presence of God incarnate with us—that moves over, through, around and within us; The Spirit groaning in our spirit as we (Divine Spirit/human pilgrim) together encounter by way of The cosmos and memory, Jesus of Nazareth. In Christ's magical Presence we are made One with the twelve and all who celebrate this bread and cup, Jesus.
If The Spirit is the objective Presence and not Jesus, then the inter-active communal nature of God fleshed in time and with humanity is lost, as a living memory—though it remains as a symbolic teaching, even a kind of emotional comprehension. The moment is little more than an aspirational devotion, a 21st century experience. Another round, please, singing, "Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth should care to know my name? Would care to feel my hurt?" At the end of the day, my childhood self was correct. It's all about me; however meaningful it may be. But if The Incarnate Eternal-Son is really present, together with The Spirit then Holy Cominion is genuinely a timespace touchstone between earth and heaven, accessed humanly in the inner senses, especially by memory—an inter-active Divine-human community.
The Church as More than Mystery
Near the end of my pastoral ministry we had finally moved to Communion every week, though by cheating. I know, probably not the best place to engage hidden motives, though I simply thought of it as wisdom. At the time we had moved to two different kinds of Communal experience, each bi-monthly. About a third of our congregants were high church or Catholic in background. For their sake and my own we would have communion every other week as one of five stations people could access during the elongated open altar/offering. Our parishioners could pray confessionally with one of our ministers at the altar, pray alone at the altar, light a candle, receive the consecrated communion or grab a coffee (It's Seattle after all). Over time the line for receiving holy communion grew to the point we could move to weekly communion for all.
What I had come to know over this decade is that The Lord's table was unique. It felt like a concrete reality, something more than a sign and different than the emotively apprehended Presence that I've known since I was a child in The Spirit. When I am in a church that does not practice Holy Communion weekly there is an ache, physically discernible. It's not an emptiness of spirit like going two or three days without devotional worship, a growing void. This ache feels more like hunger pains. So, somewhere around 2011 and on I've been searching for the words that describe what I experienced today and often at The Lord's Table; the actual felt sense of Jesus touching me.
The Touchstone
Every 500 years or so humanity awakens to new information about our world and cosmos and our place in it. What saddens me is how we in the Church so easily reject a philosophical perspective emergent from our inter-action with the universe. Einsteinium science happens to work and allows humans inside our inter-dimensional reality. We, like a child in "awe of all that we know" want to keep it ever so and avoid the "no's", redirects, the pain of new ideas that do not easily fit. If, as post-moderns contend, experience or "the next emerging event," the inter-weaving communal loving act or verb is what is really real, then chaos—it is feared—will follow in the wake of the latest wave.
My first awareness of Catholic theology about Transubstantiation1 that made any kind of sense was from a former Baptist preacher turned Episcopalian Priest, who was teaching at western Evangelical Seminary. He noted that idealism was the philosophical paradigm of the times; a belief that underneath, through and around what we experience in our senses as mass (space and time) or materiality is the "idea" of the thing, first in God's Creative mind. That is what makes our experience of it real. A chair for example—I can see the old professor waving his hands to frame the object—is first an idea or has the quality of "chairness" that it is its essential nature. So, when a Catholic Priest consecrates the bread and wine its outward form remains what we see—bread and wine. Its inner form changes and is transformed into the actual body of Jesus of Nazareth, his "Christness," the very substance of his body wounded for us.
What idealism was attempting to get at from the Middle Ages to enlightened modernity the Post-Modern world view perfects. Its underlying scientific principle is the awareness that all matter is the result of millions of inter-active particles, each in a creative tension with and responding to its counter-parts, ever growing more complex, expanding. It is a chaotic, explosive and fluid cosmos whose time in motion bends to sentient perception, precisely because everything and everyone is connected. A war ultimately is or is not, according to the inter-active interpretation given between each person and their leaders framing the chaos into a new imagined future or conversely a despotic one.
Post-Modern is ultimately a verb, not a noun. Everyone and everything is in motion, be it space, biology or a chair. The essential of all reality is each moving part or series of events are inter-related, connected in a dance of time and creative mass, shaping reality. Hence the inherent importance of community over property, each parts of and the result of perception; never in isolation but as a body politic. Hence salvation is communal 1st, then profoundly personal.
Stated differently. as a child I was lost in the wonder of mass; people, rocks, dogs, tables. Physicality was localized, a specific focused thing. I developed language from the words given me to increasingly grasp "mama" or table". I was separated in spatial distance from each new thing of wonder and in a world void of time. Such is the ultimate magic of childhood.
Unfortunately reality has a way of interrupting. MY MAMA said no. My halloween candy was ripped from my arms. The world and I started a lifelong dance, a give and take. No longer could I control or experience myself as a lone, unitary self; at least if I wanted to 'become' someone more than a consumer—more often an addicted consumer. The real gig is to loose oneself in the dance as a loving presence in this awesome music. Perception shapes everything and everyone. It's almost as if sentience is essential to all that is. And scripture tells us it is so.
Whose perception is truth has been the conserving and appropriate question. Unfortunately, we have held to modernity and it's philosophical ideas as though they are Divine, instead of realizing that like every shift there is a mix of accurate and inaccurate, of good and evil, depending on who is defining truth and why. Dogma is controlling from the outside in, no matter the world view. Canceling others because they disagree with our "truth" is wrong whether it comes from a wokster committed to diversity or a Pharisee committed to Moses law.
The Christian faith is radically personal/social. Jesus tells us that he is truth. Truth itself. In a post modern cosmos we should not be surprised that "The Way" and "The Life" is ultimately personal, communal. Paul affirms that the Eternal Son ”is before all things, and in him all things hold together“ (Colossians 1:17 NIV). John the Apostle tells us that The Word, now made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, is the Creator of all that is—of the material spacetime contuim. Hence John affirms that ”in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind" (John 1:4 NIV). Richard Rohr 2 frames it in terms of "The Cosmic Christ," to capture in The 2nd Person of the Trinity the One in whom "we live and move and have our being“ (Acts 17:28a NIV). It is Christ who surrounds and fills each moment of Space-Time quite literally holding us and all things together.
At the very center of the post-modern view is reverence for the whole, the community, the eco-system and each person who is invited to participate. Given truth is ultimately a person then we really do need to respect the value of every person. Causality is of lesser import than the intricate weaving of time, space, and the rhythms of nature, perception, creative choice all held in tension. The emphasis for a post-modern Jew or Christian is to see in Moses law not a universal code that judges each of us as guilty or innocent before God in some kind of penal system of which God is the judge, juror, and prison warden. Rather, Moses law is life-giving; a Godly re-imagining of how to form a human community that doesn't reflect the slavish commitment to Pharaoh's consumer, war-centric culture. In Jewish culture the most important sentence or idea is found in the center of a paragraph or book or list of say, Ten Commandments. Hence at the center of the 10 are three commands about reverencing human life by rest and communal honor. We are commanded to:
Make room for "rest," considering our place in God's ecosystem. No more slavery to work., and;
Value home and the role of our parents, and;
Commit ever to the worth of one another by integrity (truth).
The contest of ultimate allegiance for Israel's redeemed generation was never between God and no god, but who is the unique God, powerful and a keeper of promises. Hence Moses asks God for his name and is given a Name that is no name. 3 ”God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’ ” (Exodus 3:14 NIV). In other words, I AM like no other. Hence:
You shall have no other gods before me, and;
You shall not make for yourselves an idol. and;
You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.
Yet, Israel's God is approachable, knowable. The Tent of Meeting is brought into the center of Israel's encampment, a space to reconcile and repent when Israel sins. Each of the last four flesh out reverence toward one another, and so:
You shall not commit adultery, and;
You shall not steal, and;
You shall not give false testimony, and;
You shall not covet.
Jesus, reveals The Father and His intent to make ultimate Truth inter-personal, social in the Sermon on the Mount. ”“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished“ (Matthew 5:17-18 NIV).
God Fleshed Out
Einsteinium science almost demands a person at its core. Such was the debate from the beginning between himself and others; the central issue surrounding the loci that holds General and Special relativity together. Is it, as Einstein believed, a mechanical, mathematical insight currently beyond us or as an almost mystical mystery, perhaps sentient process that some of his colleagues leaned into. 4
Jesus reveals this interior Presence held within and around all life in his final prayer in the garden recorded in John 17. ”“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me“ (John 17:1-2, 22-23 NIV). It is this "glory" that Jesus reveals in his resurrected body that remains concrete, earthy and yet more metaphysically. The Eternal Son who fills the Cosmos, holding its tensions in his own pierced hands, admonishes Thomas. who doubted. “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe”“ (John 20:27 NIV).
His prayer frames John's thesis that Jesus is the very "Lamb of God!”“ (John 1:36 NIV). The Beloved, John, was ever near Jesus heart even at the cross as ”one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water" (John 19:34 NIV). Water and blood together with bread are the Eucharistic motif that weaves through the book. Wine at a wedding, the Baptism of John, the discourse with Nicodemus about water, spirit and being lifted upon the cross, the woman at the well, the food that Jesus eats in doing God's actions, the healing at the pool of Salome, the feeding of the 5,000, the wrestling with the demons of darkness in the boat at sea, the teachings about eating Jesus flesh and drinking his blood, Jesus washing the disciples feet, the parable of the vineyard and finally the cup of his passion spilling out onto the ground, Mary holding her son drenched in his blood and the tears (rain) from heaven, and the disciples again at sea as Jesus cooks a breakfast of fish.
From first to last John's gospel is centered on the bread broken, the cup poured out. It is the only gospel without the Lord's Table because the whole book is God fleshed out, broken and spilled out for and in us. It is a Eucharist event unfolding, the washing of the disciples and his prediction of their betrayal exactly where the other gospels recount the last meal. It is John's way of saying we are to become living communions in the earth by works of service and authentic confession in response to Jesus already forgiveness! As with Peter, Jesus is praying for us in our betrayals in the certain hope that we will fulfill The Lord's Table by fulfilling Jesus new command that we ”Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34 b NIV).
We Are What We Eat
When we gather at Jesus Table we evangelicals like to think of ourselves as rich in experience; the experience of The Spirit. And we often are. The problem is we never leave the comfort of the Great Room to dine at the formal dinning table spread out for us. We talk and laugh, we sing and dance in the outer room of fellowship in good Spirit filled devotion and miss the real purpose of the invitation; to eat Jesus flesh and drink of his blood. We are happy in our contemporaneous 21st century Thanksgiving and leave spiritually alive and comforted in our fellowship in the ever communal Spirit. We also leave hungry.
We are hungry for the ancient meal that Moses longed for; to see God face to face. To sit at the very same Passover with Moses and later table of Communion with Jesus and the twelve. We are hungry for Jesus actual, real space/time earthy Presence.
This meal takes us deeper into God's house in the heavens and can only be experienced the same way we material-based humans experience all life; in and through the inner and outer senses, especially memory.
From before time and then in our mothers womb and in every moment from our first gasp for air The Eternal Son made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth has been intimately surrounding every neutron and proton being encircled by electrons in every cell of our body. . ”Is there anyplace I can go to.. be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you’re there! If I go underground, you’re there! If I flew on morning’s wings to the far western horizon, You’d find me in a minute—you’re already there waiting! Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I’m immersed in the light!” It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you" (Psalm 139:7-12 MSG).
Dr. N.T. Wright tells us 5 that the Jewish and early Christian world view did not think of heaven as "out there" a few billion light years, but close-in, near, just beyond eyesight in what we today would call a parallel universe. C.S. Lewis, building on Chesterton, among others talks about the five inner Witt's (senses) through which we can perceive the "spiritual reality" of space-time. They are:
Common Sense or the learned experience of community, and;
Estimation or Intuition or the ability to extrapolate from experience and anticipate likely outcomes, and;
Imagination or the ability to imagine new possibilities from previous experience, and;
Fantasy or the ability to imagine new possibilities without any previous experience, and;
Memory or the ability to re-experience in the present the full experience of the past.
Memory, of these five, enables us to live anew the vivid texture (touch) of past experiences as in the beauty (sight) that captures us in awe or taste anew the sweet satisfaction of a meal, smelling the unique aroma that first awakens our interest, and the lingering smell that comforts long after the moment as we in significant moments hear our own voices in the telling of it all. Memory is what connects "past-present" and us to one another; for our great memories are rarely known in isolation. Memory, together with imagination, seats us at Israel's table readying their exodus or with the twelve gathered with Jesus—and the uncertainty in the darkness that awaited them just beyond the upper room.
In worship our posture is "present-future" via the gifting of The Spirit. In Christ's table we are grounded in the ancient story remembering Israel's suffering by way of injustice and Jesus loving and brave surrender to the Empire. Injustice's power and our shame and guilt are melted inside Israel's escape from slavery and our Lord's release of "his cup" into The Father's hands.
There has never been a time when we, the People of God need both the earthiness of water and the hope and lift of Spirit. For ”no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit" (John 3:5-6 NIV). We need to receive Jesus of Nazareth fully present, as the Creator and Sustainer of everything and everyone. Quite literally around, below, above, before and after us. That is why Jesus, taking the bread, "broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me”“
(1 Corinthians 11:24 NIV).
Just as importantly, having seen God The Eternal Son anew, at his table, and with all The People of God; we dare not leave the Sanctuary of Heaven on earth without renewal in the Spirit who calls us into the future God is forming even now in the coming of His Kingdom. As it is in heaven so shall it be on earth. This is past-present-future in which we are saved; by water and Spirit.
Blessings! Terry
1 Transubstantiation: noun, Christian Theology
(especially in the Roman Catholic Church) the
conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic
elements into the body and blood of Christ at
consecration, only the appearances of bread and
wine still remaining.
Definitions from Oxford Languages
2 For more, watch Richard Rohr's discussion of "The Cosmic Christ"
3 The concept of a "Name that is no Name" is beautifully described, together with the appropriate distinction between "The Eternal Son and Jesus of Nazareth" in Pope Benedict's book "Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration." (He in no way suggests Jesus is, in his human/Divine nature any other than The Eternal Son.
Only that while Jesus is fully "The Eternal Son", The Eternal Son is more than Jesus of Nazareth whose beginning as a human is a fixed point in time.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1586171984/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.L
4 Einsteinium Physics
a) Overview of Einsteinium Physics and the Nature of the Universe
b) PBS Recommended videos on Einsteinium Science
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