Scripture and Liturgy: Offering Christ

SL 39 (2009) 185-201 Scripture and Liturgy: Offering Christ by E. Byron Anderson* What do we think we are saying and doing when we as a worshiping community hear the words "This is the gospel of Christ" and respond "Praise to Christ our Lord" or "Praise to you, a Christ"; or when we hear "The Word of God for the people of God" and respond "Thanks be to God"? And, what is it we are saying and doing with our "Amen" after hearing "The body of Christ, broken for you; the blood of Christ shed for you" as we receive the bread and cup? While there are a number of possible answers to these questions, I want to explore one primary idea: that in the liturgical proclamation of scripture and in the sharing of the eucharistic bread and cup Christ is being offered to us. Our response, however we ritualize it, is an acceptance of that offer. Three concerns that Michael Vasey raised in his short essay "Worship and the Bible" have guided my reflections: first, the church's tendencies to separate the cerebral and symbolic, word and sacrament; second, current Protestant tendencies to see scripture and sacrament as "intrusions into 'real worship' " or as simply some kind of adjunct or aid to preaching; and third, Vasey's proposal that "liturgy is the incorporation into the life, memory and celebration of the community of the 'word of Christ.' "1 In brief, then, my thesis is this: scripture and sacrament have their home in Christian liturgy, where, as comparable means of grace, they make present to us the incarnate Word of God, and through which God offers Godself to us for the sake of our salvation. I. Scripture and Sacrament at Home in the Liturgy There are several ways for us to think about the problems of separating scripture and sacrament. In a Protestant-Catholic divide that has long suggested we must choose between scripture or sacrament, few contemporary Protestants seem aware of how much scripture Catholics hear each Sunday, and few Catholics seem aware *The Rev. Dr.E. Byron (Ron) Anderson is StybergAssociate Professor of Worship atGarrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, lllinois, USA, and may be contacted at [email protected]. This essay was originally presented as the 2009 Michael Vasey Lecture in Durham, England. 1 Michael Vasey, "Worship and the Bible," Evangel: The British Evangelical Review 16 (Spring 1998) 20-21, 23. 185 of how little scripture Protestants are likely to hear, even in an age when many of us share a common lectionary. The problematic separation of scripture and sacrament is sometimes seen in the placement and use of liturgical objects as well. So, for example, in many North American congregations, especially those that consider themselves “non-liturgical,” it is not unusual to find the Bible “enshrined” on the altar table, a kind of visual aid that often remains unused in the reading and proclamation of scripture and which suggests that the table is unlikely to be used for the holy meal. Akind of idolatry of the book? Perhaps. But when pressed, we might also discover a sense of the real presence of Christ the Word. Of course, Protestants often see the tabernacle for the Blessed Sacrament as another kind of idolatry, missing the point that it too represents the presence of Christ, who is the object of our devotion. We might think of the ways in which liturgy has come to mean stereotypically sermon for Protestants and eucharist for Catholics. And, beyond this separation, we need to acknowledge that there is a part of the church which, trying to be “seeker-friendly,’’ has little place for either scripture or sacrament, much less for any notion of liturgy. However it is that we frame the separation of scripture and sacrament, the separation itself is problematic for the life of the church. Scripture and sacrament require each other and we require them both. As Orthodox liturgical theologian Alexander Schmemann so keenly observes: “in separation from the word the sacrament is in danger of being perceived as magic, and without the sacrament the word is in danger of being ‘reduced’ to ‘doctrine.’”* Scripture becomes an object of historical-critical study and sacrament becomes an object of philosophical speculation. But scripture is neither history nor doctrine and sacrament is neither philosophy nor magic. Scripture and sacrament are liturgy; liturgy is their natural home. That liturgy is the home of scripture is especially hard to see in an age when scripture is readily available in a variety of translations and paraphrases, whether as printed text or electronic image, when scripture is portable and individualized, and when there seems to be no end to the variety of study editions and commentaries. In such a personalized and individualized context, the assertion that scripture requires a community and a liturgical ritual context for its “performance” and its interpretation seems unfathomable. Similar forces seem to be at work in relationship to the sacrament of the table, not only in proposals for various kinds of video participation but also in the availability of pre-packaged individual servings of the eucharistic elements. The connection between ordained ministry and the sacrament of the table may make such problems somewhat less of a * Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988) 68. 186 concern, but this same connection has also led some communities to decide that the sacrament of the table is unnecessary. Thus, this claim that scripture and sacrament find their natural home in the liturgy warrants some exploration, especially in terms of scripture. Certainly on the Protestant side of the conversation, attention has tended to focus either on what scripture either permits or forbids in liturgical practice or on imaginative readings of prophetic visions as somehow providing an outline of "true" Christian worship. The reality, of course, is that scripture tells us very little about actual or even imagined Christian liturgical practice." That such concerns for scriptural warrant still occupy our attention is because we fail to see, as Louis-Marie Chauvet suggests, "The liturgy is not apparent in the text itself ... because it is its pretext."4 Scripture is not the home of liturgy, but liturgy the home of scripture. Christian liturgy is the place not only where scripture and sacrament most fully live, but also where they come to be as scripture and sacrament. That is, "the liturgical assembly (the ecclesia in its primary sense) is the place where the Bible becomes the Bible"> and where a meal becomes eucharist. As Aidan Kavanagh argues, "it is the assembling for worship which renders the writing and canonizing of scripture inevitable."6 To this we might add that it is in and because of the assembling for worship that we also see the gradual emergence of a liturgical eucharistic canon-as Paul Bradshaw demonstrates in his work on the historical development of the eucharist." The history of the canonization of scripture, as well as the history of the church's commemoration of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in what we call the church year, demonstrate how this is so. After Peter finishes his homily on Joel in Acts 2, we are reminded that the church continued in the apostles' teaching, the prayers, and the breaking of the bread. When Justin offers his defense of the Christian faith to the imperial powers, he tells how each Lord's Day the Christian community gathers to hear the memoirs of the apostles and the writing of the prophets, to be exhorted to their imitation, to give thanks, and to share bread and wine. All of this is to say that the ongoing worship life of the Christian community played, and continues to play, a decisive role in the development and understanding 3 As Paul Bradshaw makes so very clear in his The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2002) 47-72. 4 Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, trans. Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995) 194. 5 Chauvet, 212. 6 Aidan Kavanagh, "Scripture and Worship in Synagogue and Church," Michigan Quarterly Review 22 (Summer 1983) 481. 7 See especially Paul Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Bradshaw, Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 118-43. 187 of scripture and sacrament. Neville Clark claims, "The native cradle of scripture is the worshiping life of the People of God.... Its controlling use is its liturgical use."8 And, while we might say that the native cradle of the meal is the family dinner, we can still say that the cradle of the meal as Christian eucharist is the liturgical life of the Christian community. Scripture and sacrament are born out of the liturgical activity of the church, survive (or not) because of their liturgical use, and receive their public authority in and through their public celebration." Without the liturgy, we have only a book; without the liturgy, we have only a meal. Although the development of contemporary lectionaries might suggest otherwise, Christian people did not say, "'Let's choose some texts' ... It is rather that their encounter with these texts shaped their faith and that these texts therefore were authoritative for them." 10 Peter's Pentecost homily on Joel, Paul's reading of the story of Abraham, Luke's account of Jesus reading the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue: each of these point to the ways in which the church received and celebrated "the scriptures." Nor, as some creative ritualizers encourage of us today, did the Christian community say, "Let's create a ritual meal." Rather, the community found its already ritualized meals transformed by memories and stories of multitudes fed, sinners prodded into hospitality' and disciples' eyes opened. It found these ritualized meals necessarily transformed by the needs of newly gathered and growing communities in contexts with different meal practices, from the Sabbath or festival meal, to fellowship meals and symposia. That scripture and sacrament are brought to birth, find their home in, and are, in a way, authorized in the liturgy, suggests both promise and problem. There is promise in that much of the church continues to perform and celebrate scripture and sacrament week in and week out when the Christian community assembles for worship. There is promise in that through this performance and celebration Christian people encounter the life-giving Word of God. There is promise in that this life-giving Word, broken open in our hearing and our eating, continues to provoke our aesthetic, ethical, and intellectual imaginations. There are problems as well. When part of the church believes it expeditious to minimize the place of scripture or sacrament, too often both, in the Christian assembly, they disappear from our hearing and seeing, from our imagining and living. When the church comes to believe that a preacher's words or a priest's 8 Neville Clark, "Scripture in Liturgical Perspective," in The Word in Season: The Use of the Bible in Liturgy, ed. Donald Gray (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1988) 24. 9 Chauvet, 190. 10 A. van de Beek, "Being Convinced: On the Foundations of the Christian Canon" in Canonization and Decanonization, ed. A. van der Kooik and K. van der Toom (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 336. 188 sacrificial ministry are the center of Christian worship, we wonder if there will ever again be a "word from the Lord" or manna in the wilderness. When lifegiving words and practices are used to degrade, wound, or enslave, rather than lift up, heal, and set free, we wonder why anyone could ever imagine this word as "life-giving" and this cup as "saving." Those who minimize the place of scripture and sacrament in Christian worship in effect de-authorize and de-canonize these central Christian practices. Perhaps more to our point, as Carol Noren argues, if Christ is the "central content of scripture," then "setting aside the written word of God [is] the same thing as setting aside Christ and the word incarnate in him." 11 Those who make preacher or priest central, or who wound rather than heal, fail to discern the ecclesial body. Those who separate scripture from sacrament and sacrament from scripture and both from their liturgical home also separate them from the very ecclesial practices that are intended to render them intelligible and rightly interpreted. All contribute to our distancing from and forgetfulness of the living Word. It is in the liturgical assembly that the memory of Christ is kept alive, "memory through the scripture, read and interpreted as speaking about him or being his own living word; memory through the sacraments ... recognized as being his own salvific gestures; memory through the ethical testimony of mutual sharing, lived as an expression of his own service to humankind." 12 Chauvet describes these promises and problems in a series of pointed questions as he describes the integral relationship between scripture, liturgy, and ethics: How could the reading of the Scriptures still be genuinely Christian if it were not connected both to the liturgy where the act of proclamation in the church assembly attests preeminently that these Scriptures are the word of God for today and to the ethical life in which they demand to be embodied? How could participation in the sacraments still be genuinely Christian if it were not connected both to Scripture-which founds liturgy not merely as the celebration of God but also as the celebration of the God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus-and to the ethical life-by which Christians are called to "veri-fy," that is "make true" what they have celebrated and received in the sacraments'r'" For Chauvet it is not our personal faith by which we attest to the scriptures as the word of God. We make such attestation in their proclamation and enactment II Carol Noren, "The Word of God in Worship: Preaching in Relationship to Liturgy," in The Study of Liturgy, rev. ed., ed. Cheslyn Jones et al. (New York: Oxford, 1992) 33. 12 Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 200 I) 28. l3 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 41. 189 in the worshiping community. It is not our piety or devotion that makes sacraments what they are. It is their connection to the person they celebrate in story and action and God's use of these things that suggests good news. It is not simply that we name a book or meal sacred, or that we somehow pass on, as a kind of personal artifact, the family Bible or a tradition of eating together. No, as anthropologist Jonathan Z. Smith argues, "the history of canon is not primarily one of transmission, but of reception." 14 Obviously scripture and meal cannot survive, much less be received and authorized if they have not been transmitted to us. And they cannot be fully transmitted to us except as they are at home in the liturgy, as they are "liturgified," which is itself a process of reception. We might say that it is not until scripture and sacrament are "animated" or embodied by and through the human person in community that they most fully come to life. The Word cannot be heard unless proclaimed and preached, bread and wine cannot be received as eucharist without prayer, breaking and sharing. It is in the public ecclesial performance of scripture and meal, in our liturgical celebrations, that we receive and attest to both scripture and sacrament as means of grace, as mediations of the Word of God "raised from its death by the living voice of the reader, then by that of the homilist who unfolds its 'timeliness,'" 15 then in the community's self-offering in thanksgiving and its mutual sharing of bread and wine. II. Scripture and Sacrament as Comparable Means of Grace Scripture and sacrament are at home in the liturgy and must be "liturgified" for their continued existence. But if, as I have just suggested, they are both mediations of the Word of God, is the distinction scripture/sacrament even appropriate? And, if both find their natural home in and come to birth from the worshiping life of the Christian community, and if the sacraments of word and table require each other, along with an ethical life shaped through them for their "verification," does this not suggest that traditional Protestant commitments to the principle of sola scriptum are insufficient? Might it not be more accurate to think of scripture and sacrament as "comparable means of grace," one the sacrament of the word, the other the sacrament of the table, both mediating an offer of encounter with Christ through the Holy Spirit? On what grounds can we consider them "comparable means of grace"? One proposal that might assist us in this is the recent discussion emerging under the heading of "canonical theism," following especially from the proposals of 14 Jonathan Z. Smith, "Canons, Catalogues and Classics," in Canonization and Decanonization, 299. 15 190 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 47. William Abraham and those who have been working with him.l" Canonical theism attempts to look at, and where necessary retrieve, the whole of the church's canonical repertoire-scripture, liturgy, sacrament, persons, practices, and materials-as resources for the church's life, as "saving practices" rather than theories of knowledge. The canonical theists seek to remind us that scripture is not the only canon in the life of the church and also, as Abraham writes, to "relocate the whole idea of canon within the arena of the means of grace within the Church," 17 through which "the Holy Spirit reaches and restores the image of God in human agents." 18 Guided by the canonical heritage of the church, we are mentored by the tradition of the church, which is always more than a text. So, for example, what we think of as an "instituting narrative" in Paul's letter to the Corinthians reflects an already "instituted" and somehow normative practice toward which Paul could point for the sake of ethical correction. That instituting narrative was already molded, in some way, by the liturgical use of local communities.!? At the same time, while we have come to think of that instituting narrative as essential to Christian eucharistic practice and prayer, in some traditions even as the canon of the eucharist, that narrative played little or no role in liturgical prayer until the second century or later. Liturgical historian Robert Taft has gone so far as to argue that "there is not a single extant pre-Nicene Eucharistic prayer that one can prove contained the Words of Institution."20 When we think then of the church's canonical repertoire, including liturgy, scripture, and sacrament, we begin to see an interlocking and comparable set of practices that the church had come to expect would mediate the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Reflecting on the ways in which these canonical practices require one another for both appropriate interpretation and support, Jason Vickers draws our attention to a note from Nicholas Cabasilas on the interaction of prayer, psalmody, scripture, sacrament and liturgy: The prayers tum us towards God and obtain for us pardon for our sins; the psalms make God look favourably upon us, and draw us to that outflowing of mercy which is the result of such propitiation .... As for the lessons from the 16 See William Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology (New York: Oxford, 1998) and William Abraham, Jason E. Vickers, and Natalie B. Van Kirk, eds., Canonical Theism: A Proposal for Theology and the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 17 Abraham, Canon and Criterion, 21. 18 Abraham, "Canonical Theism: Thirty Theses" in Canonical Theism, 4. 19 Paul Gavrilyuk, "Canonical Liturgies: The Dialectic of Lex Orandi and Lex Credendi" in Canonical Theism, 68. 20 Robert Taft, "Mass without the Consecration? The Historic Agreement on the Eucharist between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East promulgated 26 October 200 I," Worship 77 (November 2003) 493. 191 Holy Scripture which proclaims the goodness of God, and [God's] love for [humanity], but also the severity of [God's] justice and judgment, they instill in our souls the fear of the Lord, enkindle in us love for [God], and thereby arouse in us great eagerness and zeal for the observance of [God's] commandments. All these things, which make the souls of both priest and people better and more divine, make them fit for reception and preservation of the holy mysteries, which is the proper aim of the liturgy.21 The prayer, the psalms, the lessons, the mysteries, the liturgy: all of these things are needed to make the souls of priest and people better and more divine; all contribute to the whole; all serve as means of grace "through which God continues to speak to the faithful who delve whole-heartedly into the life of faith." 22 "Each element in the canonical tradition," Abraham writes, "has its own place to play in the total economy of the community."23 Much as Paul reminded the Corinthians that the hand, eye or ear could not say to the other that it had no need of it or that it somehow was not part of the body, so too each canonical element has a distinctive place in the church's life, which, when separated from the other, is weakened by its isolation. While each is distinct, the canonical practices of the church are comparable means of grace that all seek and contribute to the same thing: a saving encounter with God through Christ and in the Spirit. John and Charles Wesley might seem unlikely examples of canonical theists; certainly John's claim to be homo unius libris-a "man of one book"- makes him an even less obvious choice at this point. Nevertheless, their understanding that there are "ordinary" means of grace and their understanding of the roles these ordinary means play in the nurture and support of the Christian community as it seeks the verifying experience of God's grace warrants, I think, just such consideration. The Wesleys' lists of the ordinary means of grace-in John's sermon on the same as well as in his letters and journal entries concerning the "stillness controversy" of the 1740s, along with Charles' hymns and journal entries on these themes-vary somewhat throughout their writings. They are consistent, however, in including scripture and sacrament in these lists, with only prayer appearing more 21 Nicholas Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty (London: SPCK, 1983) 26, quoted in Jason Vickers, "Medicine of the Holy Spirit: The Canonical Heritage of the Church" in Canonical Theism, 18. 22 Douglas M. Kostela, "The Authority of Scripture in its Ecclesial Context," in Canonical Theism, 221. 23 Abraham, Canon and Criterion, 53. 192 frequently. Given the historic Methodist emphasis on scripture as the primary source for theological and doctrinal consideration, growing out of the emphasis on sola scriptum in the Anglican and Methodist Articles of Religion, we might expect scripture to have the upper hand as a means of grace. It may be somewhat surprising, therefore, to note that, at least for Charles, the chief of the means of grace is not the scriptures but the Lord's supper: The prayer, the fast, the word conveys, / When mix' d with faith, Thy life to me; In all the channels of Thy grace / I still have fellowship with Thee: But chiefly here my soul is fed / With fullness of immortal bread.>' His preference for the supper is perhaps less surprising when we realize that this stanza comes from one of his hymns on the Lord's supper. Nevertheless, even as this stanza seems to suggest that Charles places the sacrament above or ahead of scripture as a means of grace, it would be as appropriate to say that he sets scripture more equally among the other means of grace, including prayer and fasting; its power is neither more nor less than the power of those means, because they are means. As means, they neither have power in themselves nor through those who offer them. Their power lies only with God acting in and through the Holy Spirit; they are channels of God's saving grace. On the one hand, they are equally powerless without God and our appropriation in faith; on the other hand, as means of grace animated by the power of the Spirit, scripture and sacrament, prayer and fasting have a comparable canonical status. What Laurence Stookey observes regarding Charles' understanding of the authority of scripture could as easily be said of his understanding of the Lord's supper: "For Charles Wesley Scripture has clear authority; but it is not in the book as such. The same Spirit who inspired the authors must apply the truth of their words to our hearts, to be received by faith. Scripture does not reveal; it is God who reveals through Scripture."25 So Charles Wesley argued when he wrote Whether the Word be preached or read, / No saving benefit I gain From empty sounds or letters dead; / Unprofitable all and vain, Unless by faith thy word I hear / And see its heavenly character.> 24 Hymn 54, "Why did my dying Lord obtain," in John Wesley and Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord's Supper (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1745). 25 Laurence Hull Stookey, "Charles Wesley, Mentor and Contributor to Liturgical Renewal" in Charles Wesley: Poet and Theologian, ed. S. T. Kimbrough, Jr. (Nashville: Kingswood, 1992) 141-42. 26 "Whether the Word be preached or read" from The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, ed. George Osborne, vol. 13 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1872) 123-24. 193 The letter of scripture, like any of the means of grace, therefore, is "dead unless the Spirit enlivens it"27 and we receive it in faith. On this point, the Wesleys were probably closer to Calvin than they were willing to acknowledge." In that scripture and sacrament are equally powerless in themselves and equally reliant on the power of the Holy Spirit, they are comparable means of grace. I think such becomes especially evident when we compare Charles' two hymn texts "Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire" 29 and "Come, Holy Ghost, thine influence shed." 30 Though published separately, and often isolated from one another within contemporary Methodist hymnals, these two hymn texts point to the way in which, first, the efficaciousness of both scripture and sacrament as means of grace depend on the working of the Holy Spirit and, second, scripture and sacrament as means of grace share the common end of conveying God's love to the human heart. Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire, / Let us thine influence prove; Source of the old prophetic fire, / Fountain of life and love. Come, Holy Ghost (for moved by thee / The prophets wrote and spoke), Unlock the truth, thyself the key, / Unseal the sacred book. Expand thy wings, celestial Dove, / Brood o'er our nature's night; On our disordered spirits move, / And let there now be light. God through himself we then shall know, / If thou within us shine; And sound, with all thy saints below, / The depths of love divine. Come, Holy Ghost, thine influence shed, / And realize the sign; Thy life infuse into the bread, / Thy power into the wine. Fit channels let the tokens prove / And made, by heavenly art, Fit channels to convey thy love / To every faithful heart. 27 Scott J. Jones, John Wesley's Conception and Use ofScripture (Nashville: Abingdon/Kingswood, 1995) 104. 28 So Calvin: "The sacraments duly perform their office only when accompanied by the Spirit, the internal Master, whose energy alone penetrates the heart, stirs up the affections, and procures access for the sacraments into our souls. If he is wanting, the sacraments can avail us no more than the sun shining on the eyeballs of the blind, or sounds uttered in the ears of the deaf. Wherefore, in distributing between the Spirit and the sacraments, I ascribe the whole energy to him, and leave only a ministry to them; this ministry, without the agency of the Spirit, is empty and frivolous, but when he acts within, and exerts his power, it is replete with energy" (Institutes IY.xiv.9; http://www.ccel.orglccellcalvin/ institutes.vi.xv.html [accessed February 13, 2009]). 29 Hymn 85 in The Works ofJohn Wesley, vol. 7: A Collection ofHymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, ed. Franz Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Hymn 469 in Hymns and Psalms (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1983); and Hymn 603 in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1989). The United Methodist Hymnal substitutes "God, through the Spirit" for "God through himself" in stanza 4. 30 Hymn 72 in Hymns on the Lord's Supper and Hymn 602 in Hymns and Psalms. 194 It is the Spirit that "unseals the Book," the Spirit that "realizes the sign," the Spirit that makes scripture and sacrament "fit channels to convey God's love." At a practical liturgical level, the two texts suggest that liturgical epiclesisinvocation of the Holy Spirit, which we often think of only in relationship to the sacrament of the table-is necessary to the efficaciousness of both scripture and sacrament. (At a different kind of performative level, I think it is interesting to note that the two texts share the same meter, making it possible for us to sing them to the same tune. Were we to do so, we could create a musical as well as a theological relationship between the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the table.) With the Wesleys, whatever we say about one of the ordinary means of grace can be said of the other, whether we speak of scripture, sacrament, or prayer. So what Scott Jones says of scripture in the Wesleys' theology we can as easily and appropriately say about the sacrament as well: "Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit uses Scripture [and sacrament] to give grace to the sinner. As that grace is received, spiritual insight is given and reason enlightened, so that the recipient can better understand the scriptures, which will be an even more powerful means of grace than before." 31 Like Nicholas Cabasilas long before them and like the canonical theists after them, John and Charles saw these instituted, ordinary, canonical means of grace as part of an interrelated system for the mediation of God's saving grace. III. Scripture and Sacrament as Modes of Word I have suggested to this point that scripture and sacrament, word and table, are comparable means of grace, sacramental mediations, which find their mutual and true home in the liturgy of the church. Such mediation is, as Geoffrey Wainwright and others demonstrate, a form of theological discourse and a means of catechetical formation. Yet to leave our discussion of sacramental mediation with these tasks is to suggest, as has become true of all too much Protestant worship, that the work of liturgy (like other forms oftheological discourse) is primarily a process of propositional communication requiring our intellectual assent and that the means of grace are primarily of epistemological rather than soteriological concern. We lose sight of the fact that they are somehow "of God" and "for humanity" rather than "of humanity" and "about God." Protestants do well, I think, to heed the reminder that "Christianity did not begin by being a religion of the sacred book" 32 or as philosophical discourse, but with the living presence of God's Word, Jones, 109. William A. Graham, "Scripture as Spoken Word" in Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective, ed. Miriam Levering (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 1989) 148. 31 32 195 with the proclamation of good news to slave and free alike, and with a tradition of shared meals in which distinctions of economic status had no place. The current Catholic catechism, echoing the Wesleys' concern for "the dead letter" of scripture, makes explicit this distinction between the book and living Word: "The Christian faith is not a 'religion of the book.' Christianity is the religion of the 'Word' of God, a word which is 'not a written and mute Word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.' If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, the eternal Word of the living God must, through the Holy Spirit 'open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.' "33 Sandra Schneiders therefore encourages us to consider how scripture and meal both mediate the logos tou Theou, the Word of God, rather than words about God: "divine revelation is a far richer reality, a far more personal and engaging encounter between God and humanity than can be suggested by such notions.">' Though Schneiders' work focuses specifically on the question of scripture and revelation, she and others help us think about how scripture and meal are both sacraments of Word, and therefore, as comparable sacramental mediations, how both are "sacramental expressions of Christ's presence in the assembly.v " They remind us how the early church, especially, understood the integral relationship between the mediations of scripture and meal. Origen wrote, "We drink the book of Christ not only in the sacramental rite, but also when we receive his words in which are life." Jerome wrote, "We eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood not only in the sacrament but also in the reading of scripture." And Ambrose wrote, "Eat this food [speaking of scripture] first, to be able to come later to the food of Christ, to the food of the body of the Lord, to the sacramental feast, to this cup where the love of the faithful becomes inebriated."> Through the sacraments of word and meal God is present to us in Christ and through the Spirit; through the sacraments of word and meal God encounters us, feeds us, enlivens us, fills us, and graces us. As Chauvet writes, "it is in the church celebrating the eucharist as [Christ's] prayer and action, as it is in the church welcoming the scriptures as [Christ's] own living word, that it is possible to recognize that Christ is alive."?" So it is that our response "Praise to 33 Catechism ofthe Catholic Church, Article 3.11.108, http://www.usccb.org/catechismltextlpt1sect 1chpt2.shtrn1#art3 (accessed January 30, 2009). 34 Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Scripture, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical PressIMichae1 Glazer, 1999) 33. 35 Paul Bradshaw, "The Use of the Bible in Liturgy: Some Historical Perspectives," Studia Liturgica 22 (1992) 35. 36 Origen, Hom. Num. 16.9, quoted in Richard Lawrence, "The Altar Bible: Digni, Decori, et Pu1coo," Worship 75 (September 2001) 389; Jerome quoted by Lawrence, 388. Ambrose, Expos. Ps. 118., vv.15, 25, as quoted in Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 214. 37 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 26. 196 you, 0 Christ" at the reading of the gospel and our "Amen" when offered bread and wine are not only our responses to the visible human voice/body in the liturgical assembly but also our response to the living divine presence brought to our hearing and tasting through the assembly in its liturgical practice. As Chauvet also suggests, in our response we welcome by faith "God who has 'come down' by the Spirit of the risen One to dwell in the hearts, that is, the life, ofhuman beings." 38 "Every sacrament," then, "is a sacrament of the Word, the live word brought to us by the Holy Spirit.">? The liturgy of word and table, scripture and meal, is therefore "a liturgy of the Word under the mode of Scripture and ... a liturgy of the Word under the mode of bread and wine. "40 Or, as Lutheran theologian Andre Birmele writes, "sacrament is the coming about of the Gospel. It is Gospel in itself ... a vector of the saving Word ... it only gives what the Word has to give."41 Through the means of grace, "the gift of the Gospel 'enfleshes itself in the church's worship." 42 For Chauvet, the Word is present and operative on three levels: "the Christ-Word (he is the subject working in the sacrament, not its minister), the Scriptures which are read in the celebration, and finally the sacramental formula itself, pronounced 'in the person of Christ (in persona Christi)."43 His statement perhaps requires one stereotypically Protestant amendment to avoid some of the theological and ecclesial problems generated by the phrase in persona Christi and by such limited focus on the institution narrative within the eucharistic prayer. For this amendment, we might draw on the suggestion by Aidan Kavanagh that "the liturgical worship of an assembly of faithful Jews and Christians is not merely words and gestures about God but in some real sense the Word and gestes of God,"44 and consider how in the eucharist the presence of Christ is not by way of a formula (which we have already noted was not present in the earliest eucharistic prayers and which is really an extension of the scriptural word), but by way of the eucharistic gestures of thanksgiving, breaking, and giving. Such an understanding would not be antithetical to Chauvet's argument, especially in light of his focused attention on the Emmaus story, in which it was finally not in the words Jesus spoke to the disciples but in his actions at the table that he becomes fully "present" to Ibid., 63. Ibid., 93. 40 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 221. 41 Andre Birmele, "The Relationship between Scripture and Sacrament in Lutheran Theology" in Sacraments: Revelation ofthe Humanity ofGod, ed. Philippe Bordeyne and Bruce T. Morrill (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2008) 64. 42 Birmele, 70. 43 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 222. 44 Kavanagh, 482. 38 39 197 them (or they to him). As Schneiders writes, "To be accessible to us, to invite us into divine intimacy, God had to approach us symbolically ... in and through perceptible reality,"45 through words, gestures, signs, and the material of bread and wine. God comes to us, then, not as "one unknown," but in a personal, living Word, in story and gesture, in word and meal. In the sacraments of scripture and meal, God becomes fully present to us: audibly, visibly, and tastably present to us. To this end, Edward Kilmartin writes, "The word enables a person to make oneself personally present to another in the relationship of speaker to hearer. Through physical appearance and symbolic gestures the person is, or remains, present. The word, together with the physical appearance and symbolic gestures, enables a person to be fully personally present to another."46 The word spoken, then, is a word spoken in persona Christi because it is Christ's word to us. The bread and cup shared is not only a sharing of Christ's body and blood, but is also shared in persona Christi because it is Christ's redemptive sign to us. Even the exchange of peace is offered in persona Christi because it is the peace of Christ rather than our own peace that we offer. Lector and preacher, presider and server, assembly gathered in worship-all embody the presence of Christ in and to the church. In words and gestures beyond the gathered assembly, we embody the presence of Christ in and to the world. IV. Scripture and Sacrament as God's Offer to Us Christian liturgy, then, is the home for scripture and sacrament, in which we not only receive words and signs about God but also in which those words and signs make God the Word present to us. Yet this presence is not the end of liturgy; we are not engaged in magical incantations invoking the presence of the gods. This presence of Word in and through word, gesture, bread and wine, is a presence on offer to us inviting our response. When I first started thinking about this idea of a "presence on offer to us," I had in mind the stories about John Wesley commissioning either Thomas Coke or Francis Asbury (the stories vary) for the mission in America, sending them off with the words "Offer them Christ." While this story is but a convenient myth in the Methodist tradition, I was intrigued by the idea of this charge pointing not only to evangelical preaching but also to eucharist. Several things come to the fore here. 45 46 198 Schneiders, 36, 37. Edward Kilmartin, Christian Liturgy: I. Theology (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1988) 337. First, this concept of "offering Christ" questions traditional sacramental discussions, perhaps to the relief of Protestants, of how in the eucharist Christ is somehow offered again to God. Second, this notion of "offering Christ" invites us to question the idea that in the eucharist we are primarily offering or sacrificing ourselves to God. My concern here is not to undermine the contemporary church's retrieval of this much-needed understanding of self-offering, but to suggest that by focusing on it we miss the first movement in this offering as a movement from God to us. Third, sacramental theologies that begin with concerns for absence and, therefore, a need to make God present tend to focus our attention on our separation from God and our "disgrace." In contrast, Wesley's evangelical concern to "offer Christ" encourages us to begin from the already/always graced character of our lives, from the awareness of God's abiding presence and of God's offer always before us. To begin from the already/always graced character of our lives and of God's offer always before us is consistent with the Wesleys' understanding of the "means of grace." It turns our attention from what we are doing before or toward God to what God is doing in and with us through our liturgical celebration of word and table. This shift in emphasis requires that we tum our attention first to the gift rather than what we do in return with and for that gift or even, as has been the case in some recent discussions, to the "impossibility of gift." By focusing our attention on what God is doing, our attention shifts away from such traditional sacramental theological considerations as what we mean when we pray "we offer this bread and cup," what we intend when we offer our "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," and what it is we do when we offer ourselves as a "living and holy sacrifice." By focusing our attention on what God is doing through our liturgical action, we begin to see the ways in which each of the components of Christian worship enact God's offer to us in Christ. As we move through the liturgy, beginning with our greeting in the name of Christ ("The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you"), continuing through the proclamation of the Word ("The Word of God for the people of God"), the sharing of the peace, and the sharing of bread and cup ("The body of Christ broken for you"), and concluding with the final blessing, we enact in persona Christi, God's offer to us in Christ. Through these liturgically located and practiced verbal, visible, and tastable exchanges, through the comparable means of grace that are word and table, God addresses us, offers Godself to us, and gifts us in and with grace. As was true of Abraham at the oaks of Marnre, as was true of Moses when he encountered the burning bush, as was true of the disciples surrounding Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration, as was true of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, 199 and as was true of Paul on the road to Damascus, so it is true today: God addresses humanity with a gracious saving word. In this address, God becomes present to us and draws us into God's presence, inviting us to become a people, to stand on holy ground, to listen to the living Word, to become messengers of the Gospel. What makes the sacraments of word and table "ordinary" means of grace is that they are modes of God's address to us through which God finds us and we regularly find God. 47 This address from God is not merely the sending and receiving of some message, some communication of information. It is, as Eberhard Jtingel argues, "the being of some content . . . expressed in language in such a way that it addresses the being of a person and summons that person out of himself through the word which addresses him."48 In this address from God, Jungel continues, we are brought to ourselves and even possibly divorced from ourselves, as when God asks Adam and Eve, "Where are you? What have you done?" or when the angel asks Sarai why she laughed or when Christ asks Saul why Saul is persecuting him. The word that we praise, the bread to which we offer our "Amen," the response in grace and peace: all are means by which God addresses us, draws us away from self-preoccupation and summons us into relationship with God. It is an address that promises Godself to us in "divine fidelity ... that cannot be negated by [our] unfaithfulness,"49 our distrust or our betrayal. In the particularity of the word that is scripture and of the word that is bread and cup, in these traces of a word become flesh in human time, "the self-communicating glory of God continues to address us and to share itself within the context of historical reality."50 Because it is God's address to us and God's promise of fidelity, it is also God's gift to us. David Power describes this as clearly as anyone: "The word proclaimed, the language spoken, the gifts shared, come from God.... All consideration of sacrament is a consideration of how God approaches and gifts creatures, who stand in wonder before the divine and ineffable mystery to which they cannot give a name but from which they receive life, a life which draws them up into mystery,">' 47 As Aidan Kavanagh writes, "In the liturgy, God welds himself into our medium of discourse without becoming subordinate either to those media or to us who must use them. Christian tradition knows that God is not restricted to a sacramental order or rite, but [God] has nevertheless willed to work through these media regularly as nowhere else in creation because it is precisely in these that we work upon ourselves and construct our world" (On Liturgical Theology [New York: Pueblo, 1984] 120). 48 Eberhard Jungel, God as the Mystery ofthe World, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 12. 49 Rowan Williams, "Sacraments of a New Society" in On Christian Theology (Malden, Mass.: BIackwells, 2000) 216. 50 Jungel, 191. 51 David Power, Sacrament: The Language of God's Giving (New York: Crossroad, 1999) 275. 200 It is God's addressing, God's promising, God's gift and gifting that makes sacrament of such ordinary things and human actions. It is not repayment in kind for what we bring or offer (for which we should say, "Thanks be to God") but, as Power notes, "a reversal of the order of giving, placing it totally, like the incarnation, in the gratuitous initiative of God. "52 It is wholly gratuitous, owing nothing to whatever we might offer in return." Through words and signs, gestures and rites, books and bread, we see, hear, and taste what otherwise seems an incomprehensible and extravagant gift. Chauvet puts it this way: "It is, before all else, this truth that the sacraments are witnessing to us: A pure gift from God deposited in our hands (The body of Christ. Amen.)"54 But more, it is also a gift deposited on our tongues, in our eyes, and in our ears. Finally, because these modest mysterious signs enact God's gift to us in Christ, because they show forth God's offer to us in Christ, they are never intrusion or interruption. As gift and offer they do not compel or insist but invite and welcome; they show us the possibilities of a gifted and graced life; and, they create a place . in which we begin to live such a life. This is God's saving work with us. For those who do not yet have the "ears to hear" or the "eyes to see," this seemingly modest gift offered in a gracious word and the sharing of bread and wine may be the starting point, an offer of help, friendship, love. For those who have heard and seen, these sacramental signs offer the means to continue or to renew the relationship. As I suggested in my opening questions, whatever else it is that we think we are doing when we respond to the reading of the gospel with "Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ" or "Thanks be to God" and when we respond to the giving of the bread and cup with our "Amen," we are acknowledging and accepting God's offer to us in Christ. To paraphrase the writer to the Colossians, in the sacraments of scripture and meal, which find their home in liturgy, God opens for us a door for the living and life-giving Word. This Word proclaims the mystery of Christ, offers to us the saving grace of Christ, and incorporates us into the body of Christ (Col 4:3). In the sacramental signs and liturgical reception of scripture and sacred meal, we "hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" God's offer of Word, "that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life" given to us by God in Jesus Christ and through the Spirit. S2 S3 S4 Ibid., 277. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 123. Ibid., 54. 201