Rain and the Rhinoceros

Here is an index to my series of Holy Week reflections:

1. Holy Thursday
2. Good Friday
3. Holy Saturday
4. Easter Sunday

Last year I wrote a number of reflections during Holy Week drawing from the late Dominican priest Herbert McCabe’s sermons. You can find his sermons in God Matters. I’ve decided to re-post these reflections here.

On Holy Thursday the church remembers the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples and so also the mystery of the Eucharist.
Because I’m immersed in the work of Herbert McCabe right now this post primarily consists of my reflections on a Holy Thursday sermon he once delivered that was published in God Matters. For McCabe, the Eucharist and indeed everything that the church points to is about the “mystery of unity,” that is, the being together of people. The church proclaims that all our efforts toward unity culminate in God. “The ultimate unity of people is only to be found in God, and the real God is only to be found in unity between people” (God Matters, 78). Needless to say, humanity has not reached a point of unity. Today, we solemnly remember our utter estrangement and alienation from one another. As a result of our persistent disunity our concepts of God constantly slip into idolatry. As McCabe points out, “God becomes for us the God of our class, our nation, our race or time, the tutelary deity, perhaps, of the ‘free world’” (78). As we recall the launching of an illegal war in Iraq five years ago we still hear the sound of “God is on our side.” Lord Jesus forgive us, the church, for our complicity in this idolatry and our collusion with nationalist politics. To recognize the disunity of humanity and our own complicity in this is to recognize the pervasiveness of sin.

In the church’s celebration of the Eucharist the Last Supper is made present, but we are also flung into the future. The future of the world is nothing less than participation in the mystery of triune God. It is the unity, the communion that we long for; it is being-together in truthfulness and freedom. At the moment, as McCabe notes, “We can see humankind itself as one only in mystery, in the gesture towards the reality that is to come. We cannot see love except in hints and guesses of what is to come” (79). Holy Thursday is the celebration of being together as people, as humans, and so we also celebrate the unity that is to come. Yet, Holy Thursday like the sacraments only exist because of sin, which is to say that these things are temporary and incomplete. Sin is “the depth within our quarrels and disunity and dislikes. Sin is the seriousness within human injustice, where it becomes a matter of what God we serve.

Our only hope for unity is in God and our approach toward this unity is, as McCabe points out, to be in solidarity with “the poor and the exploited against their oppressors,” for “the only God we know is the God of the poor, the God who takes sides in the struggle, and that any God of consensus who is supposed to belong to both sides is an illusion and a dangerous one” (79). In McCabe’s view, though God takes sides we do not. And so we can never say that “God is on our side,” but this is not because God is neutral but because we are compromised. Because God is on the side of the poor, so the church if it is to be a sign of the kingdom must be the church of the poor. Despite the optimism of modernity “there is no real unity to the world, the only authentic unity is in the struggle, and it is because this is our real unity here and now that we can only express the Kingdom sacramentally” (79).

What we experience in the United States is not true peace or unity primarily because it is born out of fear and based on violence. The unity that we have as citizens of the U.S. is a false unity because it is not built on love. Indeed, this false unity is nothing but “concealed hatred, a hypocritical pretense of fellowship” (80). The entire structure of the United States and the false unity that we have through global capitalism is built on antagonism and violence. However important the dismantling of structural violence is it will not finally bring about unity. If we believe this, according to McCabe, we have not come to recognize the depth of human sin. The human race is in need of a greater transformation, a more radical revolution than the overthrow of systems of injustice: we are in need of forgiveness.

When the local church gathers together on Holy Thursday, the whole church is present, just as the whole Christ is made present in the Eucharist. This gathering is never private. Whenever the church gathers it gathers as a public in its own right. There is no such thing as a private mass. “Those who are actually enacting the liturgical sign of eating the Body of Christ and drinking his Blood are doing so not for their own private sakes, but for the whole community, just as actors are not acting just for their own private satisfaction but for the whole audience as well” (83).

The Eucharist is thus a sign of the mystery of unity and “Christ is present precisely as the sign of our unity and not in any other way” (84). The Eucharist as a meal is a sign of community and hospitality. Each and every human being is invited to the table to share in the food that is a sign of our unity in God. And so we give thanks for the gift of life and nourishment, for God’s sustaining love and his Word made flesh in whom we were made and to whom we are destined to share in life together.

In his provocative article, “Communion and Otherness,”1 Zizioulas states not without a tone of lament, “The world at this moment is dominated by Western culture.”2 In a time when Western political and economic systems dominate and exert themselves on the world, Orthodoxy cannot afford to become merely another “‘exotic’ religion offering refuge to those seeking mystical and other extraordinary experiences.”3 Instead, following the ancient church as a model, Orthodoxy, especially those members living in the West, must engage and strive to transform culture. Zizioulas urges the Orthodox church “to relate tradition to the problems of modern Western man, which are rapidly becoming the problems of humanity in its global dimension.”4 The individualism that is rooted in the “very foundations of this culture” regrettably views the happiness and rights of the individual so highly that it makes “protection from the other. . . a fundamental necessity.”5 As a result, “we are forced and even encouraged to consider the other as our enemy before we can treat him or her as our friend.”6 Acceptance of the other is always conditional on the basis that this other does not “threaten our privacy or insofar as he is useful for our individual happiness.”7In Zizioulas’ assessment the values and ideals of Western culture, heralded by the United States in particular, actually perpetuate fear of the other.

This essay is broken up into two parts. In the first section, we will make the case that the Bush administration with the help of the media8 has constructed a depersonalized and stereotyped Arab/Muslim other9 to justify a seemingly unending “war on terrorism.” In the second section, we will undertake a study of Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist to support our thesis that the Eucharist enacts a vision that resists all methods of depersonalization and stereotyping by opening up a set of human relations in which the other is affirmed as particular and unique. Our hope in this paper is to offer a small contribution to the recent retrieval of the social meaning of Christian worship.10

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1. The article first appeared in John Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38.04, pp. 347-361. A revised form of the essay appears as the introduction of Zizioulas’ recent publication Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1-12.
2. Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” 348.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid
5..Ibid., 349.
6. Ibid., 349.
7. Ibid., 349.
8. I am fully aware that the term, “the media,” carries some ambiguity. By media, I mean to refer specifically to mainstream corporate news outlets, such as CNN or The New York Times. Analysis of other forms of media, such as the portrayal of Arab/Muslims in film, literature, theatre, photography, and art is beyond the scope of this paper and has been discussed elsewhere. See, for instance, Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar eds., Visions of the East: Orientalism in film (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
9. Of course, the Western construction of an Arab/Muslim other is hardly a recent phenomenon. Here, I take Edward Said’s basic thesis for granted. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon books, 1978. See also, Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Said’s basic thesis is that knowledge of the East in Western imagination has been generated primarily by constructs that juxtapose the East as the antithesis of the West.
10. See especially William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (New York: T&T Clark, 2003) and Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998); Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells eds., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting an essay that I recently wrote in the form of a series. The full title of the paper is “The Eucharist and the ‘War on Terrorism’: John Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist and the refusal to reject the Other.” This is my first blogging attempt at posting a “series,” so bare with me. The following is the first post of the series and the beginning of the essay.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, coupled with the President’s rhetoric about the shadowy nature of the enemy, played into people’s fear of the other. The Bush administration, with the help of the media, constructed a larger-than-life “terrorist enemy” and promised to rid the entire world of evil forever through the deployment of massive military force. By exploiting this fear of the other, the Bush administration gained wide support from the nation’s citizens, including many Christians, to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and later, under a related pretext, the invasion of Iraq for the second time in just over a decade.

Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas directly identifies the fear of the other with the fall of humanity. He writes, “There is a pathology built into the very roots of our existence, inherited through our birth, and that is the fear of the other.”1 Adam’s sin was the “rejection of the Other par excellence, our Creator.”2 Any hope for reconciliation with the other, therefore, relies on our first being reconciled to God. Our fear of the other is, however, reflective of a much deeper and universal fear of all otherness.3 The fear of all otherness is the fear that difference poses a threat to our individual security. Even when fear of the other is apparently overcome, when we begin to accept a particular other, for instance, Zizioulas argues that we do so only on the condition that this other is similar to ourselves. In other words, we are resistant, and indeed cannot even bare to accept, much less affirm radical difference or absolute otherness.

When we gather together in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist we enter into communion with the triune God, with one another, and with the whole of creation. At the same time, in the Eucharistic celebration otherness is radically affirmed and difference no longer leads to division. In Zizioulas’ words, in the Eucharist “difference ceases to be divisive and becomes good. . . unity or communion does not destroy but rather affirms diversity and otherness.”4 The Eucharist is thus the act in which “communion and otherness is realized par excellence.”5 This series of posts will explore John Zizioulas’ notion that communion and otherness is fully realized in the Eucharistic celebration. Building on the work of Zizioulas we will argue that the Eucharist enacts a vision or an “ethos” that resists all methods of depersonalization and stereotyping of the other by positively affirming the absolute uniqueness and particularity of each and every human person. We will show that Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist has a cosmic and profoundly social dimension which has implications for how the church should respond to the distorted construction of an “Arab/Muslim” other in the United States led “war on terrorism.”

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1John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1.
2 Communion & Otherness, 1.
3 Ibid., 2.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 7.

At the Last Supper Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Mt 26:29; cf. Lk 22:18; Mk 14:25). In saying this Jesus was pointing to the end of temporal history as we know it; he was pointing to the full reality of the kingdom of God that is to come. Every Eucharistic celebration is both a memorial of what the triune God has accomplished in history and a foretaste of what the triune God will do in the future. As the Catholic Catechism points out, “Whenever the Church celebrates the Eucharist she remembers this promise and turns her gaze ‘to him who is to come.’ In her prayer she calls for his coming: ‘Maranatha!’ ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ ‘May your grace come and this world pass away!’” (CCC 1403). In the Eucharist the future breaks into the present time and we cannot help but be caught up in the glory and splendor of God. Although “his presence is veiled” the Lord of heaven and earth meets us in the Eucharist and calls us into communion with him. Our communion with God in the Eucharist is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

Oh, have mercy. Will it ever stop? I just found out about the U2charist.The U2charist is a very specific kind of Eucharist service started by the Episcopal church in which U2 songs are played during the celebration of the Eucharist. According to  Wikipedia the U2charist “features the music of the rock band U2 and a message about God’s call to rally around the Millennium Development Goals.” Apparently the U2charist began a couple years ago to rally around Bono and his humanitarian efforts.Of course, I think that Christians should urge countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals, but does this mean holding a U2charist? I’m not a major “traditionalist” by any means, but everyone knows my disdain for Bono. If you haven’t heard read here and here.  Okay three points: 1) A U2charist reflects how deep the wedge really is between our worship and our politics that we have to transform the Eucharist into a promotion for a social program.  2) The traditional Eucharist has been so privatized to the point where people don’t believe that it has any relevant social meaning. So, we need something like U2 to spruce it up and make it relevant to the world.3) The name U2charist just makes me sick.  I don’t know. What do people think about this? Am I too cynical? Is this a helpful way to get people to connect worship with politics? Is the Eucharist as it is so socially irrelevant?    

As a non-Catholic studying theology at a Catholic university, I often think about the possiblity of intercommunion, that is, sharing the Eucharist with my Catholic sisters and brothers. Often you will hear Protestants speak against any exclusion when it comes to sharing the Eucharist, for all are welcome at the table. Yes, all are welcome at the Lord’s table – this must be affirmed. God calls his people to share communion together not apart. Does this mean, therefore, that protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, should now begin to share the Eucharist together? No! because the truth of the matter is that we are divided and not in communion. It is our hope that all will come into communion, but until that day we must be honest about where divisions exist. As Zizioulas notes, “In disagreeing with [intercommunion], we do not preach exclusiveness and exclusion of the other; we simply acknowledge that such an exclusion does exist, and until the causes of it are removed, communion with the other’ suffers” (Zizioulas,Communion & Otherness, 8).

The Christian church must seriously engage the truth-claims of other faith traditions because we believe God is active in the world seeking to gather all of humanity back to himself. On the one hand, this is just another way of saying that the church must have a posture of openness to the work of God in the truth-claims of other traditions. On the other hand, it is also a way of affirming that God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is the truth and therefore the only proper starting point for Christian reflection and evaluation of the truth-claims of other religions. To say otherwise is to suggest that Christians (or anyone else for that matter) have access to some other superior and “objective” perspective by which to evaluate competing truth-claims. Thus, to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the truth, the way, and the light, is no more of a confessional statement then to say he is not, or something else is, or nobody knows. Of course, truth-claims contain little value if they are not embodied by a people. Thus, Christians must witness to God’s saving work in Jesus through peaceableness and service to and for the world, which includes other faith traditions.

With the rise of globalization the religious and cultural “pluralism” that exists in the world seems to be magnified. Paradoxically, however, the reality of globalization threatens to collapse the distinctiveness of all traditions into one, homogenized, faith in the ideology of the global market. Nevertheless, religious pluralism does exist and so it poses a challenge to the Christian church, especially in an age that seeks to consume all religions at once to satisfy the thirst for more, or, for the sake of unity, attempts to privatize religion altogether. Although there is much to affirm in other traditions, whenever truth-claims are made truly public there will exist some degree of conflict and division. Still, the unity we desire with other religions is not to be found in the nation-state (around a flag). Instead, in the face of conflict the church must proclaim that unity is to be found in a wafer, for God has reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ.

The celebration of the Eucharist and the existence of a bishop are not necessary for a particular community to be called church. If we agree with Vatican II that the Eucharist and a bishop are necessary components of what constitutes a church, then how do we account for “ecclesial communities” that do not have a college of bishops and do not celebrate the Eucharist in communion with Rome? Does this necessarily mean that when these people gather to worship they do not constitute church? By the logic of Vatican II we are left with the Roman Catholic church and other “ecclesial communities” not other churches. To be fair, Vatican II made many concessions in the direction of ecumenical dialogue, but this writer cannot in good conscience agree with an idea of church that, by the necessity of its own logic, excludes other communities of baptized people who gather for worship and partake in the Lord’s Supper.In order to defend such a claim, I must demonstrate that something else constitutes a church. To clarify, I do believe that a congregation that celebrates the Eucharist around its bishop is a desirable model of church, but it does not by itself constitute it. Indeed, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the church’s life and the bishop provides the visible connection and helps bring the particular church into communion with other churches. However, it is not the Eucharist and a bishop that constitutes our identity as church. Rather, our identity as church is grounded in our having been called into communion with the Triune God. In other words, we are constituted by God as we participate in this communion. All of this is not to deny the importance of the Eucharist; nor is it to discredit the function of the bishop. However, to claim that these two elements of the church’s life constitute its being as such, fails to fully recognize that only the Triune God calls the church into being, and that our participation in this communion is a flawed participation. This does not mean that we cease to be church; it does mean that what constitutes church cannot be solely identified on the basis of particular ecclesial practices.

Thus the Church itself is a leitourgia, a ministry, a calling to act in this world after the fashion of Christ, to bear testimony to Him and His kingdom. The eucharistic liturgy, therefore, must not be approached and understood in “liturgical” or “cultic” terms alone. Just as Christianity can-and must-be considered the end of religion, so the Christian liturgy in general, and the Eucharist in particular, are indeed the end of cult, of the “sacred” religious act isolated from, and opposed to, the “profane” life of the community. The first condition for the understanding of liturgy is to forget about any specific “liturgical piety.”

Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 25-26.