And that is the point. The goal is to change the economy of Holy Communion from one in which the sacred food is a scarce commodity controlled and doled out by a religious elite (clergy, elders, or both) to one in which all participate in sharing so that we all might experience abundance. p. 146
Before I begin, I should share that Christopher Grundy is a
friend of mine, I consider him part of my extended family, I love his music,
and that I am more proud of my alma mater, Eden Theological Seminary,
knowing Professor Grundy teaches there.
Grundy’s book will be an important contribution to the
ongoing discussion about the meaning and practice of Holy Communion. I think the one weakness of the book is that
it makes references to a broad critique of current Christian practice and
meaning while actually developing a more specific point of departure for a
critique of current Christian practice and meaning around objectification and
sexual violence.
If Grundy’s text did indeed try to speak more broadly about
the myth of redemptive violence, I think he would need to engage Walter Wink’s
writing[i]
and, even more so, Dom Helder Camara’s Spiral of Violence.[ii]
What he has done has torn the tablecloth off the table of what
patriarchy considers a silent, private meal to acknowledge the horrific
hierarchies and objectification that should have trigger warnings at every
turn.
In doing so, Grundy gives us permission to imagine and risk
something more egalitarian, just, loving, and communally public which should be
in keeping with a meal tradition that sought to intentionally unseat and
disrupt a violent status quo.
My hope is that Grundy or someone else will pick up his text
and engage the broader public discourse.
That engagement will be critical as State violence enjoins peaceful
protest on the street and, at times, seeks to provoke or use vandalism or
property damage to justify violence against human bodies. What does a sacrament like Holy Communion
teach us as we see or move in protest, State action, and media delivery? How do we imagine that sacrament being
practiced on the streets in a way that is faithful? What can we learn from public liturgies which
have already been practiced?
As a more specific text, however, Grundy has offered an
alternative meal practice that is long overdue.
We recognize that void when we are on a youth mission trip, only have
saltines and water, and find that the meaning of that communion seems deeper
and more meaningful than what we experience on Sunday morning. In my last settled pastorate, I found it
powerful when we did not have our regular communion stewards in place. An intergenerational mix came forward with mentoring
and grace evident in distribution. I
found that mix seeded with much more joy and meaning—disrupting the hierarchy
Grundy strongly critiques.
In particular, Grundy wants to unhook Holy Communion from
what Christians would traditionally call “The Last Supper.” The words given to Jesus in The Last Supper
are fraught with an acknowledgment of violence or predicted violence. Grundy is especially critical of language
that moves “Jesus’s body and blood” from a subject to an object, controlled,
managed, and done violence to that body and blood by others.[iii] He points to other meal stories/traditions
that are profoundly more countercultural—manna and water, feeding of the
multitude, eschatological promise, footwashing, breakfast on the beach, and
Emmaus. He makes the invitation for
others to imagine with him.
In that imagining, I see the Syro-Phoenician/Canaanite woman
as a questioning interloper in the liturgy, not unlike children during
Passover, asking why she and her daughter are not included at the table. With that healthy questioning, the table is
transformed and expanded to continue asking, “Who is here or not here for whom
the table should be transformed and expanded?”
That imagining would go hand in hand with Grundy’s
explanation of the apostle Paul’s Holy Communion practice where nobody goes away
from the table hungry and some of those at table are actually economically poor. In those socially radical practices, Holy
Communion is not Holy Communion unless those in need are present and actually
fed. I believe what Grundy is asking for
is a table which is integrated with justice-doing and peace-making in our
community. If rituals and a sacrament are
going to imprint powerful meaning, should they not somehow disrupt tables too
often communicating class and caste?
As with the healthy spiritual practice of Biblical study
then, I would ask whether maybe all Holy Communion should begin with an
acknowledgment of our social location. Rather
than the too often empty Prayers of Confession we make inside and outside our
Holy Community liturgy, social location acknowledgment would be a way of saying
where we are and where we want to be.
Not only with Paul, but Grundy lays out elements in other
Biblical communion stories that have elements which require socially radical
practices. If we practiced what we read
in the Emmaus communion story, we might need to receive food from a stranger or
provide hospitality to a stranger, share in prayer, have a meal that is an epiphany,
a citation, or a performative reiteration of a meal that helps the Beloved
Community to come near, and an acknowledgement and recognition by the disciples
of that Beloved Community.
In spelling out these Scriptural stories that have socially
radical practices, Grundy is encouraging his readers to integrate meal
practices in Holy Communion that have too often been separate—feeding the poor,
community potlucks, and the small bread and grape juice of Holy Communion. In practicing violent objectification, sparse
economies, and hierarchical distribution, we are practicing a theology of Jesus
that should honor body and blood as subjects, multiplying abundance economies
of solidarity, and just distribution. His
text offers us a possibility and dialog of transformational intention.
What we have been doing in Holy Communion should come loaded
with trigger warnings for those who have experience or are experiencing ongoing
sexual violence. Grundy’s text calls out
our ongoing assumptions to show what damage we are doing to the Body of Christ
in a tradition that romanticizes the trauma, torture, and death of Jesus. He makes it clear that we have ample resources
within the tradition to make healthier choices.
As with all work within a major faith narrative, his text
also shows the constant struggle we have to critique the Christian tradition
while recognizing how we must also engage power. Early in the text, Grundy shares that he will
use the Beloved Community (I love this) rather than Kin-dom or some other
translation of the early Jewish movement that Jesus referenced as the Kingdom/Empire
of God. Beloved Community, as a term
coined in the Civil Rights Movement, can open us to speaking openly about the
alternative Domination System. I assume
that Jesus’s use of Empire/Kingdom of God is intentionally satirical and provocative
as a proverbial phrase that opens us to something radically different than the
Roman Empire/Kingdom of Caesar. Beloved
Community will always need to be moored over and against racism, materialism,
and militarism. Or, better yet, the American
imperial project.
I pray that liturgical theologians will use Grundy’s good
text as a point of departure for language and imagery that has long needed
changing. I am grateful that he has
given us all permission to open a wider treasure of meal stories for liturgical
use in Holy Communion.
[i]
https://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/critical-perspectives-the-myth-of-redemptive-violence
and found in more detail in Wink’s Powers trilogy.
[ii]
The whole text is found here: http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/spiral-of-violence-camara.pdf.
[iii]
From note 22, on p. 37, “ . . . Holy Communion helps to structure an
environment in which we produce a living body that is simultaneously treated as
a ritual object—and an object of violence.”
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