1. If I could do Communion exactly as I wanted, I would draw attention back to that part of the scriptures which most people gloss over but which sticks out like a sore thumb during the wafer-and-grape-juice rituals we have today: "When Jesus sat at supper with his friends..." If I could do communion I would have it be a simple meal with all the congregation seated around many round tables. Each table would have a fresh loaf of bread and wine/grape juice at it, as well as the various bits of the meal (a potluck, some soup, sandwiches, whatever). Each table would have one person who would repeat the words of Jesus, break the bread, and hand it around to signal the start of the meal. Then, as people were finishing up, she or or would rise, raise a glass, and everyone would drink some wine/grape juice. I don't care if this would be too expensive or too non-traditional or too difficult to organize or would interfere with regular sunday service. It's the way the Eucharist meal ought to be done.
2. If we are to truly show the Trinity as a model for the whole people of God, then we need to remake God the Father into God the Mother. To resolve gender issues, it makes sense if the Trinity is he/she/it. 'It' is obviously the Holy Spirit -- we can refer to 'it' without sounding mechanistic, which we can't do with either the other parts of the trinity. And obviously Jesus came to earth as a Man (what else could he have done in first century Palestine? -- as a woman no one would have listened to him), so that means to complete our triumvirate we need God to be She. It's not that hard really, God's always giving birth in the Old Testament, groaning in travail for her people. God is loving yet stern, laying down the law for unruly children, letting them learn how to ride their own bike (with all the skinned knees that entails) but always ready to enfold us when we come back crying from our wounds. This is not to say that I will hereafter always refer to God as 'she', but thinking of the Trinity in this way does break down that old notion of the holy boy's club.
[Addendum: Removing God from the role of Father also severs God from that pervasive deistic notion of God as a 50's father: a shadowy figure who doesn't take much personal interest in our lives, who is to be catered to and feared more than cuddled up to and chatted with. Not around very much when we need Him, although his work makes our lives of relative luxury possible, so we are taught to feel endebted to him in specific monetary and commodified/material way. Ie. "Daddy paid for the clothes you're wearing and he's very tired right now, so don't bother him with your questions." Very nasty metaphor, that.]
3. We need to find a way to make 'church' into an animate, rather than an inanimate noun. Church should be a someone, not a somewhere. Again, I'm not going to be dogmatic about this (I can't change English word usage all by myself, much as I would like to), but I think conceiving of a 'church' of people the same way we refer to a flock of birds or a school of fish would go a long way to helping Christians (and non-Christians) realize that the buildings are just empty shells, that we are what matters.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I think these are excellent persistent ideas. I like them all.
If we go that far with the Eucharistic meal, why are we neglecting the injunction to do it "as oft as ye shall eat it"? That is, is every meal we eat the sacrament of communion? And if so, what is the place of communion (whether a full meal or a stylized one) in the worship liturgy of the church?
I agree with you -- I've often had the urge to treat beer and nachos at the pub as Communion, but resisted because I was worried the Christians around me would think I was being sacriligious, and the non-Christians around me would think I was a Jesus freak.
As for the other comment (if communion is so big, why do it in church at all?) is that it is the gathering together for a meal which is most important. If we truly celebrate the Eucharist every time we drink wine and eat bread, then we need to rescue the Eucharist from becoming commonplace by doing it in the special location of the church and by eating with those who we do not normally sit down at table with. It should be so important in the liturgy of the church precisely because what the church should be doing is making us aware of the sacred import of our habitual actions.
Some comments to throw into the mix.
Regarding (1)
I think I agree with you folks and the idea that maybe we should have communion every meal, but I wonder if there's a huge misunderstanding in all of this. Maybe every meal is supposed to be communion.
I don't mean that every meal involves a ceremony, but rather that when Christ calls the bread his flesh and the wine his blood he means that we need food and drink to sustain us in the same way that we need Christ to sustain us.
Christ declares that all has changed--bread has become flesh--yet all is still the same--we still need bread to live.
Think of the woman at the well: Christ needed "earthly" water and she needed "living" water. He's not saying she (or He) no longer need water, but he's use the need for water as a metaphor explaining the need for Him.
Regarding (2)
I have been thinking about this now and then over my spare time, and I don't know if I like the idea of making God a mother. Maybe I just feel that way because of the gender biases present in my subconscious, but I will attempt to relate some thoughts and maybe they'll even make a little bit of sense.
I think that I would prefer to make God the super-gendered one (NOT neuter) mainly for the reason that I think God the Father/Mother really transcends the genders. There's some sense that God comes before Jesus and the Spirit, and therefore embodies both of them. Also, Adam and Eve are both created in the image of God. Therefore, their genders point to a creator that surpasses our gender divisions.
Then, to fill in the rest of the scheme, I would agree that Jesus is male (hard to get away from that, as you said) and I would say that the Spirit is female.
I think my best evidence for the femininity of the Spirit comes from two ideas: the first is that the spirit is often equated with wisdom and the Jews see wisdom as being female (see proverbs). For the second, (*stereotyping warning*) I understand the Spirit to be comforting, understanding, and informative. In general I would say those traits are more female than male (of course there are many exceptions), and so I'm more comfortable with understanding the Spirit as the female.
Also, one more argument: In the song "For the First Time" by U2 I think that each verse is about a member of the trinity (look up the lyrics sometime), and in the first verse (about the Spirit) they refer to her as female. Therefore, U2 agrees with me. :)
Post a Comment