My thoughts exactly: Eucharist and unity
Today in our church's corporate worship I was responsible for the "children's sermon." I had been asked to talk about the Lord's Supper because we celebrated the sacrament today. While this may seem like hefty reading for preparation, one resource I consulted was the chapter on the Eucharist in John Colwell's Promise and Presence: An Exploration of Sacramental Theology. Colwell is a British Baptist theologian at Spurgeon's College in London, and his book is organized around the seven classical Catholic sacraments. After lengthy discussion of the various theological proposals for conceptualizing Christ's Real Presence in the elements/liturgy of His Supper, Colwell closes with a reflection on the the problem of Communion and Christian disunity. I found myself agreeing with him fully and grateful for his eloquent expression. So, I thought I would share Colwell's words and add a hearty "Here I stand!" to them. Enjoy!
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The greatest irony, the greatest tragedy, and perhaps the greatest apostasy of the Church is that the Lord's Supper, the central celebration of the Church's life and essence, given as a sign and focus of its unity, has become the principal sign and expression of its division. Both the immediate and the broader context of the passage cited at the beginning of this chapter [1 Cor. 10:14-18] constitute a sustained appeal for the Church's unity: '...we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.' It should be noted that our unity with one another is an outcome of communion: it is not that we share communion as an expression of our unity (a unity defined and discovered in some other place or manner); it is rather that we are united by virtue of sharing communion. Our participation in Christ is both the possibility and the manner of our participation in one another. For this reason those who, like Zwingli, undermine the reality of our participation in Christ at the Supper, inadvertently also undermine the reality of our unity with one another. It may be historically true that groups that have most stressed the Supper as a celebration of our unity with one another have tended to be groups that have qualified the unique reality of Christ's presence here - but in so doing they have redefined the nature of the Church's unity.
The issue of the Church's unity, which is necessarily an issue of the Church's sacramental unity, will be revisited at the conclusion of this book. But for the present it must be conceded that, until, without hesitation, we can share communion together, every ecumenical pretension remains no more than pretension (for a denial of our sharing in communion can be no less than a denial of the validity of our common identity as the Church): we do not share communion as an expression of our unity: we share communion as the means of our unity; to seek unity through agreeing forms of words is to seek an inadequate form of unity and to seek it by inadequate means.
And differences of understanding, even 'confessional' differences (such, at least, that do not offend the catholic creeds of the Church) are a wholly inadequate basis for continuing such disunity: I have tried to demonstrate within this chapter that it is the reality of our participation in Christ, rather than the manner in which that participation is expressed or analysed, that is crucial. Indeed, since we are dealing here with the central sacramental mystery we must concede that this ultimately will defy all analysis; our forms of words will never be adequate...Participation in this mystery is the means to confessional unity rather than its outcome. To fail to receive one another as we have been received by Christ is itself apostasy.
- John Colwell, Promise and Presence. Milton Keynes, UK. Paternoster Press, 2005. pp. 176-78.
*****
The greatest irony, the greatest tragedy, and perhaps the greatest apostasy of the Church is that the Lord's Supper, the central celebration of the Church's life and essence, given as a sign and focus of its unity, has become the principal sign and expression of its division. Both the immediate and the broader context of the passage cited at the beginning of this chapter [1 Cor. 10:14-18] constitute a sustained appeal for the Church's unity: '...we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.' It should be noted that our unity with one another is an outcome of communion: it is not that we share communion as an expression of our unity (a unity defined and discovered in some other place or manner); it is rather that we are united by virtue of sharing communion. Our participation in Christ is both the possibility and the manner of our participation in one another. For this reason those who, like Zwingli, undermine the reality of our participation in Christ at the Supper, inadvertently also undermine the reality of our unity with one another. It may be historically true that groups that have most stressed the Supper as a celebration of our unity with one another have tended to be groups that have qualified the unique reality of Christ's presence here - but in so doing they have redefined the nature of the Church's unity.
The issue of the Church's unity, which is necessarily an issue of the Church's sacramental unity, will be revisited at the conclusion of this book. But for the present it must be conceded that, until, without hesitation, we can share communion together, every ecumenical pretension remains no more than pretension (for a denial of our sharing in communion can be no less than a denial of the validity of our common identity as the Church): we do not share communion as an expression of our unity: we share communion as the means of our unity; to seek unity through agreeing forms of words is to seek an inadequate form of unity and to seek it by inadequate means.
And differences of understanding, even 'confessional' differences (such, at least, that do not offend the catholic creeds of the Church) are a wholly inadequate basis for continuing such disunity: I have tried to demonstrate within this chapter that it is the reality of our participation in Christ, rather than the manner in which that participation is expressed or analysed, that is crucial. Indeed, since we are dealing here with the central sacramental mystery we must concede that this ultimately will defy all analysis; our forms of words will never be adequate...Participation in this mystery is the means to confessional unity rather than its outcome. To fail to receive one another as we have been received by Christ is itself apostasy.
- John Colwell, Promise and Presence. Milton Keynes, UK. Paternoster Press, 2005. pp. 176-78.
Labels: Baptist Catholicity, Ecumenism
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