BREAK THE CHAINS OF OPPRESION AND THE YOKE OF ...

Litur gy
In the liturgy of Holy Communion the drama of salvation is re-called and played
out with the assembled congregation as active participants in that drama, not as
passive recipients of an act done to them. If the theological issue of Christ’s real
presence in the sacrament is to hold true then it is real for those assembled in
that act. Each individual gesture, each individual word, reading, prayer and
hymn is then part of that playing out of the drama of salvation.
In that drama of salvation we gather as did the first disciples in the company of
those who are not just. The only just person present in this act is Christ. Fraudsters,
adulterers, child abusers, liars, betrayers, social climbers, greedy bankers,
heartless elders and careless ministers - sinners great and small are gathered
around that table knowing themselves not to be just but trusting themselves to
be justified in Christ.
This gathering of the unjust around the table is sign and symbol for a new reality
in Christ which will find its fulfilment and completion one day which is not
yet.
But the sign and symbol and the participation in the drama of salvation requires
that those who have assembled round the table then seek to express that future
reality already today and begin to enact the ethical consequences for living of
that drama of salvation not only within the context of the liturgy, but also outwith
it. It means that those who know themselves to be unjust but justified in
Christ seek to live out the justice of God which they themselves have experienced;
and that they do so not only in privatised, individualised ways but as the
community of the church and also in relation to the community of the world.
In the church in Corinth it was those who ate and drank without sharing with
the poorer members of the very same church who were not expressing that future
reality in the here and now. 7 � � � � �
Filling their stomachs without the poorer members
of the church being offered the same opportunity, considering apparently the
bread and wine of the liturgy a symbol sufficient unto itself without ethical consequences
for just living the congregation in Corinth needed to be reminded by
Paul of the inclusiveness and the ethical consequences the sacrament of Holy
Communion carries within itself.
7 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. The rich, who had ample time together before their poorer fellow
Christians arrived from serving their masters, went ahead eating what is understood
to be an agape feast. It appears that this agape meal, celebrated before the sacrament
"proper", was not considered important. It seems that , the sacrament "proper" was understood
to be the act in which Christ's sacrificial death was remembered and that the
agape meal simply was perceived to be a convivial meal. Paul’s criticism of the rich was
that their behaviour outside the sacrament proper scandalized the full meaning of it.
Using metaphorical language Paul’s understanding of the horizontal relationship between
the poor and the rich mattered as much as the vertical relationship between
Christ and the Corinthian church members.
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– THE LITURGY OF HOLY COMMUNION –