Saturday musing

The "lifelong study" that our theology professor recommended to us our final minutes of the course all those years ago is something I've taken to heart as a serious life commitment; hearing him say that most who graduate seminary and are ordained disappear into their career as parish minister, pastor, priest and never open another book. I've tried to do better, and on my own, not following my various bishops' recommendations or requirements for continuing education units, which have never interested me as checking some checkoff list. I do my own thing. It has been and continues interesting. 

A subject that has intrigued me is what we call the Words of Institution in the Eucharistic Prayer: 

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 

After supper, he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, 'Drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the New Covenant, shed for you and for many (some Celebrants say 'all') (and Matthew adds) 'for the forgiveness of sins'. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

We get that story from Mark, who may have got the words from Paul (1 Corinthians 11). Matthew copies Mark but adds "for the forgiveness of sins" to the words for the cup, which is how our BCP liturgy picks it up. 

Luke is quite different, with a cup before the meal, and then the bread, and then a cup after the meal. 

Gospel John does not report the meal at all, instead, his Last Supper story is about the foot-washing and the New Commandment. 

This particular interest of mine is about the meal. Acknowledging that the church is heavily invested in the Lord's Supper as central to our faith and that it is unchangeably imbedded in our tradition, I am only exploring, with no desire to change anything, including within myself. Although exploration and discovery inevitably changes us anyway, in much the same way that reading a poem may change the way we look at life. 

The synoptic writers (not Gospel John) intend the event to be Jesus' observance of Pesach, the Jewish Passover meal, with his followers. But for Passover there was/is process, ritual, tradition; and the process we follow in our representation of the Lord's Supper is not it. Rather than the Passover ritual, we seem closer to any standard meal that begins with "ha-motzi" the blessing and breaking of the bread to kick off the meal together. 

In that he starts with the cup, Luke does seem closer to the Passover observance.

It concerns me that Matthew adds "for the forgiveness of sins" - - bothers me enough to make me see our Eucharistic liturgy as developed tradition that is not built on witness memory of disciples who were present, but on the faith as it quickly evolved in the generation after Easter to be observed as a Christianized Passover event. We are a religion of stories that make us what we are and what we do and say and sing and pray. Paul wrote his letters, including what he says in 1 Corinthians 11; and the gospel writers assembled their stories from passed along stories that they had heard, possibly including from Paul's circulating writings - - and there may have been some earlier writing down, such as "Q" and a passion narrative, that helped some of them. 

As Celebrant, it has occurred to me to omit Matthew's addition "for the forgiveness of sins," but I haven't and won't. Our words are what they are, and they make our Eucharistic theology what it is. I'm not challenging that or anything, I'm simply out for a walk, and at extreme old age in final retirement I can go wherever I DWP!* 

What I'm "challenging" for myself alone in this thought process is the historicity of the Lord's Supper event as we have it, to better understand it. My thought has always been encouraged by what scholars of the Jesus Seminar record in "The Five Gospels," and other scholars, and was revived this week as I watched an online lecture by Bible scholar James Tabor.

Tabor's lecture question was whether, at the Last Supper, Jesus really said that the bread and wine were his body and blood, a notion that would be revulsive in the Jewish prohibition on drinking blood, or revulsion at eating human flesh would have been for those who are said to have been there. Tabor brings in teaching from the Didache, from Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and about Passover observance from throughout the Hebrew Bible. He compares the synoptic accounts - - all while repeatedly acknowledging that the Lord's Supper as we have and practice it "IS Christianity" and that he is not challenging that but is working as a scholar, inquirer, explorer, seeker. 

At any event, what Tabor believes, or what I believe, is not an issue, the focus is about what fascinating exploration might suggest, uncover, enlighten - - as in my midweek Bible study classes and adult Sunday school classes, where a standing principle was that "no question cannot be asked, no subject cannot be discussed."

So, where do I come with my study interest? Without necessarily finishing, because I'm dropping it for now, and without going into thoughts and rationale as some form of "proof," I come to see the Last Supper, at the synoptic gospel writers' Time, as meant to be a memorial Jewish Passover meal with Jesus and his friends, Jesus leading it. Some scholars question whether it ever really happened at all, but I'm willing to believe that it really happened that evening before Jesus was crucified, whether it was Passover as the synoptics have it, or the day of the slaughter of the lambs (the day before Passover) as Gospel John has it in order to tie up his chapter one view of Jesus as the Lamb of God. 

That they would have observed Jewish ritual of the Time, from the first cup of wine to the final singing of the hymn. 

That our tradition of the Lord's Supper is a Christianized story that quickly developed after Easter, and in Time was substantiated in Paul's writings about the sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and recorded by the gospel writers based on what they had heard (remember our elementary school game "Gossip") in the forty years between Easter and the destruction of Jerusalem when Mark wrote the first gospel. 

Our observance of the Lord's Supper is not the irrecoverable history of that evening, but tradition that developed within the developing Early Church. 

Does all this stop me from going to Mass in the Episcopal Church for celebration of the Lord's Supper tomorrow morning? By no means! 

No more so than my knowledge of the history of the Nicene Creed stops me from standing and saying it in church with the faith community on Sunday mornings. 

No more than my seeing questionable, sometimes appalling, theology in hymns stops me from enjoying singing them. (those who set at naught and sold him, pierced and nailed him to the tree, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see). 

No more than knowing that combining Matthew and Luke nativity narratives produces yet a complete third story that is not what the Bible records, stops me from loving the annual holy commotion of the Christmas pageants. In fact, the only way I would change the Christmas pageants is to let every little girl who wants to be the Virgin Mary wear blue and stand around the manger. Seek the Truth, Come whence it May, Cost what it Will doesn't mean trashing everything; it's about better understanding instead of wearing blinders and telling my closed mind that it's necessary to believe all the stories are historical in order to be Saved, whatever that means. Or (supposedly Mark Twain?) "Faith is believing what you know damn well ain't so." 

The Lord's Supper is part of our Heilsgeschichte, holy history, holy stories that belong to us as part of our joy - - other faiths and religions have their own myths and traditions. And, as Jesus is reported to have said, "I have many sheep who are not of this fold."

Comes to mind a lifelong acquaintance telling me, "Carroll, I don't believe all the stuff." Not an issue! Religion is not subject to scholars' criteria for "history," and there are aspects of the faith to appreciate and enjoy with the community without swearing that one earnestly believes they are historical. 

So, am I going to publish this +Time blogpost?  Maybe on blogger. Maybe not yet or never linked on Facebook. I'm not interested in starting a conversation or hurting what anyone holds dear. I'm jotting down my thoughts this Saturday morning before I go on to something else.

RSF&PTL

T89&c 

picture: snapped from 7H porch earlier this week. there's nothing whatsoever going on on the Bay as I sit here writing this, my almost daily nonsense.

come to think of it, maybe I will post the link on Facebook, just for the morning or day.