The term “Bible Study” is used loosely, but there are r - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The term “Bible Study” is used loosely, but there are references to the Bible sometimes.Depending on your theological viewpoint:

Health warningSlide2

Fergus J KingBlessing and eucharistSlide3

“Blessing” has been seen to concern people and relationshipsIt has been connected to covenant, and the responses to situations which are in agreement with the wishes of God.

That Christianity is not licence is emphasised, in different ways, by

Paul (Romans 6:1-3, 15)“What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

..

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means

!”

BLESSING: A RECAPSlide4

and John 16:23“Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.”But this needs some clarification as it does not mean what it seems to say at first glance…..

Recap 2Slide5

Back to Dom Gregory Dix, who bestowed generations of Anglican ordinands the description of the eucharist as a four-fold action.

Take, Bless, Break, Give

Certainly these four actions are part of a number of events related to the Eucharist as well as the Supper NarrativesBut, do they tell the whole story?I think they conflate a wider range of actions, most notably in reducing the significance of Our Lord’s words. They blur the line between blessing and the words of institution.

The

narratives suggest

that the elements are

blessed (at least in Mk and Mt eulogeō

), but need not imply that blessing might not be identified with eucharistic change.

The Four-fold ActionSlide6

The Eucharistic SuperGroup:

Aquinas-transubstantiationLuther- consubstantiation

Calvin- Real [spiritual] PresenceZwingli- Thanks for the memories. No change given.So, has he gone all Zwingli on us?No- just don’t think that it depends on the word “bless

”

Has he gone all

Huldrych

zwingli

on us?Slide7

Repeat after me: “An outward and visible sign of a inward and spiritual grace” has confused generations of Anglican confirmands…It owes much to Augustine of Hippo, but was unknown to our evangelists (or Paul).

They were more likely to understand Judaic idea of a sacrament:

“a special rite in which supernatural gifts are mediated through naturalexternal means which are often prepared in a special way to have thepower they lack in ordinary use

.”

Where does that come from?

SacramentaliaSlide8

A Jewish “romance” roughly contemporary with the gospelsNOT

As has recently been argued, a gnostic gospel containing a coded reference to Jesus of

Nazareth and Mary of MagdalaThis reading ignores years of scholarship for the sake of a “Gee-Whizz” theory.But Joseph & Aseneth

does tell of

Aseneth

being given food (honeycomb) blessed by an angel which effects her transition from pagan princess to Jewish matriarch

The story exemplifies the earlier understanding of sacraments

Joseph and

asenethSlide9

The notion that eucharistic prayers do not focus solely on the elements is found in practices which claim to originate in the earliest liturgies of the church. Consider the EPICLESIS from the Scottish Episcopal Church:Hear us, most merciful Father, and send your Holy Spirit upon us and upon this bread and this wine, that, overshadowed by his life-giving power, they may be the Body and Blood of your Son,

and we may be kindled with the fire of your love and renewed for the service of your Kingdom.

EUCHARISTIC PRACTICESlide10

Paul makes a similar point in 1 Cor. 10-11Commentators point out that Paul, whatever he is doing, does not mean that the bread and wine are ordinary food and drink.

It is not simply a blessing: Jesus is the “master of a ceremony”.

Bread is given a new meaning related to his body and death for the community.Note that “for you” ( 1 Cor 11:24; Lk 22:19) suggests a sacrificial aspect.“Poured out for many” (Mk. 14:24; Matt. 26:28) used of the cup performs a similar function.

Note that many may well be better translated “all”, but this does not imply a universalism, but only a universal invitation

PAULINE PRECEDENTSlide11

The denial of universalism is linked to the blessing traditions of the Scriptures which entail an ethical response.The NT does not endorse a magical eucharist, any more than it endorses a magical set of blessings.

Note that ex

opere operato that the character of the eucharist does not depend on the belief or ethic of the celebrant or recipient.If we reject magic, we also reject receptionism.

But Paul reminds the Corinthians that effective reception involves an ethical response.

Denial of universalismSlide12

Clearly seen in 1 Cor 11: 27-29

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves

.”Paul’s Ethical responseSlide13

It is also seen in the chapter which precedes this.In 1 Cor 10:1-5, Paul describes the fate of disobedient Israel in the Exodus narrative:“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness

.”

These verses embrace a sacramental activity which can be identified with baptism and eucharist. Ethical response 2Slide14

Fr. Gerard W. Hughes has pointed out the need for an ethical edge to the place of the eucharist in our community life, in his God in All ThingsEthics in recent thoughtSlide15

If Hughes is too modern for your theological taste, you will find an even stronger critique in the writing of Frank WestonWeston was a ferocious Anglo-Catholic with a penchant for excommunicating people, or trying to …

The Kikuyu Controversy (1913-14)

Bishop Hensley Henson of Hereford (1915)But he was also a radical social criticHe lambasted the German authorities in German East Africa for their treatment of the African populace (

The Black Slaves of Prussia

– 1918)

He saved the second barrel for a subsequent British administration (

The Serfs of Great Britain- 1920)

Frank

weston

, bishop of

zanzibarSlide16

Both his politics and theology revealed a deep concern for Africa and African experience:He rejected liberal theology (Like Streeter’s) because it devalued both and demanded conformity to the premises of liberal thought:“You will bear me out that Gethsemane and Calvary are most real in Africa; that Christ is brutally crucified here, crucified in the persons of Africans, by his professing followers... God in manhood, God on the Cross, God of the empty tomb.

Now into the glory of our Calvary breaks the voice of

prelatical and priestly liberalism. And its message, what is it?”(The Christ and His Critics: An Open Pastoral Letter to the European Missionaries of his Diocese - 1919)A SIDE DishSlide17

And also:We appear to forget that our essential relation with eternal love is through the Response of Love incarnate, Jesus, the coloured man of Nazareth. Moreover we ignore our relation with the poor Man of Galilee, the naked Christ of Calvary. And we allow ourselves to be, almost entirely, dominated by standards of wealth and caste the world about us approves....Eternal love, when He takes flesh, comes as a poor, coloured Man, whereas we dislike poverty and despise colour! How then can we preach love incarnate?

(The Revelation of Eternal Love: Christianity Stated in Terms of Love.- 1920)

More Side dishesSlide18

But Weston’s most powerful writing concerns the eucharist- and will provide a conclusion which I do not believe can be bettered: “But I say to you, and I say it to you with all the earnestness that I have, that if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.

MainsSlide19

Now mark that—this is the Gospel truth. If you are prepared to say that the Anglo-Catholic is at perfect liberty to rake in all the money he can get no matter what the wages are that are paid, no matter what the conditions are under which people work; if you say that the Anglo-Catholic has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament. …If you listen. I am not talking economics, I do not understand them. I am not talking politics, I do not understand them. I am talking the Gospel… And it is folly—it is madness—to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done

.”(

Our Present Duty: Concluding Address, Anglo-Catholic Congress, 1923) Main course 2