a sacramental baptist?

I have been working through some of the Baptist literature on the eucharist and sacramental theology. Molly Marshal (pdf) has some good stuff that she has released recently in Joining the Dance: A Theology of the Spirit. I want to share what I found. Read on, MacDuff!

Zwingli

Baptists have focused mainly on anamnesis - remembring Jesus in a memorial meal - following the instruction of 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. We have thought of this remembrance as a cognative activity of bringing to memory Christ's death for us. The draping of the table often has connoted a funeral image: his body laid out before the congregation, whose chief action in the meal is to be somber. Laurence Hull Stookey reminds us that there is a lot more to remembring: it is not mental recall, but doing the meal. (p. 85)

It is good to know that I am not the only one who made this same connection after reading Stookey's Eucharist. I remember the day in Ruth's liturgy class when this dawned on me. Incredible.

Marshall continues to muse of the common meal and what it means to recognise Christ. For her, this is the opposite of simple re-cognition or recollection. She points us to the gospel and Acts accounts of recognising Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit: Mk. 16:14-18, Lk. 24:13-53, Jn. 21, and Acts 1:4-5. She wants us to pay special attention to the Luke narrative. For Marshall, the experience of the hearts of the disciples' burning is a reflection of Moses and the experience of the burning bush. This may be a stretch, but what she is attempting to underscore is the understanding of the present of the Spirit being that of flame. Pentecost certainly comes to mind here. The burning of understanding and recognition is suggested by the disciples as affirming the presense of Christ in the midst of a shared meal.

Marshall also states that the presense of the Messiah heals blindness. In the case of the Luke passage, spiritual blindness. This is a reminder of the healing nature and acts of Jesus. It is a promised parallel healing. They believed the Messiah to be dead, but through healing the spiritual blindness, they are made aware by the Spirit ("burning in our hearts") that Christ is indeed alive.

Her final statement about Luke's narrative is the one I like most. In the breaking of the bread, it is "only be the Spirit do we recognize the risen Christ." Once our sense come to light, Christ vanishes. This is to suggest strongly that "rational congnition will not suffice." I think this is a wonderful was to contradict the prevailing Baptist theologies about the presense of the risen Lord (read: Zwinglianism). As a Baptist, Marshall wants to reside in scripture. It is the only way she can argue with any authority that a sacramental undestanding of the eucharist is appropriate. No patristic argument will help her. No extra-scriptural sourse will suffice. Thus, by leaning heavily on this tale of the Risen Lord, the spiritual blindness of the disciples, and their fleeting recognituion of Christ, she can begin to challenge the prevailing cognative approach in Baptist eucharistic theology.

She also plays the experience card well. "Our experience in Communion is like that of those who journeyed to Emmaus. The concrete practice is what brought about spiritual recognition. The ritual recollection brings about spiritual remembrance...the re-entering the moment in the Upper Room. For Marshall, the continuing practice of the rite throughout the ages is a strong argument for the continuing and constant presense of the Risen Lord in the meal. The shared experience of God in the midst of the gathered for two thousand years affirms the truth of the scriptural account. Experience matters.

She continues with several more significant ideas that I really don't have the time to go into right now, but I'll throw them in your general direction:

1. At the meal, Christ is within us by virtue of our conversion.
2. At the meal, Chirst is "in our collective midst."
3. "It is the Spirit who re-members the baptized as the Body of Christ." This, again, is anamnesis. Though it is Marshall's more accurate reclaiming of anamnesis than the hyper-cognative understanding that is so common within our tradition.

At times, we conduct the meal as if all the meaning depended upon our right action in how we prepare and serve and receive the elements. But our actions cannot make the practice a means of grace; rather we live into the reality of a self-giving God embodied in the feast spread before us.

It is important to pay close attention to this issue of right practice. For with this trouble that she mentions, we repeat the mis-practice that our tradition was attempting to reform. The eucharist is a gift. We respond to the presentation in the anamnesis that is the Lord's Supper. This responding is what keeps a neo-platonic dualism out of Marshall's theology. I must admit that when I read this chapter in the book there were times when I thought that Marshall was overly "spiritualizing" the meal. Calvin runs into some of the same difficulties as well. And Marshall mentions Calvin at the begining of the chapter. There is a certain "ambiguity," states Marshall, to the communion rite. The meal is, quoting Calvin, "in a matter present and in a manner absent." There is union with and through the Holy Spirit (synaxis in the Lord's Supper that embraces the whole church. The Body is physical and is knit together in the Spirt. It is made possible through the meal, our anamnesis and our praexis. This is liturgy, the work of the people.

The table calls us to justice. Marshall suggests that there is a connection between all other tables with the Table of the eucharist, with the eucharist Meal and all other meals. Who gathers with you at table or at Table? Who has nothing on their table? Do we recognise (remember?)our shared identity through the eucharist with them? In good southern fashion, Marshall reminds us that there are "table manners." There is a justice and a mercy proclaimed at the Table. This is reflected in the context of the struggles with the church in Corinth...and Paul's reason for reminding them why they gather at the Lord's Table.

This connection is clear and should not be brushed aside as some "liberal whitewashing." Marshall quotes Fred Craddock. There is a real hunger in the world - "a hunger beneath and behind all other hungers." The communuion meal is temporal, real. Christ's presense is real, temporal and eternal...and there are more than the two disciples who need feeding...there are more than the five thousand. The call and demand of the eucharist is relational - a response to the Spirit and a call from Christ to "go into the world proclaiming good news." But the news, as in the case of the church in Corinth, is not only for the poor.

It is not surprising that [we] do not really know what we hunger for - our market-driven culture weaves a web of seduction. "Consume" is the categorical imperative of our day; meaning has been reduced to economy. And we buy and eat, and eat and buy...and still we hunger. It is never enough, for it is perishable bread. Only the bread of life, Jesus, can fill us as we commune with him in the meal...The Spirit helps us discern our true hunger (our hearts burned) and nourishes us in the common meal, where Christ always meets us. We hunger for belinging, a place of welcome. We hunger for intimacy, to offer ourselves to someone who will receive us, who will know us to our depths and delight in us. These things Christ does, though our brothers and sisters who are brought into union through the Spirit. (p. 87)

She refers us to John 6:24-34 as a guide to understanding this.

Finally, Marshall sounds a little like Aquinas when she summarizes that the presens eo fteh SPirit in the eucharistic meal is continually "rebirthing" us as we were reborn at our baptism. Our identity is birthed in the Holy Spirit. The eucharist is a vehicle for such grace.

Posted by tripp at June 21, 2005 10:45 AM