Torture & Eucharist Being Consumed: A 5 Course Meal
Appetizers
This weekend, I visited the Museum of Man in San Diego, and explored the Cannibal exhibit. Occasionally, cannibalism occurs in dire survival situations; more often though, cannibalism is ritually or medicinally practiced in order for the partaker to consume the power of the partaken. English royalty drank skull powder for health, and Richard the Lionhearted ate the flesh of his enemies, the Saracens. As I devoured the exhibit, I couldn’t help but connect to William Cavanaugh’s texts, Torture and Eucharist and Being Consumed. In Torture and Eucharist, Cavanaugh makes the claim that, under the Pinochet military junta of Chile, citizens were tortured and disappeared. The state’s torturing of victims was seen by Cavanaugh as an upside-down liturgy of the Church’s Eucharist. While we are not (currently) under the rule of a right-wing pseudo-religious military government in America, nor are we Catholic, I found myself absorbed into Cavanaugh’s conviction that the Church needs to unlearn our ecclesiology in order to understand our identity as the Body of Christ.[1]
Unlearning: Mystical vs. Corporeal
As the coup took place, the Catholic Church in Chile initially saw its primary goal as maintaining unity within the country. The church leaders’ biggest fear was that, if they became involved in “politics”, it would further divide the country.[2] While they didn’t support the regime, they held “the conviction that more lives could be saved by cooperation and quiet diplomacy.”[3] The Church had succumbed to the false imagination of the state, that their role was to serve as the soul of Chile, “a mystical body, which unites all Christians above the rough and tumble of the temporal.”[4]
The problem with this perspective, however, is that “the designation of the church as ‘mystical’ rather than ‘true’ body of Christ has often served the imagination of a disincarnate church.”[5] Unfortunately, as I read the story of the Chilean church, I felt uncomfortably as if it was the story of the evangelical church in America, which seeks to save souls for heaven, challenges young believers to “ask Jesus into your heart,” and spiritualizes worship services into ethereal disembodied moments and the Lord’s Supper into an individualized obligatory remembrance. Rather than understanding our identity to be the literal, physical Body of Christ, the church sees our self as Christ’s body only figuratively or mystically. Like the Catholic Church of Chile, I hunger to see our churches reimagine our ecclesiology in light of a realized eschatology of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God into our temporal and spatial place.[6]
What time is it?
Cavanaugh asserts that the Church resides in a different temporal sphere than the world.[7] In my research last semester, I was introduced to William Robinson (1886-1963), a British theologian from my church movement (the Restoration Movement). Robinson operated from the perspective of the Lord’s Supper as “realized eschatology;”[8] that is, it is in the action[9] of the presider, servers, and participants that the “whole drama of God’s redemptive work” is made a reality in our present time and place.[10] Robinson believed God’s time (God eternal, outside of time) and earthly time (created) met together in the action of the church in the Lord’s Supper. He held that Jesus, giving “His Body and Blood to the disciples before they had been offered on Calvary, in the same way He can actually give the same Body and Blood after they have been offered” to us, because His connection to the time process is eschatological.[11] Although he wrote decades before the Chilean dictatorship or Cavanaugh’s dissertation, like Cavanaugh, “Robinson held that the Lord’s Supper was an ethical act of unity, and because of the divine presence of the Lord in the action of the ritual, a place where we meet Christ and salvation begins on earth.[12]
Consuming Eucharist, Eucharist Consuming
The Kingdom of God is an upside down Kingdom; it doesn’t follow the rules or expectations of the world. Unlike the dismembering of a body tortured by the state, the Kingdom of God re-members the Body of Christ through participation in the Eucharist.[13] This occurs because Christ fully poured himself out for us (kenosis), giving “over his very identity to the community of his followers, who thereby become in history His true body, which in turn takes the form of a servant.”[14] This is powerful. Cavanaugh continues this theme in Being Consumed: “the consumer of the Eucharist is taken up into a larger body, the body of Christ. The individual consumer of the Eucharist does not simply take Christ into herself, but is taken up into Christ.”[15] He continues, “in the consumption of the Eucharist, we cease to be merely ‘the other’ to each other. In the Eucharist, Christ is gift, giver, and recipient; we are simultaneously fed and become food for others.”[16] When I marinate on the essence of cannibalism, it seems as if the tables are turned in participation in the Eucharist. While we do receive “power” from the communion elements we ingest (we are filled with the Holy Spirit), it is because the elements are consuming us, digesting us into the Body of Christ, the literal, visible Body of Christ in the world.
Dessert
The Church is meant to be Christ’s “disruption of history,” His Body physically visible in the present. If we are to “resist disappearance”, we cannot allow the Body of Christ to be “secreted away in the souls of believers or relegated to the distant historical past or future.”[17] There is always risk in being incarnate into a particular time and place. It means fierce reconciliation of relationship, seeking the welfare of the city, planting and producing, paying the true cost for commodities, and refusing to allow the political state to dictate our identity as embodied members of the literal and physical Body of Christ. “To participate in the Eucharist is to live inside God’s imagination. It is to be caught up into what is really real, the body of Christ.”[18]
[1] William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 16. cf. 73, 202.
[2] Ibid., 80, 84.
[3] Ibid. 89.
[4] Ibid., 79. cf 85.
[5] Ibid., 207. Italics mine
[6] One significant challenge in standing up to state authority is the difference between the hegemony of the hierarchal institutional international Catholic Church, and the cacophony of voices from the multitude of Protestant churches.
[7] Ibid., 222-229
[8] cf. Ibid., 223.
[9] cf. Ibid., 230.
[10] William Robinson, The Administration of the Lord’s Supper, (Birmingham: Berean, 1947), 20, 23. cf. Cavanaugh 225.
[11] William Robinson, “The Meaning of Anamnēsis”, Shane Quarterly, No 14 (Jan, 1953), p20-24.
[12] Can I quote myself here?? Katy Lines, “A study of the historical practices and interpretations of the Lord’s Supper in the Restoration Movement (Christian Churches)” (unpublished), December 12, 2016, p7.
[13] Cavanaugh, 229.
[14] Ibid., 230.
[15] Cavanaugh, Being Consumed, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 54.
[16] Ibid., 56.
[17] Cavanaugh, Tortured Eucharist, 234.
[18] Ibid., 279.
About the Author
Katy Drage Lines
In God’s good Kingdom, some minister like trees, long-standing, rooted in a community. They embody words of Wendell Berry, “stay years if you would know the genius of the place.” Others, however, are called to go. Katy is one of those pilgrims. A global nomad, Katy grew up as a fifth generation Colorado native, attended college & seminary and was ordained in Tennessee, married a guy from Pennsylvania, ministered for ten years in Kenya, worked as a children’s pastor in a small church in Kentucky, and served college students in a university library in Orange County, California. She recently moved to the heart of America, Indianapolis, and has joined the Englewood Christian Church community, serving with them as Pastor of Spiritual Formation. She & her husband Kip, have two delightful boys, a college junior and high school junior.7 responses to “Torture & Eucharist Being Consumed: A 5 Course Meal”
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Katy, great quote: “The Kingdom of God is an upside down Kingdom; it doesn’t follow the rules or expectations of the world.” This makes it harder to understand, follow, and teach. I struggle to make the gospel relevant and appealing to people who have walked away from church but are just distanced from God. In reading these materials about consumerism, one can tell there is an active enemy bent on taking us away from our Creator. How do we draw our consumer culture back to Him?
That exhibit sounds disturbing and intriguing, thus making it interesting. I’ll have to check it out. I liked your contrast with the Eucharist and cannibalism. That would have been a great defense for the early Christians who were accused of cannibalism when they were partaking in the Eucharist.
Uh, oh. Jen beat me to it. But I really liked your point so here it is again:
“The Kingdom of God is an upside down Kingdom; it doesn’t follow the rules or expectations of the world. ”
There’s so much in your statement. The way I thought of it was – the world is selfish and doesn’t understand motivations that don’t relate to “me as number 1”. Christ didn’t come to be served but to serve.
This really comes out in gender discussions. Some men feel that they are male, therefore they get served. But Jesus turned that upside down too. It’s not that there’s no leadership, just that the leader who is like Jesus does not fit the world’s picture.
I loved your illustration but was glad it was mid-morning and I’m not hungry!!!
Katy, great post! When you were speaking of your visit to the Cannibal Exhibit—I had to laugh when you stated: “As I devoured the exhibit…” Great choice of words! I’m with Jen and Mary on your highlighting how the Kingdom of God is an upside-down Kingdom. Kraybill’s book with that title is an excellent book. Thanks for a thoughtful post!
Thanks, Jim. Yes, that was an intentional phrase. I like playing with words (and food). 🙂
You did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of Torture and the Eucharist, Katy! As I read the book, I simply felt the underlying question “Would resurrection people participate in torture?” which convicted me of the ways we “dismember” the Body whether physically or metaphorically.
Your words, “Unlike the dismembering of a body tortured by the state, the Kingdom of God re-members the Body of Christ through participation in the Eucharist” hits on something I found so critical in both of Cavanaugh’s books – the evangelical church (and perhaps others) do not take Communion seriously as a reminder that we are literally one body. It is viewed as an individualistic symbol of the sacrifice Christ made for “me” rather than for the community of the Kingdom. This left me feeling oddly bereft and wondering how to fix it.
Katy great reflections. “Robinson held that the Lord’s Supper was an ethical act of unity, and because of the divine presence of the Lord in the action of the ritual, a place where we meet Christ and salvation begins on earth.” This quote is powerful and intriguing to consider. Seeing this as an “ethical act of unity” is so different to the way in which we have understood the intent and purpose of sharing in the Lord’s Supper. It also reduces the mystical nature of the act and invokes a spiritual richness that bears witness to what we should be demonstrating to the world as the body of Christ.
Katy,
I was so looking forward to your post on these books and you definitely didn’t disappoint!
“Robinson held that the Lord’s Supper was an ethical act of unity, and because of the divine presence of the Lord in the action of the ritual, a place where we meet Christ and salvation begins on earth. —– I absolutely love this…. the Lord’s Supper as an ‘ethical act of unity…. that paints a picture of community, unity and reconciliation around God’s table.
I will not soon forget that image.
thanks!