Firbush Retreats Firbush retreats are organized and led by Robert T. Walker. Firbush retreats are designed to make the best theology accessible to as many people as possible and especially those not trained in theology and often not familiar with routine technical terms. They combine times of worship and prayer with reflection on a theme related to Torrance theology. For more information see https://tftorrance.org/firbush. ----------- Firbush Retreat Fall 2016 Jennifer Floether, "Congregational Understanding of the Eucharist" https://tftorrance.org/firbushF2016 The audio recording for this presentation is available on the Firbush Retreat section of the website for the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship. The following AI transcript is too rough to rely upon, but perhaps useful for word searches and time-stamps. It is unretouched; if anyone wishes to listen to it and clean it up we will be happy to post an improved version (contact the webmasters). We invite speakers to send us slides for their talks, which we will post alongside the audios and transcripts. If any speaker wishes to have their talk removed from the website, just let us know and we'll take down both the audio and the transcript. ------------ 00:00-00:07 I must also, like David, start with an apology. I forgot to bring the handouts. They'll be 00:07-00:19 available tomorrow. A while ago, after holding a day seminar for members of our congregation 00:24-00:31 in our last church to explore the meaning of the sacraments, a week later one of the 00:31-00:39 participants came up to me after church with tears in her eyes and told me that that morning 00:39-00:47 as she had taken communion she had realized for the first time what it meant for her and 00:47-00:54 that had brought her to tears. I may add that this lady is well into her 70s and has attended 00:54-01:01 an Anglican church all her life. She's taken a lot of communion. Since then, it's often 01:01-01:09 occurred to me to wonder how many people are there in any congregation who faithfully take 01:09-01:16 communion every Sunday and perhaps even on Thursdays as well, but little understanding 01:16-01:23 of what is happening in the sacrament. To prepare for this talk, I have a very important 01:23-01:30 question. I asked some members of my own congregation and another Episcopalian congregation 01:30-01:37 and some Church of Scotland people to assist me in my inquiries. I asked them some very 01:37-01:44 simple questions which would have been on your handout, but I'll read them out. Question 01:44-01:50 number one was, "What for you is the heart of the Eucharist?" Number two, "Which part 01:50-01:56 of the Eucharistic prayer do you find best expressed what you feel is happening in the 01:56-02:03 Eucharist? What, if anything, do you find less helpful? How do you understand what the 02:03-02:10 congregation is doing, what God is doing, and what the celebrant is doing?" You might 02:10-02:17 question these questions under order, but that seemed to me a good way to start. As 02:18-02:22 you'll notice, the questions are very open. I didn't want to steer people into giving 02:22-02:29 certain answers. I followed this up with some very informal conversations with everyone 02:29-02:37 who contributed. Processing the responses was challenging because they were so varied. 02:37-02:43 There were as many different answers as there were people who gave them. At first, it was 02:43-02:50 hard to pick out any common threads. In general, people found it helpful, challenging to be 02:50-02:57 asked to think about the Eucharist. Some had long wanted to know more, but it felt too 02:57-03:05 embarrassed to ask. Many were very keen to talk. Those from churches with formal liturgies 03:08-03:15 had a better grasp of the structure of the prayers than those who came from churches 03:15-03:22 who don't use a liturgy. Both groups were equally vague and uncertain about their content. 03:22-03:30 None of this was surprising. What was surprising was that no one mentioned Jesus. Actually, 03:36-03:43 two did, but only after being prompted. Nobody mentioned the body and blood of Christ. Nobody 03:43-03:53 mentioned the word sacrifice. What started out as a simple exercise to discover how a 03:53-04:04 small group of people understand the Eucharist turned into a quest to discover why they don't, 04:04-04:09 at least to judge from what was said. How could it come about that the core content 04:09-04:16 and substance and meaning of the sacrament seems to be missing from how it is understood 04:16-04:24 by the people in this group, at least? One obvious answer to this question is that teaching 04:24-04:33 doctrine has dropped off the agendas of most churches, certainly in my part of the church. 04:33-04:40 In fact, our rector said to me the other day, "We emphatically do not teach doctrine. There 04:40-04:48 are so many ways to find God, and Christianity is only one of them, and it's better to leave 04:48-04:55 people to find God in their own way." People are often being left to seek God, and I spell 04:57-05:04 that with a small g for themselves, within themselves and their spirituality. That might 05:04-05:12 explain the growing trend, the growing demand for courses in meditation and contemplation 05:12-05:19 and mysticism and so on. Part of a trend, what Colin Gunton called the psychologizing 05:22-05:29 and subjectivizing of the faith, also known as meology. Originally, I wanted to call this 05:29-05:37 talk the view from the pew, but that wouldn't have worked because it turns out there is 05:37-05:44 no one single view. However, some people did give the impression that they want to know 05:44-05:52 that their experience in some way corresponds to the reality. They want to know that their 05:52-05:59 experience turned up again and again in words like supposed to think. I don't know what 05:59-06:06 I meant to think. There may be more interesting doctrine than at first seems the case. Presumably, 06:06-06:14 this turn to an individualistic and more subjective understanding of the faith is one outcome 06:14-06:21 of postmodernism, the rejection of any overarching or dominant worldview or narrative. This is 06:22-06:29 contributed to a collapse of trust among believers in the teaching of the church, even in the 06:29-06:39 existence of any solid truth, objective reality on which to place our faith. As the focus 06:39-06:47 has shifted away from Christ and the teaching of the church, it has come to rest more and 06:47-06:54 more on subjective experience as the basis for understanding. This was borne out by much 06:54-07:03 of what people said. One person said, "Well, there might be objective truth out there, 07:03-07:10 but how it's interpreted will differ from person to person. There is no right interpretation 07:10-07:17 or right understanding." Well, if that's so, then who Jesus is and what he has done is 07:17-07:27 open to our subjective interpretation. There's no reason to even bother looking for objective 07:27-07:34 reality and meaning in the sacrament. We can just look for it within ourselves in our subjective 07:34-07:41 experience. In fact, one clergy person said to me recently, "There is no right teaching 07:41-07:50 about the sacrament. It is about our experience." There were some people who find the meaning 07:50-08:01 of the sacrament not necessarily within themselves, but in what's happening. In what the celebrant 08:01-08:07 does or the right itself does or in the bread and wine or in communion with one another, 08:07-08:11 these were all ways of finding meaning in the sacrament. You know there is no mention 08:11-08:18 of Jesus. Some find meaning in our obedience to Jesus' command. Others in remembering something 08:18-08:25 in the past as a memorial, recalling and perhaps connecting us to the Last Supper and the cross. 08:26-08:33 Others, quite a few, found meaning in the sacrament as an outward sign of an inward 08:33-08:38 grace. I've never understood that. If somebody could one day enlighten me, I'd be grateful. 08:38-08:45 I don't know what it means, but anyway. The reason I referred people to the liturgy, in 08:45-08:52 the initial questions at least, to the Eucharistic prayer was that it does contain a lot of doctrine, 08:53-09:00 albeit rather cryptic and compressed. As Bob mentioned, what was it? Long-winded, some 09:00-09:07 of it certainly. Now although the liturgy is not principally for teaching, prayer does 09:07-09:14 shape our thinking. In fact, Torrance said his own confession of faith was bound up with 09:16-09:23 the Nicene Creed and the Eucharistic liturgy. We could argue that the early Eucharistic liturgies 09:23-09:31 may have developed partly to instruct new believers. For instance, the institution narrative 09:31-09:39 was introduced in the fourth century to teach and remind worshippers what the rite was actually 09:39-09:46 all about. It's not appropriate to criticise the liturgy. It's not appropriate to criticise 09:46-09:53 it, except it wasn't handed down in stone at Sinai. The language of the prayers is necessarily 09:53-10:03 the language of sign and symbol. So at times, yes, rather cryptic. But if the content and 10:03-10:13 substance of the Lord's Supper is the person and atoning human life of Jesus and his resurrection 10:14-10:21 and ascension and our inclusion in him and all he has done, why doesn't the Eucharistic 10:21-10:28 prayer say so clearly, intelligibly and understandably to everyone? On the other hand, without at 10:28-10:38 least some grasp of basic doctrine, the meaning of even the clearest word and phrase will 10:38-10:45 be obscure. For instance, one person found the phrase in the Scottish liturgy, "Your 10:45-10:52 life and ours are brought together in a wonderful exchange." Totally mystifying. So although 10:52-10:57 some people picked out phrases that they found personally meaningful, taken as a whole, the 10:57-11:04 Eucharistic prayer did not seem to aid understanding. One lady finds it all confusing. Another person 11:05-11:10 said, "I don't really think about the prayer. It's comforting to hear the familiar words, 11:10-11:17 even if you don't know what they mean." So to sum up, although on the surface the responses 11:17-11:22 were bewilderingly varied, what they have in common is that the relation of Jesus to 11:22-11:29 the sacrament is seen as at best a tenuous one, a distant one, and in some cases a completely 11:32-11:39 non-existent one. So this raised for me two questions. I'm sure there are many others. 11:39-11:48 The first is, what's missing from the information made available to congregations about the 11:48-11:54 Eucharist? And the second one, this was part of this detective work that I ended up doing 11:54-12:01 for this talk, has to do with trying to figure out if there are some underlying barriers 12:01-12:08 and presuppositions that could be actually creating barriers to understanding. I think 12:08-12:17 there are. When there is no teaching about who Jesus is, the tendency is, this is the 12:17-12:24 first one, the tendency is to think of his humanity, his human nature, as somehow different 12:24-12:31 from ours, as perhaps semi-divine or sinless. Well, of course it is sinless, but the human 12:31-12:38 nature he took on, if we think of it as sinless to start with, it means it's a different human 12:38-12:44 nature from ours. That is a strong tendency when there is no teaching about who Jesus 12:44-12:51 is. Another thing is that there's often an unconscious assumption that if Jesus is truly 12:52-12:59 human he can't be truly fully God as well. Or put another way, when he was on earth being 12:59-13:07 human then he wasn't being God at the same time. Then there's the very common idea that 13:07-13:16 even if Jesus was truly human he isn't now. He dropped our humanity after the ascension 13:16-13:23 and went back to being God. That is the common view from the pew. It was interesting that 13:23-13:32 although no one mentioned the name of Jesus, everybody talked a lot about God. I find this 13:32-13:40 is very common. Jesus has almost been airbrushed out of the picture, certainly in this context 13:43-13:50 where I am. When there is a reference to Jesus it's almost always in the past tense in terms 13:50-13:59 of his compassion, his ethics, perhaps his political relevance, his ecological relevance, 13:59-14:06 you name it, past tense and of course his sacrifice on the cross as a pattern for us 14:06-14:13 to copy, but always in the past tense. On top of all this there's dualism, this dualism 14:13-14:19 this colour is everything we think about the faith. We take for granted a gulf between 14:19-14:26 God and creation which even God can't bridge. As Torrance saw so clearly, if we assume that 14:26-14:33 God cannot be transcendent and yet present in creation both at once without ceasing to 14:33-14:40 be God, we find it difficult to think of the risen ascended Jesus as both with God in heaven 14:42-14:49 and fully present to us through the Spirit. You'll be glad to know that it's completely 14:49-14:56 beyond my intellect and the scope of this paper to go into Torrance's thinking about 14:56-15:04 dualism. It has to do with a container view of space. I have to tell you a story. My first 15:04-15:11 encounter with Bob was walking late into his Christian theology classes at lifelong school 15:11-15:16 and lifelong learning at Edinburgh University and walking into this room and seeing this 15:16-15:22 man drawing a bucket on the whiteboard and thinking I've got the wrong class. But it 15:22-15:29 turned out that Bob was preparing us for a discussion on dualism by speaking about the 15:29-15:36 container view of space anyway. However it's described this way of thinking has shut God 15:36-15:43 out of creation. So it follows that it is virtually impossible to conceive of the real 15:43-15:50 presence of Christ in the Eucharist. One person said sadly, wistfully, well for me the Eucharist 15:50-16:00 is well that's the closest you're going to get to God. And certainly it was clear from 16:00-16:07 what people said that the word, the term real presence is mystifying. If Jesus is present 16:07-16:15 at all, his presence is generally thought of as unreal. This could also be an outcome 16:15-16:22 of thinking that Jesus has gone back to being God. Although after some prompting two people 16:22-16:29 did mention his presence, it was in ways that it implied a spiritualized, numinous sort 16:29-16:36 of presence. One person said Jesus is present but he's not doing anything. So all these 16:36-16:46 underlying presuppositions and there are many more have truly terrible consequences for 16:46-16:53 understanding the sacrament. If we think that Jesus is not fully one of us, we will think 16:54-17:01 that what he did took place not inside but outside our humanity. So we won't know that 17:01-17:10 we are included in what he has done. So what do we think we're receiving in the sacrament? 17:10-17:22 If we think Jesus is not fully God, all he did was merely as a creature and has no saving 17:22-17:29 power and eternal reality. So what happens to our forgiveness and our righteousness and 17:29-17:37 our eternal life? What are we celebrating in the Eucharist? Are there people who don't 17:37-17:44 know that what Jesus has done is their total cast iron, bomb proof guarantee that they 17:44-17:51 are completely saved? I would argue there are many such people who worry that we must 17:51-17:58 do something for our salvation. Timach's sicker, just in case. If we believe that the ascended 17:58-18:09 Jesus is no longer human, what does that tell us about our humanity? What has happened to 18:09-18:17 his union with us as he abandoned us? If the body and blood we receive and eat and drink 18:17-18:24 is not our humanity that Jesus has restored and made new but something different, what 18:24-18:30 are we eating and drinking? For many of the people I spoke to, the words body and blood 18:30-18:37 of Christ are simply incomprehensible as one person said. What does that mean for their 18:37-18:46 communion with Jesus in his body and blood? And if the risen ascended Jesus is not fully 18:46-18:53 fully human, his human priesthood has been merged into God. We have no priest, we have 18:53-19:01 no mediator. And certainly it was clear that there is almost no understanding of the continuing 19:01-19:08 priesthood, the priesthood of Christ and the high priesthood of Christ. Lastly, if we think 19:08-19:15 that God is not really present in creation, then the risen Jesus isn't our creation. He 19:15-19:22 is not. And if he is present, then the risen Jesus isn't either. Or if he is present, his 19:22-19:31 presence is unreal and numinous. He is not doing anything. In the sacrament he is inactive. 19:31-19:39 All this means that Jesus is redundant. We have no priest at the sacrament and so the 19:39-19:46 righteous. We might become our own priests in our spiritual and moral response, mediating 19:46-19:54 God to ourselves or more likely his gifts of grace and love and eternal life. Or the 19:54-20:02 right itself takes on the role of mediator, even acting on God. A fellow reader who serves 20:03-20:10 in a very high church said, well, whatever happens, the show must go on. Or the priest, 20:10-20:19 and this is where we're coming to the real problems that can happen when Jesus is not 20:19-20:26 understood as fully actively present at the sacrament. The priest, not the human priest 20:26-20:32 because the only human priest is Jesus. The chap at the front will take Christ's place 20:32-20:39 as the mediator between God and the congregation. As one person said, the priest takes his place 20:39-20:46 and prays for the church and for all the congregation. In Catholic understanding, he has to be a 20:46-20:55 he because he acts in the place of Christ, mediates God to the people and ordination 20:58-21:04 includes the power in many people's minds, maybe not officially, includes the power to 21:04-21:10 re-sacrifice Jesus in the transubstantiated bread and wine for the sins committed since 21:10-21:17 the cross, including those of the dead. That's what happens in the mass for the dead. For 21:17-21:26 many people, ordination still confers special power on clergy and this is hugely damaged 21:26-21:33 how the Eucharistic sacrifice is understood. The act of consecration becomes the focus 21:33-21:41 of the sacrament and this in turn is seen to imbue the bread and wine with special power. 21:41-21:47 The bread and wine are understood to be the mediators of God. We're still not talking 21:47-21:53 about Jesus here, you understand God. The mediators of God and/or his gifts to us or 21:53-22:00 even contain the real presence of Christ. One person said, Jesus is in the bread and the 22:00-22:07 wine. Transubstantiation is officially rejected in the Anglican communion. That's the reason 22:07-22:14 there's no epi-clasis in the Church of England Eucharistic Liturgy to avoid any suggestion 22:14-22:21 that the bread and wine change into anything else. But this isn't how an awful lot of people 22:21-22:28 think. One person commented in Church of England services, you don't know when the epi-clasis 22:28-22:33 is so you don't know if the bread and wine have been ... and then she just stopped herself 22:33-22:40 from saying, changed. A priest we know was upset because a woman took the wafer away 22:40-22:47 with her, uneaten because as he said, the bread has power and can be misused for black 22:47-22:54 magic. This is not unusual. The idea that the presence of Jesus is somehow localised 22:54-23:00 in the elements lingers on because nothing has replaced it to help us to understand what 23:00-23:06 the bread and wine mean or rather what the bread and wine actually are. Torrance was 23:06-23:13 very keen to stress that a true sign has something of that which it signifies. We mustn't separate 23:14-23:20 them. But there's confusion about the bread, what the bread and wine are. Someone says, 23:20-23:25 I was taught one thing at confirmation classes and now I'm being told that this is all nonsense 23:25-23:31 and I just don't know what I'm supposed to believe. Most people do think that the bread 23:31-23:38 and wine change in some way, even if it's only trans-signification, that the bread and 23:38-23:45 wine change in some way but they don't know into what. They see them as symbols but symbols 23:45-23:53 of what is unclear. The Scottish Liturgy does have an epiclaces. Send your Holy Spirit upon 23:53-24:01 us and upon this bread and wine that overshadowed by his life giving power, they may be the 24:01-24:06 body and blood of your son. But if we don't really know what the body and what the blood 24:06-24:13 of Christ are, this doesn't help much. It just causes more confusion. It was interesting 24:13-24:19 that no one mentioned the word sacrifice. One person said, actually I've never noticed 24:19-24:26 it but it's in the prayer three times. At the beginning to refer to the sacrifice of 24:26-24:32 Jesus on the cross and then again to our sacrifice of praise and worship and then again to our 24:32-24:38 sacrifice of praise and worship and then again to our sacrifice of ourselves as a holy and 24:38-24:44 living sacrifice. In some churches at the beginning of the Eucharist, the plate is brought 24:44-24:51 up with the bread and the wine and then the prayer is something like made one with him. 24:51-24:58 We offer you these gifts and with them ourselves a single holy living sacrifice. This gives 24:58-25:05 the people the idea that what we are offering is ours and that is the view that what we 25:05-25:13 are offering is ours. But it's sacrifice is understood as our offering to God, our whole 25:13-25:21 lives, everything we are, our entire beings. Well, clearly we are incapable of that. So 25:23-25:30 the word sacrifice is not understood. So in many ways this exercise was rather disheartening 25:30-25:39 but on the positive side it's brought to light some of the reasons why so many of us struggle 25:39-25:46 to understand the Eucharist and I include myself in that. It's shown how easily the 25:47-25:54 sacrament becomes detached from Jesus in people's understanding when as T.F. puts it, we don't 25:54-26:02 think out of a centre in Jesus but out of a centre in ourselves and when his vicarious 26:02-26:10 continuing humanity, his eternal priesthood, his real presence and his atoning sacrifice 26:10-26:17 are the whole focus of this sacrament. It has also brought it home to me certainly how 26:17-26:27 little awareness there is that everything Jesus has done is for us, that his eternal 26:27-26:33 humanity is truly ours. It's sad to realise that there are people there taking communion 26:33-26:39 faithfully every Sunday who don't know that the ascension of Jesus in our humanity means 26:39-26:46 that he is still one of us and one with us and that we are being fed with his death and 26:46-26:54 his resurrection, that he is feeding us with his, our new humanity, his, our eternal life. 26:54-27:03 I still remember the moment it dawned on me that the risen ascended Christ is still a 27:04-27:11 man, still our brother with scars on his hands and feet and saying something like, 'Oh, there's 27:11-27:20 a man in heaven, our man in heaven.' But if there is a man in heaven and if he is our 27:20-27:29 man in heaven, our brother, our priest with all our names written on his heart forever 27:30-27:37 inside the Holy of Holies, taking us with him right into the very heart of God, how 27:37-27:44 does that change not only how we understand the Eucharist but how we understand everything, 27:44-27:50 life, the universe and everything. There needs to be much, much more emphasis on the risen 27:50-27:55 humanity of Jesus, his eternal priesthood. 27:58-28:05 What also became apparent was the need to reconnect the sacrament with Jesus, with his 28:05-28:11 sacrifice, with his whole self offering of himself and his obedient life and his obedient 28:11-28:18 death. At the very heart of the Eucharist is the mystery of atonement, the ultimate 28:18-28:26 mystery of the blood of Christ, the blood of God incarnate as Torrance puts it. 28:27-28:34 The mystery of the Word made flesh. So there is profound mystery but we need to find ways 28:34-28:43 of speaking about it as far as we dare. The only sacrifice we can offer is Christ's self 28:43-28:52 offering to God of his obedient life and obedient death on our behalf and in our stead and for 28:53-29:00 our sakes as Torrance says. It is our priest Jesus who takes up not only our sacrifice 29:00-29:08 of thanksgiving and praise but us and presents us to the Father in his own self offering 29:08-29:14 and so at the Eucharist in our union and communion with Jesus in his body and blood we are lifted 29:14-29:22 up to be with him where he is. That's really something to celebrate. Here I am he says, 29:23-29:30 and I'm going to be irreverent for a moment and this lot's with me he says. This lot with 29:30-29:38 all their incomprehension and their tuneless hymns and their slightly strange liturgies 29:38-29:46 and all the rest of their muddle, this lot is with me he says. And again that is something 29:48-29:55 to celebrate. There was a lovely moment generally when I ask people what are we eating? Most 29:55-30:04 people said they didn't know but when I asked one lady what are we eating suddenly our eyes 30:04-30:12 open wide it was like two light bulbs going on and she said oh yes when you eat something 30:12-30:19 it becomes part of you. Right on lady. Just to conclude a few weeks ago a very elderly 30:19-30:29 couple came up the aisle to take communion holding both hands of their also elderly severely 30:29-30:40 disabled son who can't walk very well who has downs and is severely disabled and when 30:41-30:47 they came up to take communion the mother held the son's hand up and helped the wafer 30:47-30:52 into the hand and placed it into his mouth and probably said something about swallow 30:52-30:58 that dear and the father did the same with the chalice. The chalice was guided into his 30:58-31:05 mouth and he was helped to swallow and he received Christ. Thank you. 31:06-31:07 [Applause] 31:07-31:14 [Applause] 31:14-31:15 (clapping)