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 Summer 2017 June 15, 2017 Trevor Hart, "Creation, Eucharist and New Creation II" https://tftorrance.org/firbushS2017 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. ------------ 00:00-00:18 Okay folks, we're happy you pointed out so let's start and then we'll hopefully finish 00:18-00:19 on time. 00:19-00:27 That's my next heading, 'Seeing Visions and Dreaming Dreams'. 00:27-00:32 So I'll give the handout out at the end, you can take it away and make paper aeroplanes 00:32-00:37 with it or whatever appeals to you. 00:37-00:43 But it will give you some of the key quotations that may not have had time to scribble down. 00:43-00:50 I thought I was conveniently offline in this place in the midst of the hills but I should 00:50-00:52 receive a text from my wife. 00:52-01:00 I guess we're pleased to know that she's apparently in 1940 out of Stornoway to Edinburgh so they've 01:00-01:03 obviously exported her from the Western Isles. 01:03-01:06 But I came here. 01:06-01:08 Exactly, yeah. 01:08-01:15 So it may not be the 1940, maybe the 7.40 tomorrow morning. 01:15-01:20 Right okay so well we got to at the end of the session before dinner which I hope you 01:20-01:23 enjoyed. 01:23-01:28 Hope the calories won't have too much of an immediate effect on your attention span. 01:28-01:34 Was the acknowledgement that as Christians in some sense we're called to live in a present 01:34-01:41 moment bathed in the light of a future vision, in the light of God's promise and the reality 01:41-01:42 of the coming kingdom. 01:42-01:46 And I want to explore in this hour a little bit what that looks like in practice and bring 01:46-01:52 into play a consideration of Eucharist and how that factors into what we've been talking 01:52-01:57 about and in a sense tomorrow morning our Eucharist together will be a continuation 01:57-02:01 of this because it will pick up in all sorts of ways on things I'm going to mention now 02:01-02:07 and hopefully you'll see the connections. 02:07-02:15 So first just to get you engaged again a quotation from philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch. 02:15-02:20 Human beings are creatures who make pictures of themselves and then come to resemble the 02:20-02:21 picture. 02:21-02:26 Well there's a picture of Iris Murdoch, that's the one in the National Gallery I think. 02:26-02:34 And her radiology is slightly less gender-specific, neutral than mine but it is from the 1970s. 02:34-02:37 So human beings are creatures who make pictures of themselves and then come to resemble the 02:37-02:38 picture. 02:38-02:43 Just take two minutes, maybe three minutes to talk in your groups about what you think 02:43-02:51 that might mean, what might that look like in practice, in what sense is that the case. 02:51-02:59 Engage brain, this will warm up your brain circuits and you'll be ready to fire. 06:35-06:46 Ambition. 06:46-06:51 Kennedy wanted to be the president who got people on the moon. 06:51-06:55 There was no way they could actually do it until he actually realised it. 06:55-06:57 Right, that's a good example I suppose. 06:57-06:59 So aspiration can... 06:59-07:07 Yeah, good, okay, what other ways might it manifest itself in our lives or in culture? 07:18-07:22 Yeah, so we all know what we mean when we talk about self-image, don't we? 07:22-07:28 And we all know we have one, we all know there's a yawning gap between the self-image we hope 07:28-07:34 others will see and what we know of ourselves inwardly, but in a sense we still, if we're aspiring to be 07:34-07:40 something or if we're... then gradually we seek to conform to that image. That's drawn on an individual level. 07:40-07:46 Through to on the societal level, and this is the sort of thing I think Murdoch is talking about, she's writing 07:46-07:52 about moral philosophy, and I think what she's talking about is the way in which as human beings we all live 07:52-07:59 our lives in accordance with some vision. I'm going to call it a vision rather than a picture, but I mean 07:59-08:06 a vision, some picture of things, a picture of the way the world is, where the world comes from, where it's 08:06-08:13 headed to, the sorts of people we are, where we've come from, where we think we're headed to, where we'd like 08:13-08:21 to be headed to, the sorts of things that matter in life, the sorts of things that are worth doing in life. 08:21-08:29 The sorts of things that are worth striving for, the sorts of people it's good to be. I mean you can break those 08:29-08:35 down into a thousand, hundred thousand bits and pieces, but they are a sort of big picture, a sort of vision, 08:35-08:42 an underlying vision which sustains our sense, basically our orientation in the world. Now, the first thing to notice 08:42-08:48 about those sorts of pictures, insofar as all that's true, and I think it is largely true, is that they're generally 08:48-08:55 fairly fragmentary and fairly eclectic in nature. I mean we might actually gather as we go along through life 08:55-09:02 bitsy-bitsy things which we, more like a collage than a painting really, but things which we've taken seriously 09:02-09:07 and bought into and owned and we have that there somewhere in the background, and then another bit from over here 09:07-09:14 and another bit from over there, probably far more fragmentary and eclectic in a culture like ours, where 09:14-09:21 we're no longer rooted in local communities, engaging only with a certain number of people. I mean ask yourself how 09:21-09:28 in the 45 years since Murdoch wrote those words, the advent of the internet might have changed the ways in which 09:28-09:34 we build up a picture of ourselves, of the world, of life, I mean lots of much more stuff being inputted into that now, 09:34-09:42 into that process. These pictures, visions, call them what you will, are fed into us from a plethora of different 09:42-09:49 sources, more so now than they were in the past, and they're sustained and developed by our participation in a 09:49-09:57 variety of different communities and different practices which embody parts of these visions. They are generally 09:57-10:04 teleological, that's to say they are orientated towards becoming something, or where we think we are or the world 10:04-10:13 or our society is or should be headed. They orientate us towards some future state of affairs and they order our 10:13-10:21 living as we live our lives, as we develop certain relationships, as we pursue certain what we take to be goods, 10:21-10:33 as we make sacrifices in life, or not, as we enjoy certain things, or not. Now, these things are generally also 10:33-10:40 tacit, they're not things we're very conscious of much of the time. If I asked you to articulate what your vision 10:40-10:44 of the world was, it would probably take you a very long time even to begin to, like one of those jigsaws you get 10:44-10:48 for Christmas and you only get as far as identifying the corners and a few other pieces round the outside before 10:48-10:54 you put it all back in the box. Because it's a huge task, and most of the time we entertain these pictures, 10:54-11:01 as Murdoch calls them, or visions as we might call them, tacitly. We hold on to them as a level below the 11:01-11:06 articular, below the cognitive. We're not really aware of them. They're a sort of credo by which we live, 11:06-11:12 but they're not really a credo because they're not spelled out in any propositional form. And if we were to spell 11:12-11:17 them out, some of them would look like a right hodgepodge, frankly. But if you ask yourself what the things which 11:17-11:21 drive you at particular moments in your life, what the things fundamentally you think are good, what the things 11:21-11:27 that you think fundamentally are important are, and begin to build up that thing, you'll see there is a picture. 11:27-11:35 And it may be one you recognise and it may surprise you. The ways in which we negotiate being in the world 11:35-11:45 will, for example, likely be very different if we, if deep down, as I say, it usually is deep down, if deep down 11:45-11:54 we suppose, as Bertrand Russell famously told us, that the world is the result of a chemical spillage on a rapidly 11:54-12:04 cooling cinder. Or, if on the other hand, deep down we believe it to be the case, and believe there I'm putting 12:04-12:10 in inverted commas because I don't need to have a theology of this, but if deep down in our guts we suppose 12:10-12:18 the world to be a deliberate product of the overflowing of divine love, drawn into God's own life in Christ, 12:18-12:28 destined to enjoy God and to share in his glory a new creation, fashioned specifically for divine human cohabitation. 12:28-12:39 Whatever percolates up to the surface in terms of human living, in terms of assumptions, motivations, priorities, 12:39-12:48 actions, ways of relating to others, ways of relating to the world, is likely to be quite different in those two different cases. 12:48-12:54 That's not to say that there aren't some people for whom bits of both of those might be true sometimes, 12:54-13:01 because we live in a world where all sorts of confusing signals are fed into us. And very few of us now are exposed 13:01-13:08 only to one such vision or story or whatever through being rooted in a community which sustains it 13:08-13:12 and tells us that story and enables us to hand it on. 13:12-13:18 Now it used to be common to refer to this sort of thing back in the middle of the 1980s when I used to go to conferences, 13:18-13:25 some of them, with people like Leslie Newbigin and others, it used to be popular to talk about this sort of thing 13:25-13:32 under the rubric of different worldviews. A Christian worldview, a secular worldview, whatever. 13:32-13:39 And maybe that term does still have some purchase and some usefulness, but I think the work of moral philosophers 13:39-13:47 like Murdoch and much more recently in his writings by philosopher Charles Taylor, who is very influenced by Murdoch, 13:47-13:56 has drawn attention to the fact that what shapes our living as human beings isn't really a set of 'beliefs' 13:56-14:08 not in other words a coherent, thought out, carefully plotted view, so much as a combination of something much more broadly rooted 14:08-14:16 in the various facets of our humanity, tapping in not just to our minds but into, possibly even more fundamentally, 14:16-14:27 into our hearts, into our desires, into our imagining, into our bodies, our feelings, our guts, as we would say. 14:27-14:31 And for much of the time, for most of the time, we're actually unaware of much of that. 14:31-14:37 Because to become aware of it we have to formulate it in some sort of articulate form. 14:37-14:44 And what feeds into us in that way isn't so much ideas or theory, but we can of course step back, as I said, 14:44-14:49 we can step back and go 'Now what on earth do I think about that? What do I remember so and so saying? 14:49-14:53 What was it my grandfather used to say? What was it that so and so used to say in his lectures?' 14:53-15:01 You know, we can do that task. But what feeds into us in that way is not so much mostly ideas or theory, 15:01-15:14 but rather images, stories, myths, legends, the material of the imaginary. Or the imaginative. 15:14-15:19 Let me draw that distinction so that anybody who still has a hang up about the term imagination 15:19-15:24 can bracket off the merely imaginary and say 'We're not really talking about that, we're talking about grappling with reality, 15:24-15:28 imaginatively, and the ways we do that as human beings.' 15:28-15:35 Now if you doubt the existence or reality of those sorts of visions or pictures or whatever you want to call them, 15:35-15:42 then I suggest you just reflect for a moment on how it is that so many people in modern societies, 15:42-15:52 including I suggest us for some of the time, certainly me for more of the time than I prefer, 15:52-15:59 seem to believe deep down in their guts, and so far as we can tell by how they behave 15:59-16:09 and how they order their lives to particular ends, that to be human is basically to be free to earn as much as possible, 16:09-16:15 and that a good life is evidenced and evaluated by the expenditure of the maximum income 16:15-16:22 in acquiring as much stuff as possible, satisfying artificially generated appetites 16:22-16:27 until the next gizmo comes along to grab our attention. 16:27-16:34 And I say that with an iPhone 6 on my... in front of me and wishing I had an iPhone 7, 16:34-16:42 but I say it therefore with all due penitence about that, and the wider culture which it actually is a manifestation of. 16:42-16:51 Consumerism and the industries of production and marketing which undergird and are in turn sustained by consumerism 16:51-16:59 is well aware, well aware, that the most powerful approach to shaping human behaviour 16:59-17:06 lies not in attending to carefully articulated creeds, whatever form that might take, 17:06-17:15 but to the generation of images, stories, embodied practices which stimulate and then serve to reinforce 17:15-17:23 an appetite and a desire for certain goods, things we hold to be good, not material goods. 17:23-17:26 Sometimes that's precisely what they are. 17:26-17:33 Goods which we will then pursue, to pick a biblical phrase which fits perfectly here, 17:33-17:40 with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength. 17:40-17:54 I want to suggest in the bit of time remaining that Eucharist, whether it's celebrated weekly or daily, 17:54-18:03 or however frequently, whatever else it's understood to be, is at the heart of God's formation of us, 18:03-18:11 into witnesses, heralds, citizens in the here and now of the as yet still coming kingdom, 18:11-18:17 fitting us gradually for an existence in the new creation. 18:17-18:29 That's to say, Eucharist, as a regular part of our worship, is a vital generator and sustainer of a kingdom imaginary, 18:29-18:37 a vision that taps into our hearts, our minds, our souls, our strength, 18:37-18:43 so as to send us out into the world to which we know ourselves, not finally to belong, 18:43-18:50 and which is not the ultimate object of our loving and desiring. 18:50-18:58 In theological terms, of course, all that has to be described in terms of divine persons and actions. 18:58-19:05 We come to the world's table to commune with the Father through our union with the incarnate Son, 19:05-19:13 to be taken up into the Son's self-offering of himself to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. 19:13-19:19 Again, at the level of metaphysics, the temporality of the Eucharist is peculiar. 19:19-19:26 It reflects and it heightens that temporal oddity of the present moment that I alluded to back before dinner, 19:26-19:30 because here, as we gather to commune with God and with one another, 19:30-19:38 we find that the boundaries between present, past and future are more identifiably permeable 19:38-19:41 than we typically are aware of. 19:41-19:48 We come to remember, to remember Christ's sacrifice made once for all. 19:48-19:54 And yet this anamnesis, this remembering, is no mere memorialisation. 19:54-20:02 It is a present sharing in union with Christ in that sacrifice and offering made to his Father. 20:02-20:13 And it's an anticipation in which the entire creation's being will be offered back joyfully to the Father 20:13-20:17 within the life of God on that day when God will be all in all. 20:17-20:24 It's not just prefigured, but in some real sense is participated in already. 20:24-20:35 There is, as my friend Colin Gunton used to say, a perichoresis of time and space going on in Holy Communion. 20:35-20:40 An interpenetration of past, present and future. 20:40-20:47 So, we can do the metaphysics of it, but discussions of the Eucharist do, it seems to me, 20:47-20:53 often move far too quickly to metaphysics and the scale of the cosmic, 20:53-20:59 without attending as Christologically one might insist they should, fully, 20:59-21:04 to the ways in which the reality of what goes on in the Eucharist is meshed into 21:04-21:08 the down-to-earth realities of the world in which we live 21:08-21:15 and of the humanity whose fullness or completeness we believe God has drawn into the dynamics of his own life 21:15-21:22 in Christ and whose fullness and completeness we are called therefore to bring 21:22-21:30 and to offer as part of our Eucharistia, our thanksgiving. 21:30-21:37 Yet, in this central act of Christian worship, the fullness of our humanity 21:37-21:41 is certainly engaged in one way or another. 21:41-21:49 And its fusion, the Eucharist's fusion of story, symbol, sign, bodily practice, 21:49-22:00 is all orientated identifiably towards the harnessing of all our heart, all our mind, all our soul and all our strength, 22:00-22:09 and towards our immersion back in the world once the liturgy is over in order to behave in ways that will render it, 22:09-22:13 that will reorder it, rather, so that here and there anyway, 22:13-22:19 in the sort of fragmentary occasional way that I was talking about before dinner, 22:19-22:26 there'll be occasions that will seem odd and scandalous, peculiar, not belonging, 22:26-22:31 in the real world, to those who look on. 22:31-22:38 The world will contain pockets of resemblance to, fleeting glimpses of the reality of the promised new creation, 22:38-22:41 which is as yet still to come. 22:41-22:47 Now, at the heart of the story within which the Eucharistic Liturgy belongs, 22:47-22:51 the darkness of the world is taken fully on board. 22:51-23:01 The threat posed to God's creation by death, disease, wickedness, are laid bare for all to see. 23:01-23:10 But at the same time, they are bathed in the light of God's redemptive action in Christ and the Spirit. 23:10-23:16 And in that sense, the Eucharist is precisely a sign of hope. 23:16-23:19 Not a memorial service. 23:19-23:22 But it's a living hope. 23:22-23:25 Again, going back to what we were talking about earlier. 23:25-23:29 It's not the sort of hope that sits with its legs crossed waiting for something to happen. 23:29-23:34 It's a living hope, not an inert expectation. 23:34-23:41 And the Eucharist's role is never, never, or should never be, 23:41-23:47 to provide a cosy religious sanctuary into which believers may retreat 23:47-23:53 in order to shelter temporarily from the world's ills and injustices. 23:53-24:02 But instead, a recommissioning centre from which we are forever sent out with unquiet hearts, 24:02-24:11 to use Moltmann's phrase, determined to engage in whatever acts of resistance and guerrilla theatre we may, 24:11-24:17 proclaiming the Lord's death inward and in deed until he comes. 24:17-24:26 Just a couple of examples of elements in a kingdom imaginary, a kingdom vision, 24:26-24:28 which functions at different levels. 24:28-24:32 We can articulate parts of it, other parts of it work lower down, 24:32-24:36 other parts are related to things we do habitually, 24:36-24:42 the formation of virtues in our character because of what we do habitually. 24:42-24:48 A couple of bits of that which are related directly to aspects of Eucharistic liturgy 24:48-24:53 and are grounded in and nourished by a regular sharing in that. 24:53-24:59 First, we tend to situate the Eucharist in the context of its relationship to the Last Supper, 24:59-25:05 with its pastel overtones and connotations, and that's fine. 25:05-25:08 No doubt that's perfectly appropriate. 25:08-25:16 Pan out and situate it now, not just in relation to the Last Supper, 25:16-25:22 but in relation to the whole of Jesus' ministry of table fellowship. 25:22-25:27 What's going on when Jesus sits down to eat with people? 25:27-25:39 Jesus' last meal with his friends was the high point in a whole ministry filled with an often scandalous hospitality. 25:39-25:47 A practice of table fellowship in which he ate notoriously and was known for doing so, 25:47-25:59 with tax collectors and sinners, showing radical and unconditional acceptance and welcome to the unworthy, 25:59-26:08 sometimes, as in the case of Zacchaeus, with immediate redemptive impact, sometimes no doubt not. 26:08-26:19 Table fellowship in Jesus' ministry was invested with a huge significance, which most considerations of Eucharist never get around to mentioning. 26:19-26:30 It connoted the willingness of God himself to seek out and mix with and commune with sinners, 26:30-26:38 so that those sinners might be redeemed from their entrapment to a life of sin. 26:38-26:47 But the logic is clear. They didn't have to free themselves, even for a moment, in order to have the invitation. 26:47-26:57 At the very heart of the story of Jesus' passion and death, of course, going back to the more normal focus of the Eucharist, 26:57-27:06 faith is compelled to acknowledge and respond to a God who allows himself to be humiliated, rejected, spat upon, 27:06-27:18 so that those who do the rejecting and the spitting might be restored and renewed and thrown into the circle of God's love. 27:18-27:37 The invitation to the Lord's Table to commune with him has, I think, too often become a self-perpetuating, cosy religious event 27:37-27:43 in which those who know themselves to be redeemed come and express their gratitude for that, 27:43-27:49 but where the boundaries are often fairly firmly fixed, even if not officially so. 27:49-28:01 The invitation to the Lord's Table to commune with God, the symbolic representation of Jesus' death in bread broken and wine poured, 28:01-28:10 serve or should serve to drive into us at levels far deeper than subscription to the theologies of unconditional and prevenient grace, 28:10-28:17 and we can all trot those out neatly, but frankly, whatever, they're just in our heads, they don't mean a bunch, 28:17-28:26 serve to drive into us at levels deeper than that the fact that in the queue for bread and wine we stand in line with Zacchaeus 28:26-28:36 as tax collectors and sinners, and that just as no bar is placed on God's invitation to us, 28:36-28:44 and just as no bar was ever set on Jesus' invitation to others to eat with him. 28:44-28:50 So, in our dealings with others, especially those from whom we differ most obviously 28:50-28:57 and with whom we disagree most vigorously, whether within the church, which is most likely I suppose, or outside it, 28:57-29:11 we should set no bar. We should be willing to bear the cost of an absolute hospitality which wins others over only by the practices of love. 29:11-29:19 Second point, and there are lots, but I'm just picking two of them. 29:19-29:25 At the heart of Eucharistic liturgy is precisely Eucharist, the thankful response, 29:25-29:33 the joyful offering back to the Father of praise and thanksgiving in response to his goodness to us, 29:33-29:45 for the gift of creation, for the gift of life, for the gift of redemption, and for the enjoyment of life in all its fullness, 29:45-29:50 promised and hopefully already being experienced. 29:50-29:58 I find it difficult when Christians say they have a problem imagining what eternal life will be like. 29:58-30:05 That suggests that they don't really enjoy some really profoundly powerful relationship with God here and now, 30:05-30:14 which is a foretaste, and only a foretaste, but a foretaste nevertheless, and should provide us with whatever image we have 30:14-30:20 of what eternal life will be and how it will be even better than that. 30:20-30:25 More precisely of course, at the heart of Eucharistic liturgy is the self-offering of Jesus himself, 30:25-30:33 making the offering that we cannot offer, of a whole human life in all its complexity and its fullness, 30:33-30:42 devoted from moment to moment to serving and glorifying God in the power of God's Spirit. 30:42-30:48 And yet, while we cannot make this once for all offering, otherwise it wouldn't be a once for all offering, 30:48-30:53 we are now called to participate in it. 30:53-31:01 We are now called to unite our own offerings of ourselves, single, holy, living sacrifices, poor servants, 31:01-31:08 comes up in Eucharistic liturgies of most sorts, with Christ's own. 31:08-31:19 And so to enter the dynamic of joyful, mutual self-giving that lies at the very heart of the trilitarian life itself. 31:19-31:28 So the logic, we can call it that, ironically, talk about it as imaginative, but the imaginative things have their own logic. 31:28-31:35 One thing I think you should try and get away from, you probably don't even entertain the idea, but I had to get away from it, 31:35-31:42 thinking that hard knowledge means order. Imagination tends to be creative and playful and leper. 31:42-31:48 Imagination, poetry, art, it has its own order, and artists know that very well. 31:48-31:55 They can't just do what they feel like. Well, some of them do, but I think the majority know perfectly well 31:55-32:01 they're working with the constraints of a reality over against themselves, with which they have to wrestle very often. 32:01-32:10 So, going back, sorry, the logic of trinitarian liturgy in the Eucharist imprints this pattern of gift and response 32:10-32:17 within God, between God and his creation on our consciousness. Whatever else it should serve to remind us 32:17-32:23 is the fact that life, the world, is gift. 32:23-32:33 The offertory prayer, often borrowed from 1 Chronicles 29, reminds us of the fact that all that we have, 32:33-32:40 including whatever we offer, comes first from God himself as a gift. We have nothing of our own, 32:40-32:48 but the offering of it is still important. A more extended version, the version we'll use tomorrow, 32:48-32:57 draws attention to the fact that what is actually offered, bread and wine, is also the work of human hands. 32:57-33:04 In other words, not just what God has made and given us, but what we have made of what God has made. 33:04-33:14 And we know the mixed story there is to tell about that. Nonetheless, we bring it, because united with Christ, 33:14-33:23 it's acceptable to the Father, and he's pleased by our willingness to bring it and to offer it. 33:23-33:30 How many Christians do you know who come to worship and feel that they leave a large part of themselves 33:30-33:36 necessarily outside the door because they don't think God can either be interested in it or willing to have it offered? 33:36-33:43 And yet Christ took the whole of our humanity and offered it to the Father, and calls us to offer all that we have, 33:43-33:53 all that we are, in union with him, to the Father. United with Christ, an offering of himself, 33:53-33:59 and I think therefore we have to say that means human culture as well as human nature. 33:59-34:07 Jesus didn't exist in a vacuum outside time and space. He lived in the midst of human culture. 34:07-34:16 These products of human manufacture, the bread and the wine, can symbolise our total offering of ourselves, 34:16-34:23 all that we are, and all that we do, and all that we seek to make of what God has given us. 34:23-34:32 But, and here's the rub, we cannot feed on the bread of life, 34:32-34:44 and then return with impunity to the world to participate without extreme discomfort in economic structures 34:44-34:50 where some glut themselves on the world's goods while others starve. 34:50-34:59 Or where some slave in sweatshops to manufacture designer garments for others to fill their wardrobes with unnecessarily. 34:59-35:07 Nor can we drink the wine which is offered to the Father as the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands, 35:07-35:17 and then return with impunity to the world to stand by as its natural resources are plundered, or exploited, 35:17-35:23 or desecrated, or cornered for the advantage of the few. 35:23-35:30 Let me cite something from Irenaeus. 35:30-35:38 Irenaeus says, "We must recall that Christ himself is the word through whom the trees bear fruit, 35:38-35:49 the springs flow, and the earth yields first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 35:49-36:00 The symbolism of receiving, of making something of, and of offering back at the heart of the Eucharist 36:00-36:11 puts the finger very quickly on our own propensities and capacities to misuse and abuse what God has given us. 36:11-36:15 That's not to say that we spend the whole of the Eucharist feeling guilty about it, 36:15-36:24 but if it makes no difference to the way we then go and live our lives, then a bit of feeling guilty about it might not do this. 36:24-36:29 The Eucharist in one way or another is meshed into the very worst aspects of the world, 36:29-36:37 but in a hopeful vein, and it calls us through its symbolism, through the story embedded in its liturgy, 36:37-36:44 through the vision of life which it inculcates and sustains and develops in us as we participate in it regularly. 36:44-36:55 Let me cite Timothy Gorringe from whom a couple of those earlier points were gratefully borrowed. 36:55-36:59 Tim Gorringe says in his little book on the Eucharist, 'The Sign of Love', 36:59-37:04 "In commemorating a death through torture, the Eucharist brings the tortured to mind. 37:04-37:10 In celebrating the sharing of bread, it recalls those who have no bread to share. 37:10-37:19 In being a communion of equals, it reminds us of the inequality of most of our brothers and sisters. 37:19-37:28 It reflects on the real world. Its concern is that God's kingdom come and be done on earth." 37:28-37:36 I want to close with another observation made by Tim Gorringe in the same passage, 37:36-37:45 and that is now that, as I've said, the Eucharist tends to be situated naturally enough in relation to the Last Supper. 37:45-37:51 I think Gorringe is right to suggest that, as well as that, not instead of it, but as well as it, 37:51-38:00 we might also seek to understand it in the context of the meal which the risen Lord shared with two of his disciples at Emmaus, 38:00-38:06 and those other meals indeed which we're told he enjoyed in the forty days between Easter and Ascension, 38:06-38:10 another extension of his table fellowship. 38:10-38:20 Because at the very least this imaginative shift serves to remind us that Eucharist is not a matter of contemplating a dead saviour. 38:20-38:25 It belongs solidly within the era of resurrection reality. 38:25-38:33 It is an eschatological sign. It looks forward and it calls us to move forward, 38:33-38:40 which, as Gorringe says, "insists that the impossible can become possible, 38:40-38:47 that there is the possibility for what is radically new and radically other." 38:47-38:53 And it's with that insistence firmly in our sights, surely, that when the Eucharistic Liturgy, 38:53-39:02 whatever version of it we use, closes, it calls us to go out to love and to serve the Lord. 39:02-39:05 I'm going to stop there. 39:05-39:14 Which I think means we've got twenty minutes or so for interaction and questions and then whatever else. 39:14-39:16 (clears throat) 39:16-39:18 (sniffling)