Sweat and Water…Blood & Wine

Invalid Sacrament?

My great friend, Mark Harris, recently returned from leading (supported by eight other adults) a group of 14 young people (14-18 year-olds) on a pilgrimage journey to Navajo land. His resilience in enduring primitive camping conditions for two weeks – no shower for a week! - in his late sixties, is only surpassed by his empathy with this age group. Detailed accounts and comments can be found on his Blog, Preludium.
This was not a Work Camp; it was, so far as I understand it, an opportunity to experience another culture, another world-view, and to spend time in some questioning, ‘mulling over’ the day-to-day contacts and experiences and to share in the life of a temporary community.

Daily prayers were a part of the schedule and it was planned to visit the nearest Episcopal Mission to attend a Eucharist. In the event, this turned out not to be practical (travel time particularly), and so it was decided to celebrate the service in the Camp. An immediate problem, though, was the absence of any wine, camping as they were in a totally “dry” locality. So, they went ahead with the Eucharist, using bread and water. Hearing of this, doubtless, Anglo-Catholics (or the tatty remnants of that movement) will be moved to a state of near apoplexy: one can visualize headlines in the Church Times or Living Church, Episcopal Youth Leader Celebrates Invalid Eucharist. Possibly the other extreme might not fuss too much; after all, they were at one time so intertwined with Temperance Movements, that grape juice was normal in ‘low church’ English parishes.

Mark had made the point that water in Navajo land was very scarce and precious: a vivid symbol of life, (recall Leviticus, “the blood is the life”) and it assumed a strongly sacramental quality in this service.

The Gethsemane Pericope

Mark’s reporting of the Eucharist with water as a potent eucharistic and not just baptismal sacramental symbol, turned my attention to Luke’s account of Jesus’ praying on the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane (Lk. 22. 43-44).
Verses 43-44 are in parentheses in most contemporary editions of the Greek New Testament. That is because the MS evidence provides a relatively strong probability (but not a certainty) that the verses are a later, though very early insertion. More recent textual critics have tended to give more weight to some of the MSS that have these verses and note that the passage is quoted by Justin Martyr, c.150 C.E.
[If anyone is interested in the complexities of contemporary textual criticism, I should be happy to produce a short essay on the subject: leave on note in the Comments.]

First Generation Christians & the Death of Jesus

In what follows, I assume that what we have in these verses is an early comment, a kind of Targum, by a first-generation reader of Luke. (If the reading should be original, even better, we have Luke’s own views). This marginal note to a first edition of Luke suggests for us what the earliest readers understood Luke to be saying about the death of Jesus: the basis for its saving efficacy, which was for them a ‘given’; the way in which his followers should participate in it; and its underpinning of both Baptism and Eucharist.

I have always thought that the Gethsemane story in Mark, followed by both Matthew and Luke, stands as a connecting link between the Last Supper and the execution of Jesus. Jesus and his disciples join in the Passover Hallel, says Mark, and go at once to this quiet place of prayer.

Obedience

What follows gives in graphic, dramatic narrative form, what is one of the central theological interpretations of the meaning of Jesus’ death to be found in the New Testament. The centrality of Jesus’ obedience stands out definitively in Romans 5.19 – “[J]ust as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”. But it is also found in Hebrews 5.8, a verse which follows what may well be an allusion to the Gethsemane story.
It is not easy to produce ‘proof texts’, but the whole tenor of Mark’s account stresses the obedience of Jesus to the will of the father: the temptation narrative, and the compulsion to preach the evangel; and the fourth Gospel emphasizes the theme: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me”.

Metaphors for “Saved by the Cross”

The New Testament uses many metaphors to elucidate what was, to those first followers of Jesus an empirical fact, the reality that underpinned their sense of freedom and of living a new life: the reality was an absolute conviction of “salvation” , connected in Greek with the verb ‘to heal’ (sõzõ), ‘to make whole’. The conviction of this new ‘wholeness’ was somehow inextricably linked to the life, work and death of Jesus, and the multiple metaphors used in the New Testament were attempts to put an ineffable experience into inadequate words: an attempt to get at the meaning of Jesus’ death in itself and for the life of his followers.
Many are found on the writings of Paul:

• a law court where, against all expectations the Judge says, “Not guilty” [justification ] ;

• a meeting of high-level diplomats working out a treaty [reconciliation];

• the fight of a righteous man against evil forces experienced as demonic [Christus Victor],

• and, of course, the sacrificial metaphor [atonement].

In all these instances, we find parallels in the Synoptic gospels and other N.T. Letters.
Luke has a parable about sending an ambassador to make peace, Lk. 14.31ff., Mark reports Jesus’ words about binding the ‘strong man’ (i.e. the powers of evil) 3.27, and the whole sequence of healings in Mark, often followed by Matthew and Luke, centers on the Christus Victor theme. The sacrificial theme, too, is prominent in these gospels. Mark 10.45 with the words “ransom for many” (λυτρον αντι πολλων) is interesting because it combines the sacrificial metaphor with yet another one – the manumission of a slave, which has strong overtones of the Exodus theme.
Yet, in this great welter of attempts to get to the essence of the divine salvation, the central act of Jesus’ obedience stands out as preeminent.

Gethsemane Narrative & an Early Comment

And so I return to the very early addition to Luke’s account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Several things are presented in this picture of Jesus:

• The undoubted humanity of Jesus: the Johannine Christ is not remotely present in this picture. The cost of obedience is immense. This is not part of a drama whose victorious outcome is known to Jesus, a view that hovers around later Christology; it is a terrible struggle with powers that keep human beings from God, both within their very being and in the world where they find themselves.

The commentator (or Luke) uses this occasion to stress the central importance of a sacramental theology.

• Water is primary: The biblical record is, one might say, flooded with it. The Spirit broods over it at creation; Yahweh leads the People through it to freedom, into a land that is watered from “the heavens” and not by “the foot” (irrigation) Deut 11.10f. Jesus’ ministry begins with it and the New Testament ends with it: “The angel showed me the river of life…flowing from the throne of God”. (Rev. 22.1)

• From the time the Hebrews made the Passover the linch pin of their faith and the center of their Liturgical life, water has been inextricably linked with blood. Both words supply powerful and paradoxical metaphors: water gives life and takes it; blood flows from death, but is also a sign of life (Lev. 7.14).

• It is not surprising, therefore, that water and blood come together in the New Testament where a further layer of metaphor is added. The Old Testament figure of the cup of wine is also a two-facing symbol. It is a sign of blessing “that makes the [human] heart happy”, (Ps. 104.15), but it is also the wrath of God.

A Pivotal Point

Luke’s version of the Gethsemane pericope, (with its comment, if it is not all from Luke’s pen) brings together all these elements, and makes this a pivotal point for understanding the life and death of Jesus and their relevance for the on-going life of his followers.

Connecting the Last Supper and the Cross, it places the obedience of Jesus at the center of his life and of his relationship to God.
In the sweat – (the water of life) – that is as blood – (the wine of blessing and of judgment) - it connects the process of God’s salvation, effected through the obedience of a faithful Servant, to the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. And it is in this sacramental mode that Christians come to learn about and share in that obedience. So Paul writes that those whom God calls are “to be conformed to the image of (his) the Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Rom. 8.29).

Invalid?

So in these particular circumstances, is water for the cup of blessing an invalid sacrament? What I suggest in this essay is that this is not an “open” question. That precise language, Latin, has two ways of dealing with “loaded” (as opposed to “open”) questions; if the implied answer is “yes”, one begins the sentence with nonne…?.

If “no”, the sentence begins with num…? I’m strongly in favour of num.

CAPITALISM UNCOVERED

A Sliver of Autobiography

When I was eighteen and in the middle of training to be a Radar Mechanic in His Majesty’s Brittanic Navy, I was stationed in the East End of London, attending the Northampton Polytechnic, undergoing a crash course in physics and the theory and technology of radio and radar. The naval ratings on the course were billeted in a large building in Hoxton that had been a hostel for “fallen girls”; it had been commandeered by the Royal Navy to become HMS some-thing-or-other . (All R.N. shore facilities are “Her/His Majesty’s “Ship”). Hoxton, among the worst of London’s East End ‘slums’, was not a pretty place: rows and rows of houses thrown up in the last part of the nineteenth century, still, in some places with a communal tap for a group of huddled houses, and often noisy at night with drunken brawls. From this dreary area, we walked to the Old Street Underground station and arrived in Islington for our first lecture – 8.00 a.m.

Labor Landslide

Depressed as it was, when the results of the first election after the War (WW II) came out, the whole area erupted with joy and enthusiasm. The people had spoken clearly - no return to closed mines, idle railway marshalling yards and decaying agriculture: no return, in effect to unbridled Capitalism with its endless queues of men picking up a pitifully small ‘dole’, as the unemployment relief was then called. But, of course no patriotic American mentions the ‘C’ word.

Profit before People

There is much that can, and needs, to be said about the Socialist experiments of the nineteen fifties and sixties, but the advent of Lady (the iron one) Thatcher, demonstrated unequivocally that capitalism was still (not, perhaps in its virulent form of the era of the first Factory Acts of the nineteenth century), very much alive, and still much more interested in profit than people.
See: a summary of the Acts and Parliamentary Committees

The religious and ethical issues raised by capitalism are extremely complex, and, so far as I can tell, infrequently mentioned in the main-stream media and in political discussions; this contrasts strikingly with the acrimonious debates about the morality of abortion, euthanasia and the sexual dallyings of prominent politicians. But before I turn to consider what theologians and ethicists have said about capitalism, I want to ponder the flood of news reporting, political rhetoric and Congressional hearings that have engulfed us for almost two months now.

Right-about: Turn

Not long ago, we were hearing cries of anger and pain from the right (not always so very far right either) about government “interference” in our health system. An alarming number of older citizens, while chanting this mantra in a kind of 1984 regimentation, managed at the same time to demand, “hands off Medicare”. Appalling posters and caricatures were waved in the pepped up rallies, and mutually contradictory accusations of Socialism, Fascism, and Communism were hurled at the President. I, for one, could not escape the feeling that all this hate was motivated by unspoken, perhaps these days unspeakable, deep-rooted racial resentments. But that is another issue for another essay.
In the light of all that outcry from the right, one is, I feel, justified in expressing utter amazement that we have recently heard from these same right-wing politicians, apparently speaking in all seriousness, that the President is failing in his leadership by not, in effect, nationalizing the Oil Companies!
The thing that has struck me forcibly is that in all this flood of official reports, populist frenzy, endless news reports and even more ‘expert’ news analyses, I cannot remember once hearing the word capitalism.

Why Taboo Word?:

As I tried to work out why this was so - since it seems very obvious to me that this issue is like an immense dead camel which all discussions tread warily around, - that part of the explanation must lie in the political development (or under-development?) of the U.S political system. My grasp of U.S, history is not as good as my knowledge of British and European history (and even there, there are lamentable gaps), but I think it would be generally agreed that any Socialist movement in the U.S. has been relatively peripheral, and there certainly has never been anything like a functioning Party with substantial representation in the Congress. What is more, the failure of such movements to take off, is as much the lack of support from the working class majority as the active opposition of the upper, plutocratic classes.

Sine qua Non for the “Dream’

America as the “land of promise” for all the millions of immigrants in the last century and a half, has been so tightly tied to the tenets of the inviolability of private property, the absolute right to climb the ladder of social and economic betterment, (hard luck for the head on a lower rung), and, in effect, the embracing of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, that there is a deeply embedded and largely unexamined commitment to unrestrained capitalism. It is this commitment, a majority seems to believe, that makes possible the “American Dream”; at the same time, the actual conditions necessary for entering the dream world are rarely examined: dreams do tend to fade as one awakes to the real world again.

Rusty, Clanking Machine

It appears, in the last analysis, that the relationship between the government and the many powerful corporations that, in theory, operate at its bidding is hopelessly ambiguous (one might say dream-like), defined in a vast corpus of Congressional Acts, Presidential Executive orders and the operation of an army of “regulatory” agencies. The confusion appears to be demonstrated in the outcry against a moratorium on the drilling of new deep wells out at sea, which goes along side shrill denunciations of the Administration for ‘not cleaning up the mess’.

I had already written the previous paragraph when I came across Hendrick Hertzberg’s comment in the current New Yorker. He points out that it is the “out-of-control of a dwindling resource” that lies behind the Gulf disaster, and suggests that the most efficient way to deal with this would be a realistic tax on carbon production together with a reduction in the payroll tax. He continues:

“This is what some European countries have done, and it may well be what Obama would do if he had the kind of legislative power that European prime ministers have and many Americans of all political persuasions, assume that he has, too”. [As an ex-pat Brit I wonder what that says about the US educational system?]
But the President does not have that kind of power and so he is attempting to achieve “the maximum that…our rusty, clanking legislative sausage machine is capable of delivering”. (June 28, 2010 p. 18).

This ‘rusty machine’ has failed dismally to develop some viable alternative to naked, uncontrolled capitalism: an alternative that would give structure to the balance between government and free enterprise.

Contrast with Britain

There is I think, a striking contrast here with the British scene, where the vested interests of the “landed classes” began to converge with those of the new captains of industry. Indeed, the latter quickly surpassed the old aristocracy in wealth, frequently marrying off their daughters to a Duke or Marquis, and sending their sons to Eton or Harrow, the unquestioned leading public (i.e. private) schools in the land.
There was, though, a distinct difference between the two classes regarding the poor. The aristocratic tradition staunchly believed in noblesse oblige, and agricultural workers, though often grindingly poor, at least had a primitive social support system provided by the great house.
The plight of the industrial worker was far different, and the reports of the working conditions of the first half of the nineteenth century are hair-raising to read. (see Web reference above).

Beginnings of Control

It was out of these conditions that the Liberal Party, even though committed to a policy of laissez faire, began to establish regulatory laws: six year olds could no longer work for more than twelve hours underground; factory workers must be given a break to go to the bathroom; some minimal standards were established to protect workers against flailing drive belts and grinding gears.
By the turn of the century, however, a more radical politics emerged in the form of the Labor Party, which, after WWII, came to power with a landslide victory. A much more ‘socialistic’ program than anything the Liberals had envisaged was put in place with uneven results over the next half century.
Overall, however, Britain has had a much more controlled form of free enterprise capitalism than has ever existed in the U.S.A., and the present Gulf disaster has revealed some significant confusions. Not a few in the Republican party would agree with Rep. Joe Barton if it were at all politically possible, while the further right (Tea Partiers et mult al.) exhibit an apparent approval of the worst excesses of the British Mill owners of the 1830s and the U.S. Robber Barons later in the century. At least these folk seem to know where they stand.

The Moderates’ Bind

It is the rest who appear lost in a deep fog: the behavior of BP is seen by most as flagrant, but they operate very freely, almost independently, under a complex system of legislation that the government, committed to the rule of law, is bound by, and which, as I suggested above, is the deeply ingrained position of many working people. (What else could account for so much support the Republican Party from that group when such support is clearly inimical to the longer-term well-being of workers?)

Theological & Ethical Issues

Is there anything that theology and the history of Christianity can teach this nation which proudly claims to be “One…under God”?
It might be worth pointing out right at the beginning that the New Testament has immensely more references to the use of money and the treatment of the poor than it has about how people should behave in bed (or perhaps on a sea shore or a mountain top). Moreover, the majority of the references are not exactly gentle about the rich.
This would suggest that at the very least our contemporary imbalance of emphasis on the two ethical issues is strikingly at odds with the New Testament writings and the teaching of Jesus. [I am well aware that the contrast between what is recorded in the gospels and the teaching of Jesus would not be accepted universally, but it is widely acknowledged in biblical studies, and does not preclude some relatively reliable conclusions about Jesus’ teaching].

Prophetic Tradition in the New Testament

When we turn to the NT, we find Jesus firmly in the prophetic tradition in sayings about the poor and the misuse of power: both in his recorded sayings and in the writings of the earliest followers the same themes recur; the rich man who built new barns; the parable of Dives and Lazarus; the Rich young man to whom Jesus said, “sell all you possess and give it to the poor”; a camel struggling to get through a needle’s eye; Peter’s address to Jesus, “we have left everything to follow you”; the Beatitudes, and especially Luke’s highly radicalized version of Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”, which becomes “blessed are the poor”: period. These are just some examples of a radical criticism of the lack of compassion so often displayed by the powerful and rich. We have heard very recently just how relevant these criticisms still are when people who cannot find work are characterized as Hobos.

Poverty in Church History

Christian history has witnessed movements that involved total renunciation of ‘the world’. Very early on, this rigorous interpretation was inter-twined with Hellenistic elements of thought, which denigrated the material world and regarded sexuality as demonic. These movements in turn, set up fierce theological and ecclesiastical tensions, evidenced very much later by the Papal suppression of the Franciscans because of their advocating extreme poverty in the 14th century, and the heated discussions of the Reformation period.
A consensus emerged favoring a via media. Total poverty and some communal form of living was not required: possessions were not sinful, though they could all too easily become an occasion for sin. The dangers were underlined for the church as a whole by the lives of ascetics and by the network of Benedictine communities that peppered the medieval map of Europe.

Usury Dethroned

Perhaps this mediating position was an important factor in the rise of a merchant class, though its move to something like modern capitalism was checked by the Church’s continuing complete ban on usury (which, in effect, regarded money as an artifact: the money gained was not from a service, or from a product).
It is fairly widely held, though increasingly questioned, that it was Calvin who loosened the bind and suggested that earning interest was not in itself wrong. Dennis McCann writes:

“Calvin’s reinterpretation of the biblical arguments against usury, especially those based on Deuteronomy 23.19-20...enabled Christians to participate fully in the development of the institutions of the modern Western financial system.” (Christianity: The Complete Guide, Ed. John Bowden, London 2005. p.186. Quoted hereafter as CTCG).

This is not to say that Calvin would have approved of the contemporary failure to examine the ethical issues raised by global corporations as his comment on Acts 16.15 suggests:

“Many place angelical perfection in poverty, as if the cultivation of piety and obedience to God were impossible without the divestment of wealth…Many fanatics refuse rich men the hope of salvation, as if poverty were the only gate to heaven, although it (poverty) sometimes involves men with greater disadvantages than riches. But Augustine reminds us that rich and poor share the same heritage. …[And] we must beware of the opposite evil, lest riches hinder or so burden us that we advance less readily toward the kingdom of heaven”. (Quoted in Bouwsma, Calvin, 198).


Christian Reactions to Industrial Revolution


Commentators point to the undoubted fact that “in modern times, Western Christianity has been perceived as the religion of rich and powerful people” (Michael H. Taylor CTCG 959), and the novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century provide overwhelming evidence of this. The same trend is glaringly present in the mega churches of the “Prosperity Gospel”, and sits uneasily beside a rather older frugality preached by John Wesley and his followers.
Donald Hay, in an excellent article in Modern Christian Thought (MCT) edited by Alister McGrath, points out the peripheral influence of Christian Theology in the last two centuries, the period of intense development of economic theory and practice leading to our present situation; this means that economics is saturated with utilitarianism. It is, says Hay, “almost exclusively an Enlightenment discipline ". He goes on to note however, that there has been a constant flow of commentary and criticism from historians and theologians in the last 150 years. The evangelicals of the 1850s deplored the many social evils of the industrial revolution, but their tone of superior morality and a view of divine providence that suggested people should keep and be satisfied with their “station” in life, was somewhat cold comfort.
More humane and more theologically sophisticated were the incarnational views of F.D. Maurice, which were “taken up by the Christian Socialists in the latter half of the nineteenth century and by Charles Gore and William Temple in the first part of the twentieth century”. (MCT pp. 136f).

Hay points to the significant contribution to the discussion of ethical issues of capitalism by a group of scholars who came to be known as Christian Socialists, (would such an oxymoron be remotely possible in the U.S.?): B.F. Westcott, Charles Gore and Scott Holland. “They rejected the concept of the economic system as a natural order of cause and effect uncontrolled by any moral responsibility”. (MCT p. 137).

The Roman Catholic church has also produced a steady stream of commentary, mainly in the form of Papal Encyclicals, the first of which to bear on the modern situation was Rerum Novarum (Dealing with conditions of labor). Issued in 1891 by Leo XIII - New Things –suggests a rather late entry into the field, but it did insist on justice for working people and advocated a degree of governmental control of private enterprise. As was normal in papal pronouncements it took the opportunity roundly to condemn Socialism, and frown sternly on Democracy.

Closing Considerations

1) It seems clear from an empirical point of view, that some forms of Capitalism work better than many forms of Socialism: producing better living standards, wider opportunities and happier lives for very many people.

2) On the other hand, it is equally clear that capitalism, left to itself in Smithian fashion, quickly produces unacceptable inequalities, which have a deleterious effect on Society as a whole: incomes, education, health care are endangered for the poor as the rich become richer (often staggeringly so) and the poor, poorer (with a rapidity that should embarrass us).

3) Religion has been enlisted by both sides (Prosperity Churches), and some biblical verses. For example, ‘the poor are always with you’ can be read (and used) like so many of Jesus’ sayings, in more than one way. It may be quite pragmatic, that is to say, experience shows that this is a (sad) fact of human history: a more ominous view of the saying might be that poverty is, as it were, built into the order of things, an item of the lex naturalis . Such a view is quite explicit in many economic theories of the last two centuries, which suggest a pool of unemployed people is required ; it will hardly be a surprise to note that this is a view held by Adam Smith and his followers.

4) Clearly, the churches cannot legislate (though there are still a few theocracies in the world where the religious authorities can dictate to the State). One of the strategies of those who have moral qualms about capitalism has been to set up countless agencies staffed largely by volunteers doing magnificent work to alleviate some of the more obvious suffering caused by the capitalist system: hunger, homelessness, unemployment, severely limited educational activities – there is no need to prolong this gloomy list. Tacitly, this may seem to endorse the first interpretation of Jesus’ words about the poor, weakening the drive for direct action. Hay, whom I have already quoted, says of this situation:

“While personal charity and concern for the poor are to be encouraged, the claims of economic justice require that action be taken by governments to ensure that no one is left in poverty”. (MCT p. 66)

5) But here is the rub: U.S. elections over the last thirty years suggest that half the electorate (some times a bit more, sometimes less) vote precisely on the grounds that government should keep its hands off (except, of course, when a disaster like the current one is about to have grave financial consequences for conglomerates. Then those on the Right feel free to castigate the Administration and forget election slogans of “No Socialism”).
A further problem is the growing political influence the religious right (particularly discernible in the eight years of the Bush Presidency). Too often, the religious drive is transmuted into a passionate jingoism: a very strong military, and readiness for pre-emptive action are paramount; ethical issues of personal behavior are more important than social issues; and, sometimes, a reversion to early nineteenth century views about the divine ordering of master and servant is openly expressed. Clearly if these ideological positions form part of the majority in an election result, one can hardly hope for government action; and when the party of the right, with support from the much further right, is not the majority, strenuous reaction to, and blocking of, any proposed legislation which aims to improve the lives of those blighted by unregulated capitalism, can be expected.

Conclusion

So what can middle-of-the-road Christians and many others (very probably a larger number) who share the same moral concerns, though not professing any specific religious faith do?
Writing in 1926 R.H. Tawney pointed out the failure of the theological community to keep up with the rapid changes of the industrial revolution:

“In an age of impersonal finance, world-markets and a capitalist organization of industry, traditional social doctrines had nothing to offer, and were merely repeated when, in order to be effective, they should have been thought out again from the beginning and formulated in new and living terms” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Penguin , p 184).

At the time, it seemed to Tawney that the churches had failed miserably in meeting the challenge, but I have noted the writings of F.D. Maurice, and the cogent pamphlets and books put out by the Christian Socialists following him, which might suggest some modification of his stringent criticism. Indeed, the final part of the 20th century and the first decade of this one have witnessed an increasing pressure on the part of the Vatican and main line Protestant churches to draw attention to theological and ethical issues of poverty, power and the structure of capitalism.
What the individual can do is continually to exercise her/his social conscience; to support those seeking election to public office who convincingly display an awareness of the moral dimensions of society, and who are not beholden to the pressures of capitalist lobbyists.
However, much we can achieve by “good works”, we must continue to insist that government has an important and legitimate role in the ordering of a just society.

Perhaps, too, we should take every opportunity to remind people just how deeply capitalism is embedded in our society: to such an extent that we do not mention it because we take it so much for granted, and, therefore take for granted as inevitable, deprivations and injustices that ultimately conflict with our Constitutional principles.