Knowing Christ

Christian Discipleship and the Eucharist

David R. Tomlinson

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781789591224
• eBook ISBN: 9781789591248
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

The Eucharist is at the heart of a life of Christian discipleship, and it is the supreme way of knowing Christ. The Eucharist also instructs and initiates us into a life of following Christ and living for God. In the Gospels the disciples "recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread". 

Through story, reflection and prayer, David Tomlinson explores the liturgy of the Eucharist and finds in it the basic building blocks of the Christian life. Readers are invited to reflect on the different parts of the eucharistic liturgy and their meaning for their day-to-day Christian lives. so that their faith can be deepened and they can learn to live more fully in Christ and as members of his body, the Church.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Love

We have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

1 John 4:16

In his book Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, W. H. Vanstone seeks to define love though he acknowledges it is far from an easy task. He starts by drawing attention to the overuse of this word, “love”: we use it too easily and so cheapen its value. Yet, he reckons that we all know the “real thing” when we find it. However, putting our experience into words by trying to cite love’s distinctive features is a different matter. Since giving a full description of love is even harder, he tries instead to identify how we know when what is presented as love does not match up to our expectations. What is it about a relationship that signals to us that what is professed as love is inauthentic? He identifies three markers—control, detachment, and limit—that tell us that what is offered is an imitation and does not measure up. When these three features are absent, then there is love. Let me explain further.

The first authenticating feature of love is an absence of control. When the lover seeks in any way to control the beloved, we know that this relationship is marred by a lack of freedom. For love to flourish, the lover needs to give the beloved the space to respond freely. We know that love cannot be forced, and attempts to demand love from someone fail instantly. The act of putting someone under pressure to love is a contradiction and by its nature makes love impossible.

The second authenticating characteristic of love is an absence of detachment. If the lover is detached, not affected by the beloved’s suffering or joy, then the relationship looks cold and distant; there is not love. For there to be love, the lover must empathize with the beloved. When the beloved laughs, the lover laughs too. When the beloved weeps, the lover also sheds tears.

The third authenticating characteristic of love is an absence of limit. When the lover places limits on their love for the beloved, refusing to do this or that for the beloved because it is too demanding or too costly, then we know what is on offer is lacking, and does not deserve to be defined as “love”.

By identifying these three markers of love’s absence—control, detachment, and limit—Vanstone works his way towards a positive portrayal of love. Given that there must be an absence of control, the lover gives the beloved the freedom to respond, for love cannot be coerced. It must be offered freely and freely received, and what is more, love is liberating for both the beloved and the lover; they are set free to be more themselves. The lover is not aloof, removed from the beloved’s feelings and mood, but profoundly responsive. What the beloved feels, the lover experiences too. The lover identifies with the beloved. Since there are no limits to love, there is nothing that the lover will not do for the beloved. Often, we discover this truth in the very act of loving. As we love, we discover, sometimes to our surprise, the depths of our love, and find our hearts enlarging—the scope of our love expanding.

When I ask parents preparing for their child’s baptism, “What has surprised you about being a parent?” they often answer that they had no idea, before the birth, how much they would love their child and how now they would do anything for them. The sleepless nights, the nappy changing, and the general reorientation of life around the child are costly, and are all an expression of this new-found, sometimes overwhelming love. David Schwimmer, the actor most famous for playing Ross Geller in the American sitcom Friends, was astounded by the scale of his love for his daughter, as he discovered a capacity to love way beyond his previous experience. “I don’t think that I’ve ever loved unconditionally before—even with partners, lovers. I think that there has always been a part of me that would hold back in some way. Now I realize that it is like part of me kind of cracked open. My heart is bigger than I ever thought that it was.”1 Like everyone who loves, he realized the intensity of his love in what he was prepared to do for the one he loved. It is in the sacrifices we make and in how much of ourselves we give that we discover how strong our love is. Our love is expressed most eloquently in what it costs us.

God’s love exemplifies supremely the three defining features of love identified by Vanstone. God gives us the space to respond freely to God’s love: we are not controlled but set free to receive and return God’s love if we choose. Yes, God knocks at the door of our lives, but only we can open it (Revelation 3:20). Opened up to God’s love, we are liberated to become the people God created us to be.

Far from detached, God is intimately involved in our lives. Besides our life and our continued existence being dependent on the sustaining action of God, God is deeply engaged in our lives, even empathizing with us. When we grieve, God mourns; when we are happy, God celebrates. God’s love is infinite, boundless and eternal, stretching through and beyond time.

In the gift of God’s Son, we see the immeasurable nature of God’s love and know that nothing can ever separate us from “God’s love in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:31–9). God’s love is exemplified sharply and vividly in the unsurpassable symbol of love: the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The cross—the stretched-out love of God

On the evening before Jesus’ crucifixion, as he shared a last meal with his friends, he embraced his forthcoming death, accepting the pain and suffering to come. Jesus spoke these words over the bread and wine: “This is my body broken for you” and “This is my blood shed for you”. The bread—torn in two and distributed—and the wine—poured out into a common cup and drunk—spoke of a body broken and of blood shed for them. We can imagine how the disciples must have felt. Perhaps a strange mixture of confusion—what did he mean?—and foreboding—whatever was about to happen next seemed ominous and heavy with significance.

When Jesus offers the bread and wine to God, breaks the bread and pours out the wine, he assents to all that is about to happen. This decisive moment is central to the celebration of the Eucharist. As he ventures out into the darkness of the night—metaphorically as well as literally dark—he is ready for what will unfold.

Every Eucharistic Prayer—the climactic prayer of thanksgiving in the Eucharist—refers back to this last meal that Jesus had with his friends. The pathos of this night is captured in the stark “institution narrative.” It is based on a passage from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth:

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

1 Corinthians 11:23–5

There are several variations on how this night is described in the Eucharistic Prayer, such as “On the night before he died . . . ” and “On the night he was betrayed . . . ” but the phrase that best captures the import of this decisive moment is, “On the night that he gave himself up . . . ”. Each time we recall that night, we remember that when Jesus broke the bread and poured out the wine, he resolved to give himself for us on the cross.

The cross—God’s love and our sin

As we contemplate the cross, we become aware of the generosity of God’s love and the cost of our sin. These two realities are integral to this one event, for in the death of Christ, we know God’s love—its height, depth and breadth—and what overcoming our resistance to God—our sin—has cost God.

In the Old Testament, we read of how God’s people struggled to learn to love God. When they enjoyed military success and prospered, they became complacent, paid only lip service to God, and lost sight of justice. When subjugated by other nations, they were unfaithful and worshipped the gods of the dominant culture. It was through times of testing—in the wilderness, in exile, in drought and famine—that they repented and returned to God, rediscovering what it meant to be God’s people, and experienced renewal.

God’s people are called to love God as God loves them, unconditionally, with no ifs or buts. To love God whatever the circumstances, whether life is easy or hard, is a challenge. In aspiring to love God in this way, Israel moved forwards and then backwards, progressing and regressing, but gradually the nation’s understanding of God, and the depth of her faith, deepened. Israel’s story reveals a long and chequered struggle to match God’s faithfulness to them; it is a narrative in which we do see some examples of this mature love for God when God is loved despite calamity and in crisis (Habakkuk 3:17–19). Ultimately though, the nation’s calling to love God fully is fulfilled by God’s Messiah, the Christ, who loves God from birth to death. Even in his death, he offers himself to God unreservedly and with inexhaustible confidence.

Besides his death being the climax of an obedient life, his final breath is the culmination too of humanity’s striving to respond to God’s overtures of love. As he is lifted on the cross at Calvary, Jesus scales the summit of love. If we imagine Jesus’ journey through life as a mountain climb with steep slopes, crevasses to cross and boulders to circumvent, in his death, he finally approaches the peak, having successfully negotiated each preceding test of love. This high point is humanity’s supreme response to God’s love; this is the definitive act of love, never to be superseded.

As our representative, Christ responds to God’s love as the whole of humanity is summoned to do. In giving his life, he demonstrates and consummates his love for God. Paradoxically, at the same time, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s resistance to God, yet stays steadfastly faithful. Through Jesus’ climactic surrender to God’s love in his death, humanity is reshaped and reformed, and a new humanity is born. His letting go of his life is our liberation. We are forgiven and set free, and invited to share Christ’s life and love for God.

Jesus’ utter obedience to the first commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” leads to his death and our salvation (Deuteronomy 6:5). God’s judgement on humanity’s disobedience is disclosed, and the debt of our sin is paid, as this life is offered and received (Romans 3; 1 John 2). Jesus’ cry on the cross, “It is finished”, signals his work is complete (John 19:30). In self-giving love, God in Christ restores and fulfils God’s relationship with humanity, and we are forgiven.

We are urged to respond to Christ’s grace and mercy by loving God unswervingly, whatever life brings. In his sacrificial love for God, Jesus realizes humanity’s purpose: to love God with the same passion that God loves us. Having achieved this goal, Jesus draws us into a renewed humanity now capable of loving as Christ loves. This is the Christian gospel: we are invited to know Christ, and to share in Christ’s love for humanity and for our heavenly Father.

We pray with Jesus, “ . . . your will be done” (Matthew 26:42)

Jesus wrestles with the Father in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times, he searches the Father’s heart to see if there is an alternative to arrest and crucifixion: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Matthew 26:39). At the end of this struggle, Jesus once more commits himself to the Father’s will. In line with the Father’s and Son’s unity of will and purpose, Jesus then goes to meet those who have come to arrest him, including Judas Iscariot, his betrayer.

By his loving submission to God, Jesus heals our humanity. We are created to love but our humanity is shrivelled by selfishness. By his unfailing obedience, even to death on the cross, Jesus renews our humanity, aligning our intentions with the Father’s heart, and making us holy. In Christ, we participate in the Son’s relationship of love with the Father, and yearn with Christ for the Father’s will to be done.

Since the Son finds in the Father the centre of his existence, his will is the same as the Father’s. This finds expression in the plea Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Your will be done”, which he prayed intensely in the Garden of Gethsemane. While the Son eternally gives his life to the Father, the cross is the historical and definitive expression of his self-offering.

In the Eucharist, the Church beholds the Son’s offering of himself on the cross. We see its costliness and yet are drawn into it. Taken deeper into Christ’s self-giving love each time we celebrate the Eucharist, our love for the Father and for all the Father loves, the whole of creation, flourishes and matures. As our desires and plans more faithfully reflect God’s purposes, we learn to pray with increasing fervour and mounting conviction “Your will be done.”

Only by loving God can we know God

Since God is love, it is God’s will that we love each other. Indeed, it is in loving each other that we imitate God and participate in God’s life. When we love, our lives resonate with God’s life and we know that God is with us. “If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).

God is the spring and source of love, and continuing the aquatic imagery, we can compare enjoying God’s love to time spent paddling in a warm sea. Let us picture the Mediterranean Sea in the summer, and imagine that when we love, we leave the beach and venture into the shallows. This vision of splashing around in the sea together, joined by the water around us that is always there, reminds us too that our love for each other is a sharing in the communion, the eternal love, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triune God is the locus of this closeness to each other. Our unity in love is derived from our intimate relationship with God. Through this unified life, that is God’s and has become ours in Christ, the Church offers love to the world. As we learn to serve each other, we model an alternative to competitive modes of relating that cause rivalry and disharmony. By loving each other, we offer an alternative way of being together to our locality and the wider world, which is often blighted by division and enmity. We are to undermine society’s increasing tribalism by transcending it in our common life. Each community centred on Christ is to embody the unity at the heart of God.

The Church is to exemplify God’s comprehensive love to a fractured world. God’s love draws people together from across the range of human diversity into one global community. God’s intention is to bring the whole of humanity and the entire creation into harmony: nothing and no-one is excluded from God’s loving purpose to unite the whole of creation in Christ. For the Church, this means that there can be no limit to our concern. We are summoned to care across national and continental boundaries. As our compassion is to stretch around the world, we have to be troubled by the degradation of the planet and the damage wreaked by climate change. Droughts, storms and heatwaves have a disproportionate impact on the poorer nations, and rising sea levels even put some nations’ survival in jeopardy.

Besides responding generously to humanitarian crises, the Church must campaign for international cooperation to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Current and future generations depend on decisive action now. As the Oscar-winning film Parasite depicted in a powerful parable about one family in Korea, it is the poor who suffer most as the planet heats up. This family’s social status is reflected by how they live in a basement beneath ground level. When there is a thunderstorm and a resulting deluge their small home is flooded and awash with sewage, whereas the rich family for whom they work is, by stark contrast, safe at the top of the hill. Working at the food bank and recycling our cardboard, praying for peace, leaving the car on the drive and c...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Bibliography
• Notes