Time for the Table of Our Common Pleasure

Rebecca F. Spurrier contributed to the issue of Liturgy 31, no. 3, on “The Lord’s Table in a Changing World” by describing Holy Family, a church in which she served as an intern. She was advised to enter into the lives of the congregation – which was made up of people with mental illnesses and other disabilities – by “loitering with intent” to learn the rhythms of the community’s members.

In a many-layered essay, Spurrier makes challenging observations about the importance of a church home for people whose way of entering into that community may not seem at all familiar to many.

The majority of Holy Family congregants are unemployed and, therefore, have time to spend with one another throughout the week. In addition to Sunday and Wednesday services, congregants gather for arts, gardening, yoga, bingo, health clinics, and socializing on Tuesdays and Thursdays as part of Friendship Circle programs. At the center of a weeklong liturgy is the remembrance and anticipation of shared meals. Many of those who come to Holy Family eat together six or seven times a week. 

When I describe writing about this parish for those outside the congregation, a congregant declares to me: “Tell people we’re good people. We love the Lord, and we eat all the time. Three times a day!” Outside of mealtimes, congregants recall the tastes of breakfast foods, discuss the lunch menu, conjure up meals eaten together at group homes, or remember childhood meals. 

When I ask. . . members why they come to the church, they often talk about “something to do.” The irony to newcomers from outside of a group home system is that some of those who come to do something apparently do nothing. They sit side by side with other silent community members. They listen to others sing, watch others play bingo, and wait eagerly for meals to be given. They work with time in a different way than those of us who mark time through a series of accomplishments. . . . 

Spurrier especially invites us to imagine the communion meal as a vehicle through which God, in sensate ways, becomes tangible goodness. It is a call to open our hearts to a new way of seeing the foretaste of the feast to come and the time it takes to savor it.

Even within a congregation like Holy Family––which expressly desires mental difference to be at the heart of its Eucharistic celebrations––there is a danger of . . . [wanting to] transform those who gather rather than inviting the experiences of disability to transform theological symbols and body practices. It is, for example, possible for wealthier members, volunteers, and visitors to serve meals and celebrate communion with those whose lives are different from their own and yet regard these persons as objects of pity, charity, or sentimentality. It is more difficult to envision all congregants as theological subjects whose own imagination and forms of gathering bespeak and enact God’s dream for the world. What might it mean, then, to pay attention to Holy Family not as a symbol of a future feast but as an experience of what it feels like to gather difference at a common table?. . . . 

If I imagine a time when everyone at Holy Family has access to the means to live, it begins with those who gather scattering out into one another’s lives across the divisions of ability, wealth, race, and security, to share the desires and aesthetics of many common tables. . . . As those who gather are sent into the world “to love and to serve” in a city where some congregants’ lives are of very little public worth, the pleasures of being fed well in a home of one’s own must be distributed; everyone who has access to a communion table also deserves access to what they need for the life anticipated by that table.

Rebecca F. Spurrier is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Rebecca F. Spurrier, “Disabling Eschatology: Time for the Table of Our Common Pleasure,” Liturgy 31, no. 3 (2016), 28-36.

Honesty in Meal-Sharing

In this essay exploring the concept of the “open table” for the Eucharistic meal, Marianne Moyaert, a professor of comparative theology, considers not only a table open to those who are not baptized members of the body of Christ but also open to people of faiths other than Christian. Here are some of her conclusions and her reasons for thinking as she does.

Liturgy 31, no. 3, explored the latest scholarly work on issues related to holy communion.

As with all rituals, the Eucharist too makes use of certain universal elements that appeal to people beyond their religious particularities. Together with those in favor of Eucharistic hospitality, I would underscore that the Eucharist is the sharing of a meal, of bread and wine, that enables people to experience a sense of belonging and that also contributes to the upbuilding of this community. . . .   

 The Eucharist is, however, also more than just a meal. It involves food, but not ordinary food; it involves drinking, but not ordinary drinking, and the preparation of the meal does not involve ordinary cooking. This meal will not still one’s hunger. As Augustine preached, it is spiritual food that stills the hunger of the interior (though not completely). By not completely stilling even our spiritual hunger, the Eucharist also nourishes our longing for Christ to return. This extraordinary meal is full of meaning, and it makes sense within a Christian framework. When Christians come together to celebrate the Eucharist, they do so in remembrance of Jesus (Luke 22:19) who is called the Christ. The meal makes present the kingdom yet to come. . . . 

Celebrating the Eucharist is not ordinarily a one-time event, but ought to be an expression of “convivencia” patterned after the life of Christ, as the word communion suggests. As with any religious ritual, the Eucharist “requires enclosure within the sphere of religious formation for full participation.” Its deeper layers of meaning reveal themselves only by living a Christian life. Religious others, however, neither share this vision nor self-consciously live a life inspired by the example of Christ. As a consequence, the depth of Christian religious experience as expressed and strengthened in the Eucharist remains inaccessible to them. Hence Eucharistic hospitality, a ritual act that is supposed to express communion and fellowship, is marked by something that is not shared and cannot be shared: Christian faith. The depths of the liturgical experience are out of reach and the boundaries between outsiders and insiders are not really lifted. . . . 

 . . . . Sharing table fellowship runs the risk of including the other in a twofold way: theologically and liturgically. To my mind, this theological and liturgical inclusion may jeopardize the integrity of the identity of the religious other. 

 Jewish liturgical theologian Ruth Langer relates why she rejected an invitation to partake in table fellowship: “Accepting the invitation would have exceeded my comfort zone … as guest … because it would constitute a symbolic gesture of our participation in fundamental Christian beliefs. Jews do not accept Christian theological understandings of the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; therefore, accepting the Eucharist simply as physical nourishment is far from an empty gesture. It becomes, not an act of communion, but potentially an act of mockery.” 

 . . . Sometimes refraining from participation may be more honest.

Because this blog may only reprint a relatively small portion of an essay, the full argument with all of its intricate reasoning cannot be presented. Please see the full article for the richness of Moyaert’s perspective.

Marianne Moyaert, professor of comparative theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is the author of In Response to the Religious Other (2014) and the editor, with Joris Geldhof, of Interreligious Dialogue and Ritual Participation (2015).

Marianne Moyaert, “Relgious Pluralism and Eucharistic Hospitality,” Liturgy 31, no. 3 (2016), 46-56.

With Whom Shall We Eat?

Liturgy 31, no. 3, guest-edited by Martha Moore-Keish, explored the latest scholarly work on issues related to holy communion.

Marianne Moyaert, a professor of comparative theology, used her essay to probe the current fascination with a completely “open table” for Eucharist. In this section, she lays out the arguments in favor of this form of meal hospitality. In the next section (July 8), you will find her reasons for concluding as she does, that the Christian church has to think deeply about the meaning of eating together.

Proponents of an open Eucharist argue that such an open, inclusivist theology with its image of deep communion should find liturgical translation. A too-narrow interpretation of the Eucharist, which sets up borders for outsiders, would contradict the universal scope of God’s outreach. Why not think of the Eucharist as a meeting point between the followers of different religions, where all express their experience of God’s divine self-giving? Eating and drinking together could be a way to witness to the measureless generosity of God. . . 

 Those in favor of an open table also take issue with the way the Eucharist has often functioned as an identity marker, excluding people rather than welcoming them. If nothing else, such exclusionary mechanisms are in conflict with Jesus’ earthly life, which as a whole gives meaning to the Eucharist. Jesus’ message was one of salvation and healing, and he demonstrated this in his interactions with people on the margins of society: the poor, the weak, the strangers. His actions were groundbreaking and directed at building up solidarity with the marginalized. . . . 

 Although Eucharistic hospitality is undergirded by strong theological arguments, there are questions to be asked to further theological debate on Eucharistic hospitality and its limits:

• Was Jesus’ table fellowship really one of radical hospitality?  

• Does Eucharist hospitality do sufficient justice to Christian self-understanding?  

• What problems does the religious other face when performing a ritual that belongs to the heart of Christian tradition? . . . .

Grounding the practice of Eucharistic hospitality in Jesus’ earthly life is less self-evident than sometimes assumed. Though I would not dispute the radicalness of his earthly mission, there is little exegetical evidence that Jesus, the Jew, actually ate with gentiles. . . . To be sure, in the story of the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus does allow himself to be questioned and challenged by her. There is no evidence, however, that he actually dined with her. . . .

The fact that Jesus’ earthly mission of radical hospitality most likely did not include table fellowship with gentiles does not, however, render the practice of Eucharistic hospitality illegitimate. History shows that the way churches have come to understand their mission is not a mere imitation of how Jesus seems to have understood his. Nevertheless, when we consider the theological viability of Eucharistic hospitality we ought to take into account both his radical openness and the fact that his religious identity did create limits to his commensality. Is it perhaps possible that, in order to be a radical host to those at the margins of society, one also needs to be a part of a community with certain restrictions and boundaries? Maybe human beings need such a bounded community, a safe haven where we can temporarily suspend our mission for radical hospitality and find a moment to resource. Maybe such resourcing in the home community is precisely what enables Christians to resume their mission patterned after Jesus’ example.
 

We will return to more of Moyaert’s conclusions on July 8. See her full essay for much more detailed discussion and for the extensive references she includes.

Marianne Moyaert, professor of comparative theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is the author of In Response to the Religious Other (2014) and the editor, with Joris Geldhof, of Interreligious Dialogue and Ritual Participation (2015).

Marianne Moyaert, “Relgious Pluralism and Eucharistic Hospitality,” Liturgy 31, no. 3 (2016), 46-56.