The cross and the Eucharist
The cross and the Eucharist
What nexus is there, then, between the cross and the Eucharist? Recent suggestions have emphasized two main ideas, namely the eternal, heavenly ministry of Jesus and the church’s union with him as his body.
According to the former, Christ’s sacrifice is thought of as ‘prolonged’ (or ‘perpetuated’, as at Vatican II), so that he is conceived as continuously offering himself to the Father. Dom Gregory Dix, for example, developed this concept in The Shape of the Liturgy. He rejected the view that the death of Jesus was ‘the moment of his sacrifice’. On the contrary, he argued, ‘his sacrifice was something which began with his humanity and which has its eternal continuance in heaven’ (pp.242–243). R. J. Coates has explained the importance which this idea has for its advocates, namely that the church somehow shares in Christ’s continuous self-offering, whereas of course ‘the church cannot offer Christ at the earthly altar, if he is not offering himself at a heavenly altar’.25 But the New Testament does not represent Christ as eternally offering himself to the Father. To be sure, Father, Son and Holy Spirit give themselves to each other in love eternally, but that is reciprocal, and in any case is quite different from Christ’s specific historical sacrifice for sin. It is also true that the incarnation involved sacrifice, since by becoming flesh the Son both ‘emptied himself’ and ‘humbled himself’ (Phil. 2:7–8), and throughout his public ministry he demonstrated that he had come ‘not to be served but to serve’. But, according to his teaching and that of his apostles, the climax of his incarnation and ministry was his self-giving on the cross as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). It is this historical act, involving his death for our sins, which Scripture calls his sin-bearing sacrifice and which was finished once for all. Not only can it not be repeated, but it cannot be extended or prolonged. ‘It is finished,’ he cried. That is why Christ does not have his altar in heaven, but only his throne. On it he sits, reigning, his atoning work done, and intercedes for us on the basis of what has been done and finished. Richard Coates was right to urge us to maintain ‘the lonely eminence of the sacrifice of Calvary’.26
This is the theme of Alan Stibbs’ neglected monograph The Finished Work of Christ (1954). He quotes Michael Ramsey’s argument that since Christ is for ever priest and ‘priesthood means offering’, therefore in Christ ‘there is for ever that spirit of self-offering which the sacrifice of Calvary uniquely disclosed in our world of sin and death’ (p.5). Similarly, Donald Baillie maintained that the divine sin-bearing was not confined to one moment of time, but that there is ‘an eternal atonement in the very being and life of God’, of which the cross was the incarnate part (p.6). Over against such views Alan Stibbs shows that Christ’s self-offering for our salvation ‘is unmistakably represented in Scripture as exclusively earthly and historical, the purpose of the incarnation, wrought out in flesh and blood, in time and space, under Pontius Pilate’, and that ‘by this once-for-all finished happening the necessary and intended atoning work was completely accomplished’ (p.8). Could Christ not be continuously offering in heaven, however, the sacrifice which he made once-for-all on earth? Indeed is it not necessary to affirm this, since he is called in Hebrews ‘a priest for ever’? No. Eternal priesthood does not necessitate eternal sacrifice. Stibbs goes on to draw a helpful analogy between priesthood and motherhood:
Admittedly the act of offering was necessary to constitute Christ a priest..., just as the act of child-bearing is necessary to constitute a woman a mother. But that truth does not mean in the case of motherhood that henceforth, to those who resort to her as ‘mother’, such a woman is always giving them birth. Her act of child-bearing is for them not only an indispensable but also a finished work. What they now enjoy are other complementary ministries of motherhood, which lie beyond the child-bearing. Similarly with Christ’s priesthood his propitiatory offering is not only an indispensable but also a finished work....(Now, however) as with motherhood, beyond such successful discharge of the fundamental function of priesthood there lie other complementary throne ministries of grace, which the priest fulfils for the benefit of his already reconciled people (in particular, his heavenly intercession) (pp.30–31).
The second emphasis of what I have called more ‘moderate’ positions is related to the thoroughly scriptural teaching that the church is the body of Christ, living in union with its head. But this biblical doctrine has come to be developed in an unbiblical way, namely that the body of Christ offers itself to God in and with its head. This notion has been widely held. A popular exposition of it was given by Gabriel Hebert in 1951; it influenced the Anglican bishops who assembled at the 1958 Lambeth Conference:
The eucharistic sacrifice, that storm-centre of controversy, is finding in our day a truly evangelical expression from the ‘catholic’ side, when it is insisted that the sacrificial action is not any sort of re-immolation of Christ, nor a sacrifice additional to his one sacrifice, but a participation in it. The true celebrant is Christ the High Priest, and the Christian people are assembled as members of his body to present before God his sacrifice, and to be themselves offered up in sacrifice through their union with him.27
In endorsing this, the Lambeth bishops added their own statement, that ‘we ourselves, incorporate in the mystical body of Christ, are the sacrifice we offer. Christ with us offers us in himself to God’.28 William Temple had earlier written something almost identical: ‘Christ in us presents us with himself to the Father; we in him yield ourselves to be so presented.’29
What is important about these last statements is that there is no question either of Christ’s sacrifice being repeated or of our offering him. Instead, it is Christ the head who offers his body with himself to the Father. The ARCIC Agreed Statement says something similar, namely that in the Eucharist ‘we enter into the movement of Christ’s self-offering’ (pp.14, 20), or are caught up into it by Christ himself. Professor Rowan Williams (now Archbishop of Canterbury), a widely respected contemporary Anglo-Catholic theologian, has expressed his view that this, namely ‘our being “offered” in and by Christ’, is ‘the basic fact of the Eucharist’.30
Other suggested reconstructions attempt to mingle not our sacrifice, but either our obedience or our intercession, with Christ’s. Professor C. F. D. Moule, for example, stressing the koinōnia by which we are ‘in Christ’, united to him, has written that ‘the two obediences – Christ’s and ours, Christ’s in ours and ours in Christ’s – are offered to God together’.31 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, on the other hand, the so-called ‘Lima Text’ (1982), which is the fruit of fifty years’ ecumenical discussion and claims ‘significant theological convergence’, focuses on intercession rather than obedience. Declaring that the Christ events (e.g. his birth, death and resurrection) ‘are unique and can neither be repeated nor prolonged’, it nevertheless affirms that ‘in thanksgiving and intercession the church is united with the Son, its great high priest and intercessor’,32 and that ‘Christ unites the faithful with himself and includes their prayers within his own intercession, so that the faithful are transfigured and their prayers accepted’ (II.4).
What can be objected to, it may be asked, in such statements as these? They deliberately avoid the three ‘obnoxious elements’ in traditional Roman Catholic documents which I mentioned earlier. Once it has been firmly established that Christ’s self-sacrifice is unrepeatable, that the Eucharist is not propitiatory, and that our offerings are not meritorious, must Calvary and Eucharist still be kept apart? After all, the New Testament calls us priests and summons us to offer our eight ‘spiritual sacrifices’ to God. It also sets Christ’s self-giving love and obedience before us as the model to which we should aspire. So what could be better or healthier than to allow our self-offering to be caught up in his? Would not the perfection of his compensate for the imperfection of ours? More than that, as Vatican II put it, would not ‘the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful’ then be ‘made perfect in union with the sacrifice of Christ’?33 Is this not appropriate and reasonable? Would it not be perversely obstinate to object?
I am afraid there are real and grave objections, however. The first is that, as a matter of fact, the New Testament authors never express the concept of our offering being united to Christ’s. What they do is exhort us to give ourselves (as a sacrifice) in loving obedience to God in three ways. First, ‘like’ Christ: ‘live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Eph. 5:2). His self-offering is to be the model of ours. Secondly, the spiritual sacrifices we offer to God are to be offered ‘through’ Christ (1 Pet. 2:5), our Saviour and Mediator. Since they are all tainted with self-centredness, it is only through him that they become acceptable. Thirdly, we are to give ourselves in sacrifice ‘unto’ or ‘for’ Christ, constrained by his love to live for him alone the new life-from-death which he has given us (2 Cor. 5:14–15). Thus, we are to offer ourselves ‘like’, ‘through’ and ‘for’ Christ. These are the prepositions which the New Testament uses; it never suggests that our offerings may be made ‘in’ or ‘with’ Christ. And if it were important to see our self-offering as identified with Christ’s, it is strange that the New Testament never says so. To be sure, it is ‘in Christ’ that we are justified, forgiven, adopted and made a new creation, but it is never said that we worship God ‘in’ Christ, in union with him, joining our praises with his. Even when we shall join the heavenly host in worship, and our self-offering is at last purged of all imperfection, – even then our praise is not said to be united with Christ’s. No, he will remain the object of our worship; he will not become our fellow-worshipper, nor shall we become his (see Rev. 4 – 7).
That brings me to the second objection, which is surely the reason why the New Testament refrains from describing our worship as offered ‘in and with’ Christ. It is that the self-offerings of the Redeemer and of the redeemed are so qualitatively different from one another that it would be a glaring anomaly to attempt to mingle them. We need to go back to Cranmer’s distinction between the two sorts of sacrifice, ‘propitiatory’ (atoning for sin) and – though he did not use this word – ‘eucharistic’ (expressing praise and homage). It is vital to remember that Christ’s sacrifice was both, whereas ours are only ‘eucharistic’. The death of Jesus was not only a perfect example of self-giving love, as Abelard stressed, in which he gave himself to the Father in obedience to his will; he also gave himself as a ransom for us, dying our death in our place. He therefore died both as our substitute, thus sparing us what otherwise we should have had to experience, and as our representative or example, thus showing us what we ourselves should also do. If the cross were only the latter, it might have been possible to associate our self-offering more closely with his, in spite of the difference, much as he called God ‘Father’ and permitted us to do the same. But the cross was first and foremost a propitiatory sacrifice, and in that sense absolutely unique. We need greater clarity in disentangling the two meanings of the cross, so that we see the uniqueness of what Daniel Waterland often called ‘the grand sacrifice of the cross’34 and ‘the high tremendous sacrifice of Christ God-Man’ (p.37). Then we will conclude that it is not only anomalous, but actually impossible, to associate our sacrifices with his, or even to think of asking him to draw ours up into his. The only appropriate relationship between the two will be for ours to express our humble and adoring gratitude for his.
There is now an important criticism of this evangelical emphasis to consider. When we are thinking of our conversion, it is said, our sacrifices do indeed appear only as penitent and unworthy responses to the cross. But does not the situation change once we have come to Christ and been welcomed home? Do we not then have something to offer, which can be caught up into Christ’s offering? This is a point Archbishop Rowan Williams has made. He wants to retrieve ‘the idea that the effect of Christ’s sacrifice is precisely to make us “liturgical” beings, capable of offering ourselves, our praises and our symbolic gifts to a God who we know will receive us in Christ’.35 Again, ‘the effect of Christ’s offering is to make us capable of offering, to count us worthy to stand and serve as priests’ (p.30). Is it then necessary for the liturgy so to be constructed as to cast us in the role of unconverted unbelievers, and to recapitulate our salvation? Could it not rather regard us as being already in Christ, already God’s children, and then unite our thanksgiving to our Father with Christ’s self-offering on the cross (pp.26–27)? These questions are not without appeal. They make a substantive point. Nevertheless, I think they must be answered in the negative. For our offerings are still tainted with sin and need to be offered ‘through’ Christ, rather than ‘in and with’ him. Besides, his sacrifice not only towers above ours in quality; it also differs from ours in character. It is not appropriate, therefore, to mix the two. Nor is it safe. The pride of our hearts is so deeply ingrained and so subtly insidious that it would be easy for us to nurse the idea that we have something of our own to offer God. Not that Rowan Williams thinks so. He is quite explicit that we have nothing to offer before we have received. This being so, and granted our hungry human vanity, should not this truth be explicitly set forth in the Lord’s Supper? I agree with Roger Beckwith and Colin Buchanan, whom Rowan Williams quotes, that ‘all progress in the Christian life depends upon a recapitulation of the original terms of one’s acceptance with God’ (p.26). The liturgy must remind us of these, and not allow us to forget them.
Michael Green got this right in preparation for the 1967 National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Keele:
We never outgrow the fact that we are sinners still, totally dependent each day on the grace of God to the underserving. We do not come to offer; in the first place we come to receive. The very nature of a supper declares this. We are the hungry, coming to be fed. We are the undeserving, welcomed freely at the Lord’s Table.36
What can be said, in conclusion of this discussion of ‘eucharistic sacrifice’, about the relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and ours? I think we have to insist that they differ from one another too widely for it ever to be seemly to associate them. Christ died for us while we were still sinners and enemies. His self-giving love evokes and inspires ours. So ours is always secondary and responsive to his. To try to unite them is to blur the primary and the secondary, the source and the stream, initiative and response, grace and faith. A proper jealousy for the uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice for sin will lead us to avoid any formulation which could conceivably detract from it.
I come back to where this chapter began. The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it. In this celebratory feast we are all participants. But what is it that we share in? Not in the offering of Christ’s sacrifice, nor even in the movement of it, but only in the benefits he achieved by it. For this costly sacrifice, and for the precious blessings it has won for us, we shall never cease, even in eternity, to honour and adore the Lamb.