On the Lord's Supper

_kaufmannphillips
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reply to mdh

Post by _kaufmannphillips » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:44 pm

Hi, Mike,

Thank you for your response!
Emmett wrote: Quote: "When else have the faithful been asked to act out something sinful as a symbol of something faithful?"

In my mind God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son would qualify.
I have addressed this topic before, engaging the propriety of human sacrifice. On the one hand, I have argued that the purpose of the episode was to illustrate that God did not want human sacrifice, and indeed God stopped Abraham from acting fully in this instance. In a proper parallel, then, Jesus should have stopped his disciples once he saw that they were willing to imitate drinking his blood out of obedience, and he should have shown them the proper alternative. Besides which, Abraham's action was not symbolic celebration, but a practical test.

On the other hand, my opposition in that prior discussion asserted that human sacrifice was not actually a sin - in which case there would be no problem for our present discussion.

Thank you again for your response, Mike! It's nice to hear from you again.

Shalom,
Emmet
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reply to steve7150

Post by _kaufmannphillips » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:14 pm

Hello, Steve,

Thank you for your response!
The other gospels while not highlighting Jesus's divinity do strongly allude to it . For example when Jesus is sleeping in the boat with some disciples crossing over lake Galilee a violent storm engages them and Jesus calms the storm. The disciples say "what manner of man is this who commands the winds and the waves" which according to Psalms only God can control nature.
And yet Moses parts the sea and holds the sun still in the sky. Of course, it is not Moses' power that accomplishes these things, but God's. The management of nature is not necessarily proof of divinity, but perhaps only of one's being God's instrument.

From my perspective, the relative silence of the synoptics throws the novelty of Paul and John into sharper relief. Paul and John depart markedly from the precedent of the Hebrew bible, while the synoptics scamper about upon trends that are already present within its pages (Luke might be somewhat of an exception to this, but then again, Luke is a Pauline source). But this is not the first time that we have had differences of perspective :D .

If one believes Jesus is God the Son then i think he would have the authority and the right through his sovreignty to use this method to accomplish his aims which may have been to whittle down the disciples to a select few.
Perhaps ... but this raises the question - what could Jesus do that would be sufficient to indicate that he was a false prophet? If every offense could be explained away or deferred to on the grounds of his supposed divinity, then how could one discern his falsity? But I would - however foolishly - expect a certain consistency on the part of God. I would expect him to treat the things that he has, in all known times and all known places, forbidden - I would expect him to treat those things in a fitting, consistent manner. On the other hand, I would expect a falsifier to depart from the steady paradigm of God.

As for whittling down to a few, the synoptics' tradition handles that quite nicely. Jesus speaks in parables so that only those who persevere end up receiving the veiled truth. But John, as usual, goes another step further.

...should we question Moses or Joshua about the authenticity of their writings because some things appear to make God a bit unloving or should we trust that God can see and know a whole heck of a lot more then us.
Absolutely, we should be open to questioning those writings. That is part of our responsibility. Because the Hebrew bible expressly affirms the paradox of God's love and his violence, the proposed inconsistency is not on the order of this eucharistic material.


Thanks again for your response, Steve!

Shalom,
Emmet
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Re: reply to mdh

Post by _mdh » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:26 pm

kaufmannphillips wrote:Hi, Mike,

Thank you for your response!
Emmett wrote: Quote: "When else have the faithful been asked to act out something sinful as a symbol of something faithful?"

In my mind God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son would qualify.
I have addressed this topic before, engaging the propriety of human sacrifice. On the one hand, I have argued that the purpose of the episode was to illustrate that God did not want human sacrifice, and indeed God stopped Abraham from acting fully in this instance. In a proper parallel, then, Jesus should have stopped his disciples once he saw that they were willing to imitate drinking his blood out of obedience, and he should have shown them the proper alternative. Besides which, Abraham's action was not symbolic celebration, but a practical test.

On the other hand, my opposition in that prior discussion asserted that human sacrifice was not actually a sin - in which case there would be no problem for our present discussion.

Thank you again for your response, Mike! It's nice to hear from you again.

Shalom,
Emmet
I was not trying to draw a parallel between Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac to Jesus asking his disciples to drink wine as a symbol of his blood. I was simply answering you question:

"When else have the faithful been asked to act out something sinful as a symbol of something faithful?"

To my mind killing an innocent person is a sin. God told Noah that the person who killed another was to face the death penalty. So for God to ask Abraham to kill his son to demonstrate his faithfulness would qualify (in my mind - apparently not yours) as an example of what you were asking about.

I am not even agreeing with you that drinking wine in memory of the blood Christ ( sorry - Jesus ) shed is an acting out of a sin. To me, we are drinking one thing in order to remember something else. I understand to your Jewish sensibilities it would bring other things to mind. Seems like Jesus was often "offending" people.

I appreciate very much what you bring to this discussion, Emmett! Thanks for your faithfullnes in posting! It has been very enjoyable reading your viewpoints on many things.

Ahab et Shalom,
Mike
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reply to mdh

Post by _kaufmannphillips » Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:06 am

Hello, Mike,

Thank you for your response!
I was not trying to draw a parallel between Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac to Jesus asking his disciples to drink wine as a symbol of his blood. I was simply answering you question: "When else have the faithful been asked to act out something sinful as a symbol of something faithful?"
Fair enough. I was leaping ahead to the implication I was trying to achieve from my question. I would press against your example a bit, though, in that Abraham's was not a symbolic action, but a literal one; it was not ritual or metaphor, but rather evidence; it was not one action as representative of another, but direct action itself. To a later audience it seems symbolic, but for Abraham (and for God) it was not.

To my mind killing an innocent person is a sin. God told Noah that the person who killed another was to face the death penalty. So for God to ask Abraham to kill his son to demonstrate his faithfulness would qualify (in my mind - apparently not yours) as an example of what you were asking about.
This raises interesting questions about the episode. Why, then, do we not see Abraham object to God that what he is asking is in violation of God's own commandment? This is a separate topic, but I wonder if perhaps Abraham himself, coming from pagan background, did not necessarily see a problem with human sacrifice. He may have seen it as a separate category from murder, just as some see the death penalty or euthanasia as separate categories from murder. Thus, the entire experience may have been intended not only to give evidence of things unseen (?!), but also to bring Abraham to a more mature understanding of sacrificial paradigms.

On the other hand, this does not resolve the problem of God having asked Abraham to commit a sin. Does God ever do such a thing? Or is it more likely that the story is not an accurate representation of what actually happened? I could buy that Abraham thought God was asking him to sacrifice his son, or that someone invented or massaged the story for didactic or dramatic purposes. Either that, or perhaps at this point in history God had not made clear that human sacrifice was sinful. Or - and much of Christianity should have little problem with this, since its theology hinges upon a human sacrifice - human sacrifice is not categorically sinful, but only in certain definitive circumstances.

I am not even agreeing with you that drinking wine in memory of the blood Christ ( sorry - Jesus ) shed is an acting out of a sin. To me, we are drinking one thing in order to remember something else. I understand to your Jewish sensibilities it would bring other things to mind.
I suppose for me the key distinction is phrasing the imagery as a metaphor: "This is my blood." Jesus could have said, "When you drink this blood of the vine, remember my blood which has been shed." This would establish the boundaries of parallelism in unobjectionable terms. But instead we have the tight imagery of proxy: the one stands in the place of the other. I do not think it is incidental that the traditional version has the celebrants drinking the blood of Jesus; the ritual moves beyond mere remembrance to an symbolic act of internalization. By drinking Jesus' blood - however symbolically - the celebrant is taking Jesus into himself, feeding upon him.

But as for Jewish sensibilities - should we not expect that both Jesus and his disciples would have shared these same sensibilities, as lifelong Jews? And on the other hand, whom would we expect not to share these sensibilties? The early Gentile church, which not terribly long afterward spawned movements to annul the Hebrew bible, either through outright rejection of it and its God (Marcionism) or through rampant allegorization (Alexandrianism).

Seems like Jesus was often "offending" people.

I don't think it's unfair to say the quotation marks are unnecessary :D .


Thank you again for your kind response, Mike.

Shalom,
Emmet
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Post by _TK » Thu Oct 05, 2006 11:27 am

Please excuse my denseness on this topic. But when I read the story of the last supper, it seems so clear that Jesus was using metaphors when he spoke of the bread and wine. The reason that the disciples were not horrified is that they knew exactly what he meant. When Muhammed Ali said he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, nobody thought he was being literal, nor did anybody think John Lennon was being literal when he sang “I am the Walrus.” I realize this sounds a little silly but I think the same thing applies here. The imagery used by Jesus would only be offensive if the disciples took his statements literally vs. figuratively. In other words, if they realized that Jesus’ intention was to say “this wine “represents” my shed blood, there is no problem with the unholy connection, etc. We know that Jesus said “This IS my blood” but wasnt that that obviously just for effect? Jesus made all kinds of “I am” statements—I am the light of the world, I am the door, I am the good shepherd, I am the bread of life, etc. maybe He was a poet and didn't know it. so the disciples were used to statements like this from Him. If they realized that he wasn’t a literal “door” when he said he was a door, why would they think differently here? It is not Jesus’ fault that his intentions in his statements made at the last supper have been misconstrued by some elements of the Christianity. I certainly don’t think the disciples had any trouble with what he was saying. It was a beautiful memorial instituted by Jesus- and simple to remember. Bread-body; wine-blood. Remember me when you partake of these when you meet together.

In one of Frank Herbert’s Dune books, he had a chapter heading that read “truth suffers from too much analysis.” That always stuck with me. Isn’t that what is happening here?

TK
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reply to TK

Post by _kaufmannphillips » Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:23 pm

Hello, TK,

Thank you once again for your response!

The issue here is not that Jesus is using metaphors. Metaphors are legitimate figures of speech. The problem is the metaphor that Jesus employs. I am not suggesting that the disciples would have taken this literally (although later generations of Christians certainly did). I am arguing that the specific imagery was unacceptable.

I have found that many Christians fail to appreciate the problem here. Many modern Christians do not take ritual seriously, and approach it as something unreal or fictional (rather than real, but poetic); this is a Protestant reaction to the ritualism of the Catholic tradition. But like I have mentioned before, there would still be ritual boundaries for such folks. Some might squirm at the language "Make passionate love to your brother," even if it were clear from the context that there was some chaste spiritual metaphor involved. Many more would object if that metaphor were being celebrated in worship by a pantomimed make-out session between two men.
It was a beautiful memorial instituted by Jesus- and simple to remember. Bread-body; wine-blood.
But would you call the pantomimed make-out session "a beautiful memorial" of spiritual truth? I suspect not.

I speculate that there are three major reasons why you are able to make such a statement about pantomimed cannibalism: (1) you have been conditioned to embrace it through years of pious behavior and trusted precedents; (2) you have lived your spiritual life in a community that is insensitive to the dietary prohibition on blood. People might be kicked out of your congregation for flagrant, unrepentant homosexuality, but I'd be astounded if anyone would be disciplined for having a rare steak at Sizzler; in fact, I would not be surprised in the slightest if people had bloody steaks at church potlucks! But according to your bible, the Holy Spirit found it good to lay that dietary restriction upon even the Gentiles (q.v., Acts 15:28-29); and (3) you have probably lived your spiritual life in a community that downplays or even discourages the connection of dietary behavior with morality. For many Christians, eating non-kosher foods is a mark of spiritual superiority. This would not have been the case for Jesus' Jewish disciples, as your bible illustrates (cf. Acts 10:14). Jesus' disciples would have been as profoundly offended by the imagery of the body/blood eucharist as they would have been by a homosexual metaphor - perhaps even more so, given the importance of dietary faithfulness in post-Maccabean Judaism.

In one of Frank Herbert’s Dune books, he had a chapter heading that read “truth suffers from too much analysis.”
A fascinating, provocative series. But untruth also suffers from analysis, and Herbert's series portrays religion as chronically contaminated with unholy factors, and emphasizes that there are wheels within wheels.


Shalom,
Emmet

P.S.: edited once to correct a point of argumentation....
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Post by _TK » Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:56 pm

ok emmett-- i think i'm finally getting it. summarizing greatly, your argument seems to be that since the traditional view of the last supper comments (bread=body, wine=blood) would have been repugnant to the jewish disciples, then this is not what Jesus meant, and the disciples understood that Jesus was talking about something else (namely what you explained in your initial post). right?

TK
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Post by _STEVE7150 » Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:10 pm

And yet Moses parts the sea and holds the sun still in the sky. Of course, it is not Moses' power that accomplishes these things, but God's. The management of nature is not necessarily proof of divinity, but perhaps only of one's being God's instrument.

From my perspective, the relative silence of the synoptics throws the novelty of Paul and John into sharper relief. Paul and John depart markedly from the precedent of the Hebrew bible, while the synoptics scamper about upon trends that are already present within its pages (Luke might be somewhat of an exception to this, but then again, Luke is a Pauline source). But this is not the first time that we have had differences of perspective .


Emmet, The difference between the miraculous things the prophets in the OT did and what Jesus did is that when the prophets did it , it was clear that is was by God's power there was not a modicum of doubt but when Jesus performed miracles there was no doubt He had the power to do it. There is not a hint that he did'nt calm the storm by his own authority or raise Lazarus or heal the sick or forgive sinners or accept worship or tell Peter he would deny Jesus three times. These events are in the synoptics and IMO portray divinity.
What Jesus could do to reveal himself a false prophet would be to violate God's will. Jesus probably did offend some of the people following him but he was speaking about believing and abiding in him if you read some parallel verses in John 6 there isn't a doubt.
He who COMES TO ME will never go hungry ,and he who BELIEVES in me will never be thirsty." 6.37
Jesus also had previously said "I tell you the truth ,you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils but for food that endures to eternal life." 6.26
Perhaps Jesus was looking to weed out those who looked for food for the belly from those who looked for food that endures.
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Reply to Emmett

Post by _mdh » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:36 pm

Emmett,

I wanted to respond to some of what you said. You did not like my example of Abraham because it was not a symbolic action. But my point was that sometimes God asks us to do things which might seem out of character, or even contrary to His previous directions. I think of the vision that Peter had in Acts where he was asked to kill and eat "unclean" animals. A request that he found revolting. (I realize you will not find this example compelling). I also think of some of the symbolic actions God asked of the prophets in the part of the Bible that both you and I share (can I say the OT?). Was not Isaiah ask to propecy naked? (Isa. 20) (Was not nudity considered an abomination in Noah's day?)

Having said that, I have no real objection to your interpretation of the Lord's Supper. I am open to new ways of thinking of things. However, I am not sure that digging deep into the symbology is necessary for me. As you know, the first time this meal was celebrated was at a Passover meal. There is a lot of symbolism in the various elements of the traditional Passover meal, the various cups of wine, the unleavened bread, even the empty seat for Elijah. One could spend a lot of time understanding the symbolism of each, and be enriched. But the basic point is to remember a mighty act of God (where blood was shed and lives were spared and freedom from bondage for God's people was given) as well as a looking forward to a future act of God when Elijah would return and the Messiah would come.

I think the new meal of remembrance can be examined for the symbolism in the various elements, and differences of opinions have arisen as to what they mean. But the basic purpose is clear. We are told to remember. Remember that a body was broken and blood was shed, a (new) covenant was being made between God and His people, mediated by Jesus. A covenant that offered freedom (from bondage to sin this time). We do not drink blood and we do not eat flesh. But we remember the price that the mediator paid so that we might live. Isn't that what we were told to do? (Lk 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:24,26) We are told to do this until He returns (1 Cor. 11:26). So we look back and we look forward, as in the Jewish Passover.

I hope that I have not offended you in any way. As I have said, I appreciate very much what you bring to this forum. I have learned from your postings and hope to continue to do so.

Blessings!

Mike
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_kaufmannphillips
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reply to TK

Post by _kaufmannphillips » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:40 pm

Hello, TK,

Thank you for continuing in dialogue here :D !

I am not always of one mind on the subject, so I may be guilty of having run at this in a number of different ways. But one of the prospects I run up the flagpole is that Jesus introduced a different ritual than that preserved by the mainstream tradition. This may fit Jesus' and his disciples' Jewish being more neatly.

Shalom,
Emmet
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