The Restoration of Cain

One of the regular features of the celebration of the Eucharist in the Episcopal Church is the use of oblation bearers from the congregation to present the bread and wine from the people for use in the consecration. In my congregation we often chose someone who is celebrating a special event, such as having just been baptized or married, for the task. On an average Sunday two people are chosen at random. In all cases the task is approached with reverence and joy.

And yet, as we consider closely what is actually being offered, the elements offered, bread and wine, should give us pause. We have seen such offerings before in the story of God’s people.

Oh yes, they represent the agricultural gifts of creation, grain and grape, grown, harvested, and used in an action of a sort of secondary creation then offered back to God. Yes, as such they bear a certain dignity as a sacrifice unto the Lord. “All things come of thee, O Lord. And of thine own have we given thee.”

But wait. When did we first see such offerings presented to the Lord? Was it not by Cain? Did not God refuse such an offering, favoring the gift of a life, an animal sacrifice, from Cain’s brother Abel? Was not this first offering of the fruit of the earth not an occasion for joy, but the cause of violence? Indeed, the murder of Abel is the genesis of all violence from a biblical vantage point. From this perspective, the ministry of the oblation bearer is an ironic one. Cain boldly approaches the altar once more.

But the offering of Cain’s gifts is not ironic in the course of the Mass. It is a redemptive offering, one that restores Cain to favor with God and gives an incomparable worth to the gift. It is redemptive in that Abel is present as well in the giving. He who is the second Adam is also the new Abel, offering the living sacrifice to God upon the cross. And also present as Cain’s victim. And this sacrifice to God and victimization of the innocent are recapitulated in the Eucharistic celebration. In Christ, Abel receives his brother’s paltry offering and vests it with the dignity of his own: “This is my body broken,” “This is my blood poured out.” In this action Cain is restored and mercy overcomes the primordial violence.

In a world riven with strife, perhaps we would do well to remember the restoration of Cain that inhabits the center of our Eucharistic life. Can this inform our peacemaking ministries as first and foremost the merciful practice of restoration?

I have yet to work out the implications of this, but I thought it worth sharing.

Off to the Sierras

I will be off to the Sierra Nevadas beginning tomorrow, so don't expect much from me for a couple weeks. (Not that anyone has been expecting anything from me in anything approaching a timely manner.)

I will be hiking, canoeing, and grilling accompanied by fine wine and good beer. Perhaps I will give a few updates as the time goes by.

Protestantism and the End of Modernity

Several years ago I picked up Jacques Barzun’s intellectual history of the modern West, From Dawn to Decadence. Interestingly, he begins his discussion of Modernity not with the Enlightenment, but with the Protestant Reformation (or, as he prefers it, Revolution). What this suggested to me is that part of the decline of the Protestant “Mainline” is that the historic Reformation Churches (as well as their immediate children such as Methodism) are products of modernity, and as such are suffering with the exhaustion of the modern project. The aforementioned Third Great Schism is in this light not only about the struggle between orthodoxy and heterodoxy but also about the end of modernity and the emergence of another paradigm (which I am not prepared to call post-modern, since I am not convinced that the whole po-mo thing is not either a transitional perspective or modernity in its final stage of entropy).

The churches that can adapt to what is emerging are those which we see thriving in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They are less enthralled by the modern project, and thus are more resilient.

This, of course, raises the question of just what are these aspects of modernity that make life so perilous for historic Protestantism? Let me venture a thought or two for now.

What strikes me today is that Protestantism emerged along with the development of the nation/state, and was indeed underwritten by this modern political project. We often forget just how important the emerging western nations were to the success of the Reformation. Obviously my own Anglican tradition provides the chief example. But we forget that the term “Protestant” was first a political one, wherein the German Princes siding with the Lutheran movement were called the “Protestant Princes.”

Historic Protestantism exists as the spiritual arm of a political trend that is in fact now under the immense stress of both globalism on the one hand and tribalism on the other. Nationalism posits a mediating unit, the Nation/State, as the ultimate political unit. Such a unit has been unstable as it is too large for the tribe and requires bureaucracy and a police or military force to maintain. With Protestantism no longer underwritten by the culture, either formally as in a state church, or tacitly, as in the case of the United States, and with ecclesial bureaucracy not able to adapt to rapid social and technological change, churches such as the Episcopal Church are destined to become moribund.

Enough for now. As I seem to actually have someone out there reading, I will leave it to you to consider this for the time being.

Rod Dreher on the CoE

This is from columnist Rod Dreher on the reports that the Church of England wants to ditch St. George as Patron.

Lord have mercy. These people. Ashamed of St. George! (Who may not have
actually existed, but that's not the point). Look, why don't these
sherry-sniffing buttercups just surrender now and spare their enemies the
indignity and tedium of having to beat up a bunch of sniveling jellyfish? I
swear, you could arm the choirs of the ten Bible churches closest to where I sit
deep in the heart of Texas with pool noodles and bullhorns, and they could run
half the marmalade-spined clerics of the Church of England over the White Cliffs
of Dover like a herd of shrieking Gadarene schoolgirls.

Poor Church of England. Whoever thought it would end like this?