More and more, I find Brueggemann one who can see the wide angle of the powers and the need to name them and their ways. Here he looks again at Luther's take on the self-indulgence of the Roman church of his day. This posting will be a bit longer - and frightening. Luther's critique cut much deeper into the theological substance of the sacraments that had come to be used as source of power and control. The most helpful comment on that "confiscation" that I know.....is that of Regina Schwartz, who observes that in earlier church usage the church was the corpus Christi, and the consecrated host of the Eucharist was termed the corpus mysticum. But by the twelfth century, she reports, "these meanings were reversed.... The outcome of this reversal , Schwartz judges, is that: the Eucharist was given a strategic function: to consolidate the Church, by positing not just the equivalence but the identity between mystical reality and the visible and by making that depend upon hierarchical authority. Hence, the Eucharist became a miracle made possible through the power of the Church - a power seemingly prior to the miracle. In this way, the Eucharist became a locus where the Church could exercise its control over the sacred. "This Eucharistic 'body' was the 'sacrament' of the institution, the visible instituting of what the institution was to become, its theoretical authorization and its pastoral tool." This co-optation of the Eucharist also vastly accentuated the institution's hierarchy, formalism, and legalism. So - the Church as institution falls into the same imperial actions - grasping power. And yet, the Church does it by using that which is to be available to the fullness of the church - and making it a contained and secured piece of the institution that becomes tied up within the hierarchy and thus loses its life-giving reality. When empires rule, the bread of life becomes a way to control not a way to lead to new life. It is then a short trip to changing the character of the meal. Now it must be earned and must be administered by those who act on behalf of the empire (Church) and the living presence of the Body of Christ becomes something that must be handed to us by the 'right' person rather than the life that we are handed by the one we call Lord - above all other 'lords'. Empires and the empire of Church are very much the same when they take that which is considered sacred and use it (whatever that may be) to secure for themselves, the power and authority to rule 'over' others rather than be the body the 'kneels to serve.' What is lost in this kind of political grab for power is the Lord of Life who we say is the Son of God - the Resurrected Lord - the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Watch and see - when empires are afraid to trust the body, they will claim control over all that is precious to the people Connection: We return to life that is available to all. We do not let ourselves be ruled by powers that do not trust - powers that demand allegiance simply because of their position - powers that pronounce rather than collaborate. Within any empire, we must live in hope - even when that means we step aside from the structure that will not allow for the Body of Christ to really be alive among us and as us. O God who bids us to follow the way of the Christ, grab us and hold us and empower us to follow Jesus as Lord of all of our days. And when we must step away from the powers of the world be our encouragement. Amen. |
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