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26 - And Their Eyes Were Opened: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff |
And Their Eyes Were Opened: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff
PROFESSOR WOLTERSTORFF makes a point that, on the face of it, seems unimpeachable: in order to participate in the liturgy there should be some congruence between our personal lives and what we intend to profess. Historically speaking, the church has put all sorts of protective hedges around the liturgy in order to strengthen that congruence. Catechumens did not attend the full liturgy; public sinners were segregated and dismissed before the celebration of the eucharist; the power to excommunicate, as the word itself indicates, separated the notorious from the faithful. On the positive side, there is a penitential moment before the liturgy of the Word commences. In the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, the priest cries out, "Holy things for the holy," before communion is distributed.
I
Wolterstorff's essay wants to bind the doing of justice (biblically understood) to the witness of liturgy in a quite intimate manner. He calls on the rather ferocious words of the prophets to indicate that the absence of such a link is, in the eyes of God, not merely unacceptable but nauseating. One hesitates to quarrel with these sentiments because such cavils would seem to be rather mealy-mouthed evasions of the stern demands of biblical living. Furthermore, it is somewhat refreshing to see sentiments that carry with them moral rigor when much of liturgical writing seems afflicted with a sweetness and light attitude that seems more appropriate to group therapy than to worship of the transcendent Lord of the universe.
That being said, I am going to argue that the unregenerate, the unlovely, and the not fully converted be invited to the table of worship, not because of some sentimental latitudianarian impulse (though only God knows if I am free of such instincts), but because of another element of the liturgy that does not get full attention in Wolterstorff's analysis. For lack of a better term, I will call that element the pedagogical one, but, by the term "pedagogy," I will mean that kind of instruction that, under grace, converts.
Lawrence Cunningham is Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame where he directs the collegiate program in theology. He also edits the "Studies in Religion" series for the American Academy of Religion. Among his many books is Faith Rediscovered: Coming Home to Catholicism (1987).
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27 - And Their Eyes Were Opened: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff |
II
In a liturgy-drenched pericope of Luke, we read of the two wayfarers who, as they make their way to Emmaus, encounter a stranger whom they do not recognize (Luke 24:13-35). The recognition occurs only after this stranger expounds the history of salvation to them "beginning with Moses and all the prophets" (v. 27) and, after that, when they share a table meal, which is described with the technical phrase of blessing the broken bread (v. 30). The next two verses are crucial and bear quoting in full: "And their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, 'Did our hearts not burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures" (w. 31-32).
Space forbids even glossing the profound biblical echoes that this text triggers,1 but one must insist that the two wayfarers, in an uncertain state of belief and a sure state of disappointment, came to recognize the resurrected Christ and his meaning only by coming to an encounter with the proclaimed word and the breaking of the bread. Luke says that their "eyes were opened," and in that phrase we must hear the opposite opening of the eyes of Adam and Eve after the Fall. If the Emmaus account is, as I think it is, redolent of the early liturgy of the church, then we can only conclude that one approaches the liturgy-the encounter with Word and Sacrament-not only in faith but also to find faith, not only in justice but also to discover what justice is, not full of Christ but to encounter him as a resurrected one who causes our hearts to burn.
There is a final point: The Emmaus account is about hospitality, among many other things. The travellers offer hospitality to Jesus, and in their meat they recognize Christ. Hospitality is a key theme in Luke's Gospel. Jesus enjoys the hospitality of Peter's mother-in-law (4:38ff.); he shares a meal with the despised tax collectors at the house of Levi (5:29); he enjoys the largesse of Pharisees on at least two occasions (7:36ff; 14:1ff.); he dines with Martha and Mary (10:38); and he points out the lack of hospitality in the story of Lazarus and the rich man (16:19ff.). Behind all of these stories is that archetypal act of hospitality by which Abraham entertains the angels of God in Genesis 18 (see also Heb. 13:2).
III
The theme of hospitality is a very rich one in the Bible and in the liturgy. We need to be very careful about those we turn away from the
1The most exhaustive treatment is Richard Dillon, From Eyewitnesses to Ministers of the Word: Tradition and Composition in Luke 24. Analecta Biblica 82 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978). For an authoritative commentary and updated bibliography, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (X-XXIV) (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985). For a comparision of the "opening of the eyes" in Genesis and Luke, see: X. Thevenot, "Emmaus, une nouvelle genese? Une lecture psychanalytique de Genese 2:3 et Luc. 24:13-35," Melanges de Science Religieuse, 37 (1980), pp. 3-18.
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28 - And Their Eyes Were Opened: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff |
table or those we fail to invite. Restrictiveness can be an act of justice, but it can also be a lost moment to reach out and convert. My own tradition has not been reluctant to exclude persons, even whole classes of persons, from the liturgy, sometimes wisely and sometimes not. When I feel the impulse to exclude, however, I am haunted by some words of a just person who hungered for the liturgy but who remained away voluntarily: "There is an absolutely insurmountable obstacle to the incarnation of Christianity. It is the use of the two little words anathema sit. It is not their existence, but the way they have been employed up to now. It is that also which prevents me from entering the church. I remain beside all those things that cannot enter the church, the universal repository, on account of those two little words. I remain beside them all the more because my own intelligence is numbered among them."2
2Simone Weil, Waiting for God, translated by Emma Craufurd. (New York: Harper Colophon, 1973), p. 77.