“Once-for-all”[1] :

2006-02-22T23:36:00.000-08:00

Exploring Liberative Dimensions of “Sacrifice” in Christian Worship
Considering Minority and Marginalized Perspectives and Contexts

Still I Rise[2]

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

I. Introduction

Divine Child Abuse: An Invitation

Is Christianity a faith based on divine child abuse?[3] Some critics charge that the language of sacrifice in Christian theology and worship enables and maintains violent patterns of relating while justifying any suffering, abuse, and violence women and other vulnerable populations may experience.[4] Questions of suffering, violence, and redemption motivate many of their concerns. These questions are not without merit, and must be grappled with in any reconstructive treatment of “sacrifice”. The reframing of suffering and violence by present-day theologians, liturgists, and peoples (and their articulators) working for dignified treatment in the face of adversity may make way for reconstructive, redemptive, and restorative treatments both of faith and the language of sacrifice. While certainly, “sacrifice” has and even does continue to be used among Christians to legitimize classifying entire classes of persons as “suffering servants”[5] or to call upon certain of the victimized to accept their victimization as “doormats for Jesus”, such usages need not be the only possibilities worthy of consideration. Criticism, therefore, is an invitation to consider how our concepts, worship, and theologies proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ with regard to social contexts and to the limits and possibilities for particular human beings.

One of a number of important questions that arises for liturgists from this criticism is, “Are liberative dimensions of ‘sacrifice’ possible in worship that do not justify suffering and violence, but rather work to participate ‘through, with, and in’ God in undoing abusive and violent patterns of human relating?” In order to begin answering this question, the ways in which suffering and violence are framed and conceived by theologians must be considered because suffering and violence are very often bound up with sacrificial terminology. Bringing into conversation a well-known critique of, liturgical analyses of, and liberationist perspectives on sacrificial language with regard to suffering and violence opens way for (re)constructive possibilities with regard to sacrificial language in worship. These possibilities may prove to be redemptive, restorative, and resistive, even necessary, if we are to face the horrors of our age with the honesty necessary for Christian “hope against all hope”[6] in a world anesthetized from suffering, enthralled to violence, and marred by abuse.

II. Some Notes on Method and Organization

The conversation introduced in this brief essay is designed to suggest and open possibilities and is by no means definitive. J. Carlson Brown and R. Parker’s salvo “For God So Loved the World?” offers a critical assessment of the use of “sacrifice” in Christianity primarily through reexamination of atonement theologies. Their reexamination argues against using sacrificial language at all with little or no qualification in their conclusions. Their critical review is a “hard saying”, and therefore, an excellent starting point from which to examine some alternative liturgical and liberation theological perspectives on the matter of “sacrifice” to determine if qualifications can be made. A detailed reconstructive summary of their central arguments and main points opens this essay. Brief summary analyses of select theological works from liturgical and liberation perspectives follow. Carlson Brown and Parker’s critical assessment of sacrificial language is then placed in conversation with these alternative perspectives to highlight some reconstructive possibilities for the use of “sacrifice” by minority and marginalized persons and populations within contexts of Christian worship.

III. Problematic Commonplace Definitions

What is meant by “sacrifice”? This question rests at the heart of this essay, and providing a commonplace definition is necessary in order to understand how this term might function differently or subversively in Christian worship and theology. Though counter-definitions are available, a quick perusal of The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that an ordinary definition of sacrifice might be: an offering repeated regularly requiring the killing of a victim for ongoing appeasement of a deity.[7] As shall be shown, however, definitions of this sort carry with them aspects that prove problematic not only to feminist and Reformation discourse, but to Christian discourse more generally—repetitious victimization, ongoing killing, propitiatory character. Whether this definition holds up under inquiry into Christian understandings is open to question. A term related to sacrifice, anamnesis, understood commonly as remembering the past, is better defined as

making present an object or person from the past….In the eucharistic tradition the formal remembering before God of the sacrificial life and death of Christ connected with the bread and wine, through which the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice will be received in holy communion.”[8]

This making present of the life as well as the death of Christ will prove vital for understanding sacrifice beyond the commonplace definition.[9] Finally, the root meaning of martyr, a term oft associated with sacrifice, is witness.[10] However, commonplace definitions of this term emphasize the suffering and death of a witness to the faith or cause.[11] Again, in reassessing sacrificial language, scrutiny of this ordinary meaning in light of Christian commitments may necessitate refinement or revision.

IV. Detailed Reconstructive Summary of J. Carlson Brown and R. Parker

Sacralizing Suffering and Violence?

If Christianity cannot clearly name suffering, condemn abuse, and face brokenness, does not such a faith imprison rather than set free? On this premise, J. Carlson Brown and R. Parker explore several models of atonement in their essay, “For God So Loved the World?” as they tease out problematic strands suggesting the legitimization of suffering for suffering’s sake or positing suffering as the very heart of life. They concern themselves with the ways in which atonement theologies imply or justify the suffering and abuse of women, insisting that “Christianity has been a primary—in many women’s lives the primary—force in shaping our acceptance of abuse. The central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive.”[12] This image shapes their analysis of Christianity in relation to emphases on atonement at all as part of Christian thinking. In short, they assert that any “baptism” of suffering is problematic, and Christianity is irredeemable unless glorification of suffering shall cease once-for-all.[13]

Christus Victor or Job’s Comforters?

Carlson Brown and Parker criticize the Christus Victor model for focusing on a cosmic battle and triumph of good over evil and rendering suffering illusory, as the particularities of pain in real lives are lost. More psychological interpretations emphasize the inner struggle while nonetheless implying “salvation through pain”.[14] Carlson Brown and Parker suggest that this shift to inner struggle obscures the meaning of suffering altogether.[15] Such a point of view, they charge, leads to responses that admonish, “Be patient, something good will come of this. The believer is persuaded to endure suffering as a prelude to new life.”[16] The danger arises of justifying suffering, especially large-scale suffering, as part of God’s plan; yet, such thinking becomes incomprehensible under such large-scale circumstances:

Such a theology has devastating effects on human life. The reality is that victimization never leads to triumph. It can lead to extended pain if it is not refused or fought. It can lead to destruction of the human spirit through the death of a person’s sense of power, worth, dignity, or creativity. It can lead to actual death. By denying the reality of suffering and death, the Christus Victor theory of the atonement defames all those who suffer and trivializes tragedy.[17]

Underlying their analysis lurks a concern for a seemingly masochistic tendency that lauds suffering as a good in and of itself and raises up a cosmic battle outside the earthly plane while rendering invisible human bodies and human pain. This approach, however, is not to their minds the only model capable of raising up suffering as the heart of life without due care for the real possibilities of unbecoming.

Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Necis?

For its association between love and justice, Carlson Brown and Parker surprisingly praise the Satisfaction tradition often associated with Anselm of Canterbury. This association is mitigated in their view, however, because “justice is not that wrong should be righted but that wrongs should be punished.”[18] In this case, Jesus takes God’s punishment for our sins because God, though loving, is estranged from humanity because of offended justice. Following W. Rauschenbusch, Carlson Brown and Parker criticize this view for its portrayal of God as a tyrant.[19] This “tyrannical view” leads to the “sanctioning of suffering” for the sake of freedom for all involved, including God.[20] They note that this model follows an imitatio Christi trajectory that calls upon “the disciple to suffer in the place of others.”[21] In essence, this model “identifies suffering with love” near exclusively[22], glorifying suffering as salvific. This glorification becomes problematic when internalized as a model of life by those facing abuse because of its identification of love with suffering and because of its expectations of obedience understood as unwavering acceptance.

In their criticism, Carlson Brown and Parker draw upon Scripture to identify what they mean by “sacrifice” and sacrificial terminology. To their minds, the various biblical models of sacrifice call upon “the power of let blood” [23] which is given “the power to protect life, establish relationship, restore life, and speak with silent eloquence.”[24] In other words, death gives life, the spilling of very lifeblood is required for rejuvenation, making this approach to atonement, in their opinion, dangerously necrophilic, matricidal, and abusive in its presuppositions.[25]

Moral Influence or Moral Coercion?

The final classical model that Carlson Brown and Parker examine is the so-called Moral Influence model made famous by Peter Abelard. According to their analysis, this approach reverses the premise of the Satisfaction model determining that human beings prevent reconciliation between God and humans, not God’s need for justice. The innocent Jesus’ suffering and death persuades us to turn to God’s ways.[26] When this theory is universalized to victims of violence in general, however, victimization may be understood as itself persuasion of onlookers toward betterment. Again, like the Christus Victor model, the actual and particular suffering of real bodies is lost:

The suffering of ethnic minorities and the poor has been graphically described, along with the suffering of Jesus, in sermonic efforts to move the powerful to repentance and responsibility. Sometimes this amounts to using the victims for someone else’s edification. But, most perniciously, it is the victimization of women that is tied to a psychology of redemption.[27]

The moral influence theories of atonement sanctify love/hate relationships. Redemption is not to be found in intimate relationships; only vicious cycles of violence may be found….The threat of death, however, should not be called moral persuasion but should be identified as the most pernicious and evil form of coercion and terror….Justice occurs when terrorization stops, not when the condition of the terrorized is lauded as a preventative influence.[28] The victimized become the Christ figure whose suffering, being necessary for the other to experience salvation, is lauded rather than ended.

Jesus as Doormat: The Suffering God

A number of modern theologians have proposed moving away from the classic understanding of God as immovable and impassible toward God suffering with us and with the world. Carlson Brown and Parker praise this move as an improvement; however, God who suffers with does not necessarily lead to the liberation of those who suffer. They highlight the theology of E. S. Brightman who posits that suffering is the tension between what is and what could be, being a part of God’s creative purposes.[29] They argue, however, that this perspective cannot explain suffering that results from human violence and injustice. Even so, Brightman offers that because God suffers with those who suffer, those who suffer are called to uproot oppression and injustice.[30] Carlson Brown and Parker criticize this model for making suffering itself redemptive:

“Bearing the burden with another does not take the burden away. Sympathetic companionship makes suffering more bearable, but the friendship between slaves, for example, does not stop the master from wielding the lash.”[31]

While they see this as an improvement over classical theories, facing up to the suffering of others because God does so to the utmost, their question then becomes, “Is suffering and the death of God necessary to initiate and constitute a community in which redemption is right relationship?”[32] They especially criticize J. Moltmann’s affirmative answer claiming that his thought “amounts to blaming the victim”[33] by correlating Jesus’ voluntary suffering because of his incitement of hostility with blaming a rape victim. Though seeking to distinguish active and passive suffering, this answer masks the perpetrator and determines that to choose life is to choose suffering. They object that this reductionism makes suffering alone definitive of full life.

What of Redemptive Suffering?

Carlson Brown and Parker also analyze a second trend in critical theologies, that of making suffering necessarily a part of liberation. In this sense, the Cross is understood as a sign of the process of liberation: “the crucifixion of Jesus [is seen] as a sign that before the dawn of a new age a period of struggle, violence, sacrifice, and pain will inevitably occur.”[34] Suffering and violence are to be expected and accepted in making change. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Oscar Romero lifted up as proponents of this particular understanding: Suffering is necessary for social change because it inspires those who do harm to inner transformation and redemption and absorbing the violence of perpetrators makes way for a new community rooted in forgiveness.[35] Drawing upon J. Sobrino, Carlson Brown and Parker challenge this perspective for failing to recognize that perpetrators have a choice not to do violence and for reifying and finally deifying suffering as essential to change, which places the Cross outside of its historical context in favor of a universal myth that tells of suffering as the way unto new life.

An End to Suffering!

Carlson Brown and Parker note a third trend current in critical theologies that rejects suffering as positive or redemptive.[36] This perspective is characteristic of the works of J. Sobrino, W. R. Jones, and C. Heyward. They criticize sacralizing connections between God’s sovereignty and injustice.[37] Atonement itself becomes a suspect doctrinal category that too easily spiritualizes the scandal of suffering.[38] Suffering in this instance is vital, however, in that without the suffering and death of Jesus, God could not have solidarity with those who suffer injustice.[39] The Cross in this take is a “real-time” example of the depth of God’s love. The Cross becomes the sign of commitment to justice and liberation in the midst of suffering and injustice, but suffering itself is not “easily taken up” or glorified.[40] Relying upon W. R. Jones, they reiterate that” to accept suffering is to be persuaded to endure it”.[41]

Humanocentric Theism: Carlson Brown and Parker’s Suggestion

Developing W. R. Jones, Carslon Brown and Parker offer what they term a “humanocentric theism”. Their reconstructive effort “stresses the functional ultimacy of humans by virtue of their creation and eliminates God’s responsibility for the crimes or errors of human history.”[42] Their approach emphasizes human free will and God’s persuasive abilities. Human responsibility is reemphasized and history is opened beyond fate to suffering. While for Jones, the crucifixion is not liberating without the resurrection, Carlson Brown and Parker deny that the crucifixion is necessary at all. The very necessity of the crucifixion sacralizes suffering in their view.[43] With Heyward they affirm that Jesus’ death was evil inflicted upon a fellow human being by others, and glorification of suffering must be condemned. In this view, Jesus’ challenge to unjust systems is emphasized. By so doing, their goal is to de-emphasize in any way a sadistic God who desires, sacralizes, or inflicts harm.

Summary Points

In their conclusion, Carlson Brown and Parker move beyond their initial reconstruction, identifying atonement itself as the problem.[44] They reject Christianity as “an abusive theology”[45] that cannot be redeemed even by Heyward’s radical attempt. In the end, the God who demands sacrifice remains, and they indict Christianity without reservation as a theology of divine child abuse.[46] They close with some suggestions for a Christianity without atonement:

Jesus was not an acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, because God does not need to be appeased and demands not sacrifice but justice….No one was saved by the death of Jesus.

Suffering is never redemptive, and suffering cannot be redeemed.

The cross is a sign of tragedy. God’s grief is revealed there and everywhere and every time life is thwarted by violence. God’s grief is as ultimate as God’s love. Every tragedy eternally remains and is eternally mourned. Eternally the murdered scream, Betrayal. Eternally God sings kaddish for the world.

To be a Christian means keeping faith with those who have heard and lived God’s call for justice, radical love, and liberation; who have challenged unjust systems both political and ecclesiastical and who in that struggle have refused to be victims and have refused to cower under the threat of violence, suffering, and death.

[47]

Evaluating whether their reconstructive approach and strong claims do justice to the tradition of sacrifice in Christianity requires review of some liturgical and liberationist theological perspectives that seek to stay within the mainstream of Christian dogmatic claims while offering substantive critique and liberative dimensions.

V. Summary Analyses of Sacrifice in the Works of Some Liturgical Theologians

Christian worship is replete with language of sacrifice. Whether combing through a Roman Missal, an Anglican Book of Common Prayer, a Presbyterian Book of Common Worship, or a Lutheran Book of Worship, “offering”, “sacrifice”, “blood”, anamnesis of Jesus’ final night are sure to be found. Brief summary analyses of the works of liturgical theologians A. Bieler, A. Gittins, and H. Gutman provide insights into sacrifice that redirect conversation toward ways of thinking that resist rather than encourage bloodletting.[48]

A. Bieler: Gift Exchange, Anti-structure, and God’s Own Protest

A. Bieler develops H. Hubert and M. Mauss’ theory of gift exchange in her essay, “Eucharist as Gift Exchange”. In the Eucharist Bieler argues: “the exchange…is initiated by God’s self giving. We celebrate the encounter with the living God who provides an enormous gift. In Christ, God offers God’s self as pure grace.”[49] Bieler’s conception of sacrifice in this instance is one of God’s self-giving and is akin to kenosis. Using Luther’s concept of the happy exchange, Bieler reminds that Luther rejects the notion of the Mass as a sacrifice while repositioning the Eucharist as gift exchange. The exchange is one of Christ in return for our sins, that we might be free to give thanks and praise to God and justly distribute the things necessary for life—restoration of right relationship.[50] In offering a Roman Catholic angle, Bieler draws upon the work of L. Chauvet who posits gift exchange as the fundamental way of relating between God and humanity. As with Luther, for Chauvet the gift is that of God’s grace.[51] However, Chauvet wonders if one needs to respond to the gift with some offering in order to be a subject rather than overwhelmed and therefore reduced to an object.[52] Bieler questions if this is so given the nature of the gift offered—God’s very self. Bieler asks, “Can thanksgiving be truly described as a gift in return?”[53] What perhaps might be suggested is that God’s work for the flourishing of life—God’s sacrifice or kenosis—is not at odds with our own responses to and for life, however imperfect, which are caught up in and indeed made possible by God’s own continuous outpouring.[54]

Eucharist: A Structure for Life

Bieler also draws upon the work of V. Turner who theorizes that ritual opens space in which an interruption of the everyday occurs and a “counter-world” is enacted.[55] The community emerging from such roles is a “supra-temporal prevailing solidarity of all members of the group.”[56] This solidarity is made possible in the Eucharist by divine initiative and self-gift—grace. Such an understanding carries with it bodily, systemic, and cosmic dimensions “illuminating the presence of the divine and the relatedness of all creatures on earth—and in heaven.”[57] This illumination happens through anamnesis in which Christ’s passion is made present as are hopes for the future.[58] In considering hope, Bieler observes that ritual rationalizations of the ability to kill by ordinary people[59] in and of itself should cause 21st century Christians to face violence given that the societies in which we live have unleashed apocalyptic means of destruction and continue to promote economic schema that tolerate millions starving.[60] Such practices destroy relationships secured through God’s self-offering while turning over fellow human beings for slaughter metaphorically and truly. Eucharist unmasks and faces squarely the failure to live from and in the gift of God’s very self while not flinching from the reality of struggle and suffering if we so live.[61] Bieler’s implied conception of sacrifice is: our being caught up in God’s own self-giving for the flourishing of life by working for life in resistance to death-dealing ways of relating. This sacrifice is nourished, made present, and (con)forms Christians primarily in the Eucharistic participation, in Whom we are reminded that death-dealing continues and that death-dealing does not have the final word.

A. Gittins: Life as Sacrifice and Anamnesis of Life

Like Bieler, A. Gittins explores the problem of “sacrifice” in his essay, “Sacrifice, Violence, and the Eucharist”. Considering the contextual background of Jesus’ own culture and that of the Church Fathers, Gittins notes that in moving outside a Jewish matrix, sacrifice becomes associated with “immolation, expiation, and propitiation” [62] rather than the entirety of Jesus “self-offering of his life.”[63] Gittins claims that this shift distorts and confuses the language of sacrifice as used by Jesus. This requires retrieving “sacrifice” from a Hebrew worldview.

What is Re-membered?

A defining aspect of Gittins’ position is that “sacrifice” in relation to Jesus involves the movement of his entire life, and not simply his crucifixion. The Eucharist itself is the anamnesis of this sacrifice, not Christ’s sacrifice proper.[64] Anamnesis in Gittins’ approach is “recreation of relationship”[65] rather than a reenactment or remembering of Jesus’ brutal death. In order to address the brutality of Jesus’ death, Gittins, like Bieler turns to gift exchange. Gittins notes that gifts create and sustain, heal and restore relationships; yet, in a world in which many communities experience disruptions, such an approach has limitations. Building on the work of G. Ashby, Gittins defines sacrifice as “matter on its way to and from God”.[66] Regardless, Gittins asserts, violence simply cannot be ignored when considering Eucharist:

We need a eucharist that can acknowledge human violence as not inevitable and not uncheckable, and that can address human aggression, look it squarely in the eye and help sanctify it And a eucharist for our world must stand before—must we say “confront”?—the unsanctified aggression and blasphemous injustice that marks cultures and communities.[67]

Gittins seems both to sanctify and to confront in considering sacrifice, sacrifice meaning a binding up of relation as shown by and in Jesus.[68] Gittins, therefore, shifts away from immolation to remembrance of a life lived and alive—once for all.[69] Gittins suggests that in this definition of sacrifice, sacrifice is God’s ” ‘characteristic activity’”[70], an activity seeking to move matter godward—to bring fullness of life. [71]

Absorbing Violence

Gittins observes that violence is part of life, though violence run amok is not; human community develops when violence is both respected and controlled. Gift exchange is a way of ritualizing violence without the suffering ordinarily involved.[72] The sharing of bread is an example of this movement. “The Mass closes the gap between our tendency to profane and God’s tendency to make sacred,” challenging our violence toward one another and at the same time expressing our movement toward companionship.[73] How does God sanctify violence? According to Gittins, God sanctifies violence by absorption. Absorption of violence is also this sacrifice, life lived godward: “Jesus freely undertakes to become ‘victimized,’ and accepts a marginal status, the ‘condition of a slave.’ And he does these things in order to be sacrifice, to absorb violence, to end the cycle of retaliation.”[74] Gittins goes further, however, suggesting that this absorption is friendship or the possibility of transformation of broken relating into friendship.[75] Eucharist is the paradigm for this action, being the anamnesis of Jesus’ absorption of violence: “He stood in the path of violence and gathered it under his wings, ‘incorporated’ it in a very literal way. That was his sacrifice.”[76] Moreover, Eucharist is food for the journey, the means in which, or rather in Whom we too join in this way of life:

he who turned the other cheek and was slapped on that one too, and who was scourged and spat upon, pierced and abandoned, has gently and insistently called us back to ‘remember’ him, to be in relationship with him, to add our sacrifice to his, in a eucharist that places table-fellowship in the path of violence and is prepared to absorb its impact, no matter how sickening. Only when violence is finally absorbed will it finally pass away, only when stanched will it cease.[77]

Joining in the Eucharist, Christians caught up in this anamnetic movement are called to step into this once-for-all, declaring, “No more!”, going forth to live it so, no longer victims or victimizers but free agents of God living life to the full.[78]

H.-M. Gutmann: Once-for-all In Christ the Victim?

H.-M. Gutmann offers an in-depth analysis of the ambiguity of symbols looking at sacrifice through a number of developments in Symbole zwischen Macht und Spiel: Religionspädagogische und liturgische Untersuchungen zum “Opfer” (Symbols between power and play: religious educational and liturgical investigations of sacrifice).[79] Gutmann develops in a short few pages, an evaluation of K. B. Ritter's interpretation of divine service relying upon the work of H. Hubert and M. Mauss. Gutmann’s exploration of the climax of the service involves a multiplex of interpretations that look at the highly emphasized gift exchange and mimesis as well as those of killing and eating. Among the most important insights, Gutmann finds a strong (re)connection between Christ and the Body in these analyses of gift exchange and mimesis. In these analyses of the climax of the divine service, the self-offering or sacrifice of the gathered community is through Christ. Once-for-all comes to suggest not only the Victim to end all victimization, but Jesus’ self-offering for all time opens way for incorporation of the gathered community into the life of God by the power of the Holy Spirit signified in the epiclesis:

Thus what happens at the high point of the sacrificial process according to Hubert and Mauss is namely the union/identification between the sacrificing ones, the victim, and divinity. An important modification to this schema must be made: The exchange of subjects through incorporation happens not simply between those celebrating and God, but between them and God in His Second Person. They are incorporated into the Son to be taken to the end of the celebration at the climax of the sacrificial process to participate in the inner life of the Trinity before the Father in praise of His eternal majesty with all the angels.[80]

Such a community is at once gathered in the Spirit, united in the perichoretic life of the Trinity, and identified with the kenotic work of the Son. This aspect is emphasized in a mimetic reading as well,[81] particularly the identification of the priest, and through the priest the gathered community, with the Victim. However, he cautions that the consideration of the killing itself is not thoroughly dealt with in these schema especially with regard to the community:

Through a cursory glance at the texts, the sacrificial dimension of “killing” appears downplayed in these schema; it is only represented by the quotation of “blood”, “cross” and in particular by the recitation of the “Agnus Dei”. In contrast to this is the systematic status of incorporation in the conclusion on the elevation in the gift exchange and in the conclusion on mimesis in the exchange of subject between God and humans to such an extent that this dimension is underrepresented in the texts in relation to the dimensions of the "gift exchange" and “mimesis”. It comes across as already examined, particularly as the incorporation of the priest, and only then, secondarily, and with less thorough consideration of the liturgical form, as producing the incorporation of the gathered community.[82]

What remains unanswered in Gutmann’s treatment here is the exact relationship of the priest to the community, which would affect any interpretation of primary and secondary incorporation as well as provide grist for pondering afresh the “killing” aspects. For example, an iconic understanding would suggest other than a primary/secondary incorporation as the priest acts for the entire community. Such a possibility might suggest a strong identification of the gathered community with the mimesis of the Cross as well and build a relation to all of those still experiencing victimization who are then joined by the gathered community in the God-Victim Himself, who brings an end to victimization once-for-all as a way at all to God and opens way to God once-for-all toward realizing this end.

VI. Summary Analyses of Sacrifice in Some Liberationist Perspectives

In struggling for social change and justice, theologians have given considerable space to thinking about suffering, violence, and sacrifice. Most often, their analyses hinge upon discussions of the Cross amidst challenging circumstances. The works of J. Sobrino, W. Cavanaugh, and J. Alison are exceptional examples of such analyses.

J. Sobrino: Covering or Recovering History?

In Christ the Liberator, J. Sobrino takes issue with Chalcedonian and Anselmian penchants for abstracting Jesus to nature (physis) that “disappear” historical context and human particularity.[83] Sobrino asserts that these approaches conceal historical causes and come close to “denying the flesh of Christ”.[84] This concealment of historical causes removes the possibility of a formative way of being in time and place through, with, and in particular human beings.[85] Sobrino names love as this formative way of human being in the world.[86] For Sobrino, the entire trajectory of Jesus’ life is one of challenging dehumanizing ways of being together. This challenge of love gets Jesus killed:

Jesus defended the weak against those who were oppressing them, came into conflict with these, remained true to his cause, and was killed because he was a nuisance. The cross came about, therefore, for defending the weak, and this makes it an expression of love. We can then say that the cross brings salvation, that the cross is eu-aggelion, good news. Love saves, and in the end love, in its various expressions, is the only thing that saves.[87]

Sobrino’s sacrifice of love rooted in the specificity of Jesus’ history and context eliminates a want to placate a god through blood and death, and instead makes the trajectory of Jesus’ entire life visible as the way of love.[88]

A crucial example of Sobrino’s approach to sacrifice is found in his discussion of Archbishop Romero and the possible title to be given him if beatified. The likeliest possibility is “martyr”, to which Sobrino objects. Sobrino cautions that if Romero is beatified as a martyr alone (and not bishop and martyr), a real danger exists of elevating his suffering and death as the only reason for remembrance, which detaches Romero’s death from the overall trajectory of his life and the historical circumstances under which his death was deemed necessary by the powers that be.[89] Sobrino hopes that any beatification recognizes the entirety of a life lived out of love in brutal historical circumstances—a living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the face of death.

W. Cavanaugh: Overcoming Disappearance, Remembering the Corpus Verum

W. Cavanaugh’s Torture and the Eucharist skillfully examines events in Chile under Pinochet in light of the Eucharist. His approach to Eucharist makes a vital contribution to sacrifice that resists justification of violence and maintains an eschatological trajectory. A central premise of Cavanaugh’s work is Eucharist undoes the attempts of the state to disappear the tortured. Like Gittins, an emphasis is placed on anamnesis of Jesus’ sacrifice. But again, Jesus’ sacrifice is carefully examined in light of Christian interpretations of this term.[90] As with Bieler and Gittins, Eucharist is seen as a very real “counter-discipline” to the very real state-sponsored torture apparatus.[91]

Using Augustine’s insights into true and false sacrifice, Cavanaugh understands sacrifice as conformation of oneself to the ways of God.[92] Rather than God demanding something of us to fill a need in God, we rather are united in Jesus’ own conformity in fellowship becoming Christ’s true Body in history through the Eucharist which nourishes us to do God’s will—charity, table-fellowship, mutually upbuilding service.[93] Sacrifice is, therefore, to live one’s life offered in, to turn one’s life over to, and to be oriented toward the ongoing work of God—
fellowship and friendship. The Eucharist is true food being the One who lived fully conformed and who now nourishes us to live godwardly in our very performance and partaking. “Body” and “Blood” remind us that Jesus offered his whole self in conformity to God’s Reign to the uttermost, even to the breaking of his body and the spilling of his blood, revealing through contrast “worldly” ways of formation: “In the Eucharist the church keeps alive the subversive memory of Christ’s past confrontation with, and triumph over, worldly power.”[94] In Christ, members of the Body are called to “continue in the Word”[95], being (con)formed in and to God’s subversive service. [96]

J. Alison: Eucharist as “Lifelong Therapy for Distorted Desire”[97]

J. Alison’s essay, “Worship in a Violent World”, relies upon the work of R. Girard in positing an alternative understanding of “sacrifice” in worship that faces human violence while refusing to conflate this violence with how God relates to us. Alison relies upon an important maxim from Lateran IV in 1215, the so-called maior dissimilitudo: “Between Creator and creature it is not possible to express that there is similitude, without implying that there is greater dissimilitude.”[98] Using these short lines, Alison interprets the nature of Christian Eucharist with regard to worship, violence, and sacrifice. Alison writes,

God takes us starting from where we are, with our words to do with god, and worship, and sacrifice, and love and enables us to turn them into something quite else, something which is not full of fear, ambivalence, violence and frenzy which characterize those words in their ordinary usage. What we are enabled to turn them into is something which is itself much more unlike those words than it is like them, but we find that we are not lying when we say that they are, for instance, true God, true worship, true sacrifice, true love.[99]

At the heart of Alison’s argument rests his contention that God subverts our understanding of such terms and actions as “sacrifice” from within. Alison uses the Nuremberg rallies as an example of the frenzied, enthusiastic mysticism of group togetherness that scapegoats another as the pretext for and development of its togetherness—what we think of as “sacrifice” [100]

Our Recovery: Holy Un-Enthusiasm

Alison positions the Eucharist as an unenthusiastic alternative that through its very anamnesis of violence against Jesus and its own induction of our desire into God’s own way of being ever-so-slowly by its very presentation of violence and use of the terminology of violence opens our eyes, so to speak, to what we are capable of and what we have done.[101] Alison writes of this process of “unworship”,

It is the gradual process by which someone who likes us reaches us while we are in the middle of a Nuremberg rally, and gradually and slowly gives us our senses, allowing us to stumble out of the rally, and walk away, being amazed at what it is we have been bound up in, and shocked at what we have done, or might have done, as a result of where we were going.[102]

This gradual process of reforming desire calls us to “live as if death were not”,[103] recognizing once-for-all that death does not save and dealing death—sacrifice in a “worldly” sense—is not God’s desire or God’s desire for us.[104]

One of the central tenets of Alison’s proposal is that in Jesus, God inhabits the space of the victim, and therefore, the buildup of togetherness in Nuremberg-style worship fails to result.[105] This is so because the sense of togetherness propagated by a sense of a people victimized is made spacious by God’s taking up the victimized place. [106] At the heart of recovery, in Alison’s thought, is forgiveness by the Victim, such that this itself is the way out of continual rehearsals of “how we were victimized”.[107] Forgiveness enables us to live our lives differently, to leave the frenzied rallies. Eucharist is the regular anamnesis of and partaking in this blood letting to end all bloodletting that our desires might no longer be swayed to such action: “The build up to a sacrifice is exciting, the dwelling in gratitude that the sacrifice has already happened, and that we’ve been forgiven for and through it is, in terms of excitement, a long drawn-out let-down.”[108] This long drawn out process leads us toward, rather than away from, ordinary life and particularity in persons,[109] so that we cannot help but recognize real bodies and real lives in those before us most different from ourselves. Our sacrifice in such a perspective is the lifelong relinquishing of blood letting and gradual reorientation toward God’s desire for us,[110] which is life and life abundantly, expressed most deeply in loving our neighbor as ourselves.

VII. Witnesses to Life: Constructing Possibilities

Now there remains the part concerning the fruit of the sacrament....It is nothing other than love....As Christ gives himself for us with his body and blood in order to redeem us from all misery, so we are to give ourselves with might and main for our neighbor.[111]

Sacrificing the Living: Sacrifice as Bloodletting

A central premise of Carlson Brown and Parker’s argument is that “in classical orthodox theology, the death of Jesus is required by God to make God’s plan of salvation effective.”[112] Their overall critique of atonement theologies, both classical and critical, concerns the privileging of suffering and the violence of the Cross as the redemptive aspect of Jesus’ life trajectory both pre- and post- Resurrection. This privileging of suffering and uplifting of violence carries with it deadly ramifications when internalized by battered women and children or by minority groups who find themselves marginalized in society. Many of the critical theologies reassessing classical models are incapable of dealing with contexts of victimization because while they raise up the suffering God, they either privilege suffering itself as redemptive or fail to call for joining with God in challenging abuse and violence. In the end, sacrifice and bloodletting, are to their minds, synonymous.

Conflating Contexts?

Bieler, Gittins, Cavanaugh, and Sobrino emphasize the importance of context in considering both Jesus’ own life and the lives of those in which theology is done. Carlson Brown and Parker, however, conflate a number of contexts of victimization from the abusive home to the absorption of suffering by the Civil Rights marchers to Base Communities in Latin America facing harm at the hands of various governments and insurgents. This conflation fails to consider how a theological perspective in one context might be inappropriate in another. For example, the absorption of suffering, (redemptive suffering) in the Civil Rights Movement or in Base Communities was played out in the public arena with a goal of right relationship rooted in forgiveness, whereas abuse of a similar nature within a domestic situation is likely hidden away from wide public scrutiny. The former contexts seek to pierce what “goes on behind closed doors” with regard to racism, poverty, and struggles for human dignity by bringing injustice and the violence that maintains it into the open, whereas the same theological perspective hidden only in the heart or confined to the domestic “container” maintains silence rather than exposure. In one context, this “meaning-making” of suffering and violence leads to greater flourishing as the agency of the harmed is recognized internally by openly facing abuse from a stance of forgiveness aligned with God, in the other, death-dealing continues unabated “behind closed doors” as forgiveness is regularly cheapened by an ongoing cycle without solidarity.

Living Sacrifice: Sacrifice as Life Well Lived

I appeal to you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

[113]

The works of Bieler, Gittins, Gutmann, Cavanaugh, Sobrino, and Alison provide ways through this complex conflation and raise suggestive possibilities for retrieval of “sacrifice”. All of these works emphasize that sacrifice is not only or primarily Jesus’ death on the Cross, but his life—being very God—fully lived in a godward direction, which in the face of historical circumstances leads to his condemnation and death. In this sense, Carlson Brown and Parker are right to raise critical questions that reframe suffering within the context of fully living:

It is true that fullness of life cannot be experienced without openness to all truth, all reality; fullness of life involves feeling the pain of the world. But it is not true that being open to all of life is the equivalent of choosing to suffer….It is not acceptance of suffering that gives life; it is commitment to life that gives life. The question, moreover, is not, Am I willing to suffer? but Do I desire to fully live? This distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering. If you believe that acceptance of suffering gives life, then your resources for confronting perpetrators of violence and abuse will be numbed.[114]

They fail, however, to find ways to redeem sacrificial language, dismissing the notion altogether as abusive theology and inextricably linked with suffering alone. Any reconstructive possibility takes seriously their criticism while redefining “sacrifice” as life lived in Christ, life lived in the godward person and direction.

Gloria Dei vivens homo[115]

What is this godward direction? Carlson Brown and Parker’s attempt to reframe suffering and violence is not as radical as they might think. They continually argue that the martyr tradition is rooted first and foremost in the privileging of suffering and violence meted out against witnesses. As an example of this tradition, A. Schmemann writes, “For the way to the Kingdom is the martyria—bearing witness to Christ. And this means crucifixion and suffering.”[116] As Sobrino’s analysis suggests, however, this is not the only possible way to understand martyria. Many “classical” expositions of martyria and Carlson Brown and Parker’s critique repeatedly underemphasize that to which these courageous men and women throughout time continually witness: “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.”[117] Suffering is not so much the goal but an aspect of living life fully alive—identified with the victim. Carlson Brown and Parker close with an inversion of the Resurrection and the Crucifixion,[118] which would seem to counter their own best efforts to sanctify life:

At issue is not what we choose to endure or accept but what we refuse to relinquish. Redemption happens when people refuse to relinquish respect and concern for others, when people refuse to relinquish fullness of feeling, when people refuse to give up seeing, experiencing, and being connected and affected by all of life. God must be seen as the one who most full refuses to relinquish life.[119]

Such a position denies the possibility of speaking of sacrifice at all in any sense other than bloodletting and death-dealing. This is so, however, only if sacrifice continues to interpreted primarily through the Temple cultus and Jesus’ crucifixion without the contributions of the psalmist and prophets’ call to live life oriented godwardly which frame the cultus and crucifixion with an eye toward “widows and orphans”[120], “thanks and praise”.[121] Sacrifice is rather doing right by one’s neighbor.

This complementary sense using Gittins’[122] and Alison’s analogous approach offers a way through the sacrificial language of the Eucharist, which rather than justifying violence, calls us to live into its undoing—God’s way of being in table-fellowship and the end of center/margin “community-building”. As Bieler, Cavanaugh, and Sobrino powerfully emphasize, this reorientation not only provides the possibility to face suffering and violence involved in choosing life, but that in choosing life, suffering and violence cannot be ultimate or the end, nor should the destruction of members of the body be tolerated or forgotten. Instead, as the community remembers the lives of those throughout time who in Christ stand for a greater outpouring of love in ordinary human affairs, and work to make it so, no matter the cost. Eucharist enacts life lived godwardly, being our (re-) or (con-) forming practice for gradually putting on the mind of Christ. As the Church in Latin America responds in the calling out the names of the disappeared during the Prayers: ¡Presente!

Never Forget

Bieler’s, Cavanaugh’s, and Gittins’ anamnetic emphasis becomes of central importance with regard to worship in the face of suffering, violence, and death. They emphasize repeatedly that the anamnesis in Eucharist is of the sacrifice of Jesus; Eucharist is itself not a sacrifice.[123] Relying on Gutmann’s exploration, anamnesis is ultimately to be swept up into the Life of the One who is Life and live thusly. Gittins writes, “He was sacrifice in the sense of being totally dedicated to the things of God, and therefore standing in the path of godlessness.”[124] Alison’s strengthens this approach, using the maior dissimilitudo. Eucharist becomes the way through which we come to recognize, however slowly and painstakingly, violence toward one another in our midst, and another paradigm is at the same time opened up for us: feed one another, help one another live.[125]

Still I Rise[126]

Carlson Brown and Parker’s attempt to reframe suffering and violence remains unconvincing not so much in their making the flourishing life the wider context for suffering and violence, but in their rejection without qualification that “suffering is redemptive or that suffering can be redeemed.”[127] Failing to offer Resurrection post-suffering, post-violence,[128] which bears back upon and breaks through into the present age, life ends, suffering is eternal.[129] Such a stance rules out the possibility that we can make meaning of suffering in situations in which immediate relief may not be forthcoming even as we struggle and implicitly questions whether we can go on at all. Suffering triumphs and death swallows up the will to live.[130] In their view, King and Romero remain tragically mistaken in their public call to absorb suffering for the sake of turning one’s neighbor around to table-fellowship. In such situations, in which suffering cannot be avoided only reinterpreted and “used”, Carlson Brown and Parker implicitly deny the agency of those suffering to withstand and make meaning of their own circumstances. Worse, though not intended, they subtly bind those suffering and experiencing violence to the perpetrator’s state-of-being. The agency of those suffering is, therefore, bound to the perpetrator’s choices rather than being freed for life even if violence should result.

Coupled with their inversion of the Resurrection and the Crucifixion, Jesus goes down to the grave never to rise except in the community who follows his example. In contrast, Cavanaugh’s emphasis on both the Eucharist as corpus mysticum—the Eschatological Presence and the gathered community as corpus verum emphasizes the redemption of violence and death through God’s continued commitment to life and to our lives. In this view, as with that of Gutmann, our communal response is in Christ, in Life, rather than only in following Christ—Life is already everlasting and we are caught up in Him in Eucharist. Cavanaugh’s and Gutmann’s approaches remind us that the in the Eschatological Presence, all in Christ are made present and we join in their hymn of praise. Head and Body, lives lived wounds and all, rise with healing on the wing.[131] The promise of God-with-us manifests in the Eucharist in such a manner that contradicts the weaker notion of the Body found in Carlson Brown and Parker. In Eucharist, all those gone before in Christ are wholly with us. Our anamnesis, our “never forget” is not only of the mind but of Eternal Life.

Meta- and Personal

Resistance to injustice is a critical component of many of the liturgical and liberation theologies examined above. In the midst of meta-struggles, Carlson Brown and Parker are right to ask about the more personal (often framed as private) matters of domestic violence or the subtle and genteel forms of violence inflicted upon women and others within the confines of Christian communities and especially behind closed doors away from public scrutiny.[132] Cavanaugh’s and Gutmann’s reconnection of the corpus verum with the actual member bodies in the Body of Christ is a positive step toward undoing “private” and “public” dichotomies that would conceal harm done to bodies in the Body. Carlson Brown and Parker are correct to criticize the ways in which theologies may fail to encourage solidarity or provide meaning only through internalization of a “doormat” worldview. In this sense, Bieler’s and Gittin’s emphasis on the gift of dignity offered bodies in God’s own self-giving cannot be overemphasized.

VIII. Some Questions for Future Study

Given Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s multiple uses of the term “sacrifice”, what light might his thinking shed upon sacrifice that emphasizes the “once-for-all” aspect of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection?

Does the work of R. Girard upon whom Gittins and Alison draw adequately or fully explain the workings of a subversive notion of sacrifice in Christian liturgy? What might other hermeneutics offer?

IX. Conclusions

J. Carlson Brown and R. Parker raise challenging and provocative questions about the use of “sacrifice” in Christianity. Questioning the interaction of sacrificial language with the sacralizing of suffering and violence, they reject such language altogether and reorient Christianity toward the defense and flourishing of life and lives, especially those of the abused and victimized. The reader is hard-pressed not to find their criticism worthy of consideration. What remains unexamined in their criticism is the multiple meanings and ambiguities of “sacrifice”, the contextual nature of the various atonement theologies they examine, and a full appreciation for the dogma of the Real Presence and the Resurrection. Their unqualified conclusions may actually fail to help those who suffer violence make sense of the senseless by eliminating agency (and thus creating eternal victims). Rather than removing sacrificial language from worship, and therefore cutting out our confrontation of suffering and violence in our deepest enactment of and entrance into Life, we might do better to reframe suffering and violence within the strong, Eucharistic stances Bieler, Gittins, Gutmann, Sobrino, Cavanaugh, and Alison take in the face of cruelty.[133] In a closing response to Carlson Brown and Parker, I offer these suggestions for continued conversation:

Sacrifice in Christian worship must be understood not primarily as bloodletting but as life-flourishing in which bloodletting is revealed as “not of God”, nor capable of appeasing God. Sacrifice must be understood as living one’s life in a godward direction, from the place of the Resurrection—Life redeeming violence and death, with an emphasis on flourishing life and offering one’s whole being to God’s ongoing work in ways great and small. In a world marred with violence, to not face bloodletting in our most important rites may very well hide our violence from us and fail to expose to ourselves how we have been less than godly.

The context in which a particular theological perspective on suffering and violence is lived are vital to understanding its meaning for a given person and/or community and how it functions to justify, even sanctify, violence or promote the flourishing of life and human dignity. What might be liberative in one context might be destructive in another even within the same community. A theological perspective that functions to liberate when lived before a wider public, may justify putting up with violence when internalized in the face of violent behavior behind closed doors.

Internalization of victimhood is perhaps one of the most destructive triumphs of abuse and violence. Affirmation of “Christ-touched dignity”[134] and a refusal to accept margin/center dynamics are vital for those who struggle to flourish in hostile conditions. In the midst of hostile conditions, finding meaning even of one’s suffering and struggles are vital if one is not to succumb to fatalism, futility, and bitterness. In this way, the volition and agency of those refusing indignity is affirmed. Forgiveness[135] in the face of violence is an Ultimate way to refuse to let perpetrators define oneself and one’s future.

Suffering and violence must be faced squarely by those who would call themselves Christians. As a corollary, suffering and violence are not matters to be spiritualized (and hence explained away), but must be considered for the very real effects on the human bodies who member the Body of Christ. Suffering, abuse, and violence are not private matters; when Christians are made aware of the abuse or victimization of another no matter their religious affiliation, no matter the sphere of occurrence (behind closed doors or in the marketplace), we are called to witness publicly to the Lord the Giver and Gift of Life who sets His tent among us, “joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing their hymn to proclaim the glory of your Name”:[136]

The presider elevates the host and the chalice as all bow and sing.[137]

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest!

All rise.

Blessed + is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!

Facing the people, the presider says the following Invitation

Be what you see, and receive what you are.[138]

Works Cited

Alison, J. “Worship in a Violent World.” Studia Liturgica 34, no. 2 (2004): 133-46.

Angelou, M. “Still I Rise.” In And Still I Rise. New York: Random House, Inc.

Bieler, A. “Eucharist as Gift Exchange: Liturgical Theology and Ritual Studies in Dialog.” In Dem Tod nicht glauben: Sozialgeschichte der Bibel: Festschrift für Luise Schottroff zum 70. Geburtstag (Don’t believe death: socialhistory of the bible: festschrift for Luise Schottroff on her seventieth birthday), eds. F. Crüsemann, M. Crüsemann, et al, 127-40. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus GmbH, 2004.

Book of Common Prayer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Carlson Brown, J. and Parker, R. “For God So Loved the World?” In Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, eds. J. Carlson Brown and C. R. Bohn, 1-30. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1989.

Cavanaugh, W. T. Torture and Eucharist. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998.

Denzinger H. and Schönmetzer, A. Enchiridion Symbolorum (Manual of dogma), ed. Peter Hünermann. 39th ed. Freiburg: Herder, 2001.

Gittins, A. . “Sacrifice, Violence, and the Eucharist.” Worship 65, no. 5 (September 1991): 420-35.

Gutman, H.-M. Symbole zwischen Macht und Spiel: Religionspädagogische und liturgische Untersuchungen zum “Opfer” (Symbols between power and play: religious educational and liturgical investigations of sacrifice). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996.

Irenaeus of Lyons. Adversus Haereses (Against heresies).

Luther, M. “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics.” 1526.

Schmemann, A. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998.

Senn, F. C. “Anamnesis.” In The New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, ed. P. E. Fink, S.J., 45-6. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1990.

Simpson, J. A. and Weiner, E. S. C. “Martyr.” In The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., 413-4. vol. IX. New York: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Simpson, J. A. and Weiner, E. S. C. “Sacrifice.” In The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., 340-41. vol. XIV. New York: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Sobrino, J. Christ the Liberator. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001.

Williams, R. “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Sermon delivered in Ain al Sukhna, Egypt. October 28, 2005.

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[1] Romans 6:10.

[2] M. Angelou, “Still I Rise,” And Still I Rise (New York: Random House, Inc., 1978), 209.

[3] J. Carlson Brown and R. Parker, “For God So Loved the World?,” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, eds. J. Carlson Brown and C. R. Bohn (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1989), 26.

[4] In my own family, for instance, women and children have found themselves enduring verbal, emotional, and physical abuse meted out and justified in the name of Jesus Christ. In turn, they relinquished their own sense of dignity as they internalized these religious justifications. The cycle of abuse, internalized as heroic for those affected, becomes an unspoken way for their own “participation in the divine nature” (1 Peter 1:4), and may be reinforced theologically until outside support establishes appropriate boundaries to end the abuse, facilitate recovery, and restore (if possible) right relating. Recovery from such entanglements of abuse and theological worldview is long in the making, and unfortunately, many find themselves unable to reconstruct wholesome ways of being Christian that do not justify simply enduring suffering and violence at the hands of others as the necessary sacrifice in Jesus’ name.

[5] Isaiah 52.

[6] Romans 4:18.

[7] “1. Primarily, the slaughter of an animal (often including the subsequent consumption of it by fire) as an offering to God or a deity. Hence, in wider sense, the surrender to God or a deity, for the purpose of propitiation or homage, of some object of possession. 2. That which is offered in sacrifice; a victim immolated on the altar; anything (material or immaterial) offered to God or a deity as an act of propitiation or homage. 3.a. The offering by Christ of Himself to the Father as a propitiatory victim in his voluntary immolation upon the cross; the Crucifixion in its sacrificial character. b. Applied to the Eucharistic celebration: (a) in accordance with the view that regards it as a propitiatory offering of the body and blood of Christ, in perpetuation of the sacrifice offered by Him in His crucifixion; (b) in Protestant use, with reference to its character as an offering of thanksgiving; (c) used for an offering to praise God, and liturgically in the anaphora of many post-Reformation Eucharistic rites.” J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, eds., “Sacrifice,” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d. ed., vol. XIV (New York: Clarendon Press, 1989), 340-341.

[8] F. C. Senn, “Anamnesis,” in The New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, ed. P. E. Fink, S.J. (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1990), 45.

[9] An eschatological interpretation of “making present”, however, might better understand anamnesis through the lens of the Resurrection as from the future or better from yet God’s own Eternal Life.

[10] J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, eds., “Martyr,” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d. ed., vol. IX (New York: Clarendon Press, 1989), 413-14.

[11] “1.a. The specific designation of honour for: One who voluntarily undergoes the penalty of death for refusing to renounce the Christian faith or any article of it, for perseverance in any Christian virtue, or for obedience to any law or command of the Church…2.a. One who undergoes death (more loosely, one who undergoes great suffering) on behalf of any religious or other belief or cause, or as a consequence of his devotion to some object. b. One who dies a victim.” J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, eds., “Martyr,” 414.

[12] Carlson Brown and R. Parker, 2.

[13] Carlson Brown and Parker, 4.

[14] Carlson Brown and Parker, 6.

[15] Carlson Brown and Parker, 6.

[16] Carlson Brown and Parker, 6-7.

[17] Carlson Brown and Parker, 7.

[18] Carlson Brown and Parker, 7.

[19] Carlson Brown and Parker, 8.

[20] God in such a view is imprisoned by his sense of offended justice. Carlson Brown and Parker, 8.

[21] Carlson Brown and Parker, 8.

[22] Carlson Brown and Parker, 9.

[23] Carlson Brown and Parker, 10.

[24] Carlson Brown and Parker, 10.

[25] Carlson Brown and Parker contrast the power of blood as life with the power of blood as uncleanness with regard to women’s blood, and suggest a cooption of the power of life in women by men “ which has almost universally been accompanied by the subjugation of women.” This is in sharp contrast to birth-giving through which life gives life, suggesting a subtle demotion of the maternal. Such imagery, they suggest, links blood atonement with violence against women in subtle ways, such that even motherly imagery is co-opted by a man, Jesus. At every turn women are secondary and subject to violation. Carlson Brown and Parker, 10.

[26] Carlson Brown and Parker, 12.

[27] Carlson Brown and Parker, 12.

[28] Carlson Brown and Parker, 13.

[29] Carlson Brown and Parker, 16.

[30] Carlson Brown and Parker, 16.

[31] Carlson Brown and Parker, 16-17.

[32] Carlson Brown and Parker, 18.

[33] Carlson Brown and Parker, 18.

[34] Carlson Brown and Parker, 20.

[35] A good example of such an approach is found in a quote from Dr. King on learning of threats on his life: “If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.” Martin Luther King, Jr., June 5, 1964.

[36] Carlson Brown and Parker, 21.

[37] To their thinking, any challenge to injustice is a challenge to suffering, and if God is responsible for all things, then a challenge to God.

[38] Carlson Brown and Parker, 22.

[39] Carlson Brown and Parker, 23.

[40] “The glorification of anyone’s suffering allows the glorification of all suffering.” Carlson Brown and Parker, 23.

[41] Carlson Brown and Parker, 24.

[42] Carlson Brown and Parker, 24.

[43] To strengthen this point, they turn to Heyward who rejects original sin and therefore the need for redemption at all.

[44] Only liberation from atonement emphases at all will liberate Christianity from such a trajectory.

[45] Carlson Brown and Parker, 26.

[46] Carlson Brown and Parker, 26.

[47] Carlson Brown and Parker, 27.

[48] The definition given by Carlson Brown and Parker. Carlson Brown and Parker, 10.

[49] A. Bieler, “Eucharist as Gift Exchange: Liturgical Theology and Ritual Studies in Dialog,” in Dem Tod nicht glauben: Sozialgeschichte der Bibel: Festschrift für Luise Schottroff zum 70. Geburtstag (Don’t believe death: socialhistory of the bible: festschrift for Luise Schottroff on her seventieth birthday), eds. F. Crüsemann, M. Crüsemann, et al (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus GmbH, 2004), 134.

[50] Bieler, 135.

[51] Bieler, 135.

[52] Bieler, 136.

[53] Bieler, 136.

[54] Bieler briefly notes that interpretations of gift exchange must take into consideration challenges by feminist perspectives, which “reject sanctification of violence and the installation of patrilineal social structures denying women’s access to social power.” Bieler, 136.

[55] Bieler, 136.

[56] Bieler, 137.

[57] Bieler, 137.

[58] Bieler’s description raises ecclesiological questions with regard to Eucharist that do not turn away from facing “violence, betrayal, and death.” Bieler suggests that the violent currents within the celebration should not be de-emphasized by an overly cheery mood, for not only is Eucharist a participation in the Resurrected One, but also in the One brutalized by the Roman state. Bieler, 137-8.

[59] Bieler, 139.

[60] Bieler, 139.

[61] Bieler concludes, “The Eucharist is a ritual of gift exchange, which contains God’s radical protest against this ongoing victimization. As such, the Eucharist contains an invitation for us to join this protest with our hearts uplifted.” Bieler, 139.

[62] A. Gittins, “Sacrifice, Violence, and the Eucharist,” Worship 65, no. 5 (September 1991): 422.

[63] Gittins, 422.

[64] Gittins, 423.

[65] Gittins, 423.

[66] Gittins, 424.

[67] Gittins, 425.

[68] Of this shift, Gittins writes, “If sacrifice is ‘matter on its way to and from God,’ then without disrespect, Jesus is sacrifice. His whole life and work and relationship is sacrifice.” Gittins, 426, 428.

[69] Gittins, 428.

[70] Gittins, 429.

[71] Gittins, 424.

[72] Gittins, 429.

[73] Gittins, 429.

[74] Gittins, 433.

[75] Gittins, 430.

[76] Gittins, 431.

[77] The table-fellowship, the continual remembrance, reminds us that God substitutes God’s-self for the violence that threatens to undo us, ever working to bring life out of death. The once-for-all nature of Jesus victimhood ends the need for continued cycles of violence, and we are called to partake of that gift joining in him in a lifelong response. Gittins writes, “Liberation theologies are calling people to fidelity to the values of Jesus; and Jesus was ‘counter-cultural’ in his approach to a violent world and violent people. He did not run away; nor did he sit down defeated. And he did not retaliate.” Gittins, 431-2.

[78] The chosen nature of Jesus’ life trajectory faces violence squarely without flinching or responding in kind. Carlson Brown and Parker’s concern that the brutality of the perpetrator disappears in such a perspective, however, is not altogether allayed. What is undone in Jesus’ occupation of the victimized and marginal space? Though Gittins does not explicitly state an answer an important insight is left hanging for future development: Those who are afflicted by abuse and violence must necessarily reject their role as victims, embracing their dignity as children of God as active agents who can work with God for a world less violated. Gittins sows suggestive seeds for the undoing of center/margin thinking—the very precondition for treating another as less than human or accepting inhuman status.

[79] The richness of Gutmann’s explorations are beyond the scope of this limited essay, but warrant further conversation with regard to a more fully developed discussion of the topic of sacrifice in Christian practical theology.

[80] Damit widerfährt dem Höhepunkt des Opfer-Prozesses nach Hubert und Mauss, nämlich der Vereinigung/Identifizierung zwischen Opfernden, Opfer, und Gottheit, in dieser Agende eine wichtige Modifikation: Der Subjektwechsel durch Einverleibung geschieht nicht einfach zwischen den Feiernden und „Gott“, sondern zwischen ihnen und Gott in seiner zweiten Person. In den Sohn inkorporiert, nehmen die Feiernden auf dem Höhepunkt der Opferreise an der innertrinitarischen Beziehung zum Vater anteil und loben mit allen Engeln seine ewige Majestät. H.-M. Gutman, Symbole zwischen Macht und Spiel: Religionspädagogische und liturgische Untersuchungen zum “Opfer” (Symbols between power and play: religious educational and liturgical investigations of sacrifice) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 271.

[81] Und hier, im Höhepunkt der Opferhandlung, nach den Einsetzungsworten und vor dem Beginn der eigentlichen Kommunion, inszeniert der Priester durch seine Gebärde die Mimesis an das Opfer Christi: „P. breitet die Arme aus und tritt so in das Zeichen des heiligen Kreuzes.“ Der Akt der Einverleibung schließlich erfüllt die Mimesis im Sinne einer Aufnahme Christi in den Leib des Priesters, zugleich in der Aufnahme seines Leibes in den Leib Christi: Durch die Epiklese ü ber den Elementen und die Elebation von Brot and Wein wird symbolisch ihre Wandlung in Leib und Blut Christi dargestellt, entsprechend durch die Elevation der großen Brechhostie. Der Priester nimmt, vor der Austeilung an die Gemeinde, Brot und Wein als "gesegnete Speise" ein; er verleibt sich Leib und Blut Christi ein und wird selbst in den Leib Christi einverleibt. Er bezeichnet dies ein weiteres Mal durch die Geste des Kreuzes an seinem eigenen Körper bei jedem Schritt dieser Heiligen Mahlzeit. In einem weiteren Schritt werden in der Austeilung von Brot und Wein an die Gemeinde auch die übrigen Kommunizierenden in den Leib Christi einverleibt. Allerdings wird auf die rituelle Inszenierung der Kommunion des Priesters erheblich größeres Gewicht gelegt; hierdurch, und bereits schon durch die deutliche Abtrennung der Kommunion des Priesters von der der Gemeinde, wird die Dimension der "Gemeinschaft"gegenüber der in den theoretischen Texten Ritters formulierten Intention unterbewertet. (And here, at the climax of the sacrificial action, after the initiating words and before the beginning of the actual communion, the priest produces in Mimesis the sacrifice of Christ by his gesture: “Presider: The priest spreads his arms out in such a way as to indicate the holy cross.” The act of the incorporation finally fulfills the Mimesis in the sense of an admission of Christ into the body of the priest and at the same time in the admission of his body into the Body of Christ: This is represented by the epiclesis over the elements and the elevation of the bread and wine symbolically becoming their transformation in body and blood of Christ, especially by the elevation of the large broken Host. The priest communes in bread and wine as a “blessed meal” before the distribution to the gathered community; he incorporates the body and blood of Christ even as he is incorporated into the body of Christ. He designates this with a further mark by the gesture of the cross on his own body at each step of this holy meal. In a further step by pieces of bread and sips of wine given to the gathered community, they too are incorporated into the Body of Christ. However the ritual production of the communion of the priest substantially is given greater weight; therefore, through the clear separation of the communion of the priest of the gathered community, the dimension of the "community" in Ritter's theoretical texts is already underestimated.) Gutmann, 272.

[82] Allein durch die bloße Mass des Textbestandes erscheint die Opfer-Dimension der "Tötung" in dieser Agende unterbelichtet; sie ist allein durch die Zitierung des "Blutes", des "Kreuzes" und insbesondere durch die Rezitation des "Agnus Dei" represäntiert. Demgegenüber ist der systematische Status der cd) Einverleibung insofern hoch, als diese Dimension den Abschluß der Steigerung des Gabentausches wie der Mimesis zum Subjektwechsel zwischen Gott und den Menschen es Textbestandes gegenüber den Dimensionen des "Gabentausches" und der "Mimesis" unterrepräsentiert. Sie wird zudem, wie bereits angemerkt, vor allem als Einverleibung des Priesters und erst dann, sekundär und mit weniger gründlicher Bedachtsamkeit auf die liturgische Form, als Einverleibung der Gemeinde inszeniert. Gutmann, 273.

[83] J. Sobrino, Christ the Liberator (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 304-5.

[84] Sobrino, 305.

[85] Sobrino, 305.

[86] Sobrino, 305.

[87] Sobrino, 305.

[88] Sobrino writes, “this crucified man has lived humanly, with love, and so the cross is the radical expression of Jesus’ self-giving throughout his life. Also, and above all, this life of Jesus’ can in itself be offered as salvation; in it, the true life is shown.” Sobrino, 305.

[89] Sobrino, 306.

[90] W. T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998), 229.

[91] Cavanaugh, 229.

[92] Cavanaugh, 229.

[93] Cavanaugh, 229.

[94] Cavanaugh, 280.

[95] John 8:31.

[96] Crucial to Cavanaugh’s approach is a reexamination of the Body of Christ in light of tortured bodies and the authority of excommunication in Chile under Pinochet. Drawing on J. Marion, under these circumstances the Eucharist through the mystical or eschatological presence (the corpus mysticum) constitutes a real Body of real bodies: “It is the communal commitment of charity which is the true res of the Eucharist, and therefore the Eucharist aims at the building of the true body of Christ in time, his corpus verum, which the church both is and is meant to be.” This true body necessitates facing squarely the suffering of fellow members and working to live godwardly in the face of ways of formation that would destroy bodies and the Body. Cavanaugh, 229.

[97] J. Alison, “Worship in a Violent World,” Studia Liturgica 34, no. 2 (2004): 138.

[98] “Quia inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda.” H. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum (Manual of dogma), 39th ed., ed. Peter Hünermann (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 806.

[99] Alison, 134.

[100] “To the divinization of the one, there corresponds the demonization of the other, which is the dehumanization of them all. And that is what I take worship to be. It is a dangerous and dehumanizing thing.” Alison, 136.

[101] Alison, 135-136.

[102] Alison, 137.

[103] Alison, 137.

[104] Alison, 138.

[105] Alison, 141.

[106] “The one true victim in the Christian story is there, the one who occupied the place of shame and disgrace because he liked those who needed to create such a space, so great was their fear of death. He liked them so much that he left a memorial supper for them so that after he had been killed, and after the resurrection had revealed to his fore-chosen witnesses that the victim was given back to them as their forgiveness, they could remember that even before he had died, he had deliberately set up his own interpretation of what he was doing beforehand, and they could remember that he had been pleased to occupy that space for them. That means that for those who allow themselves to be forgiven there is neither fear of death nor place of shame any longer, and they can walk in the same path as he, without fear….I want to stress this point, the point concerning the remembrance of the victim, because it is exactly the reverse of the memory of “how we were victimized.” The memory of the victim, which is only possible for us because the victim is forgiving, is the condition of the possibility of True Worship.” Alison, 141-142.

[107] Alison, 142.

[108] Alison, 143.

[109] Alison, 138, 144.

[110] This “desire for us” has a dual sense of “what God desires for our well-being” and “how God desires to be in relationship to us”. God’s desire for us is neither bloodletting or death-dealing; God desires to relate to us not through fear and tyranny, but through life and peace, forgiving even now that we do not see and know God as God desires us to so see and know.

[111] M. Luther, “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics”, 1526.

[112] Note that in Anglican theology and classic orthodoxy generally, a particular theory of atonement has never been made the theory by any oecumenical decision. Carlson Brown and Parker, 4.

[113] Book of Common Prayer, “Offertory Sentences” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 376.

[114] Carlson Brown and Parker, 18.

[115] The glory of God is the alive human being. Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses (Against heresies), IV, 20:7.

[116] A. Schmemann, For the Life of the World:Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 90.

[117] Book of Common Prayer, “Eucharistic Prayer A”, 363.

[118] Carlson Brown and Parker, 28.

[119] Carlson Brown and Parker, 19.

[120] For example, Isaiah 1, 56; Jeremiah 7:6; Ezekiel 22:7; Zechariah 3:10; Malachi 3:5.

[121] Psalms 4:5, 27:6, 51, 54:6, 116, 141.

[122] “The ‘fit’ here is beautiful: Jesus became ‘as we are.’ Yet resemblance is not identity and the difference between us remains important….If the eucharist is no literal sacrifice of bread and wine, if crude realism is misplaced, and if the sacrifice is the totality of the life of Jesus, still we are not excluded or reduced to making token offerings; for the anamnesis or remembering of Jesus gathers us and the sacrifice of our lives, back into the action of Jesus as it breaks through to the Godhead where it continues to renew the face of the earth.”. Gittins, 433.

[123] Questions, however, must be asked about varieties of meaning about sacrifice, for example, in Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s reinterpretation in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer that might be fruitful for future research and discussion.

[124] Gittins, 430.

[125] Alison’s closing story of Fadil Fejzic and the Soraks illustrates this quite poignantly and really.

[126] Angelou, 209.

[127] Carlson Brown and Parker, 27.

[128] “Those whose lives have been deeply shaped by the Christian tradition feel that self-sacrifice and obedience are not only virtues but the definition of a faithful identity. The promise of resurrection persuades us to endure pain, humiliation, and violation of our sacred rights to self-determination, wholeness, and freedom.” Carlson Brown and Parker, 2.

[129] Carlson Brown and Parker, 27.

[130] See 1 Corinthians 15:54.

[131] Malachi 4:2.

[132] In disqualifying the notion of sacrifice altogether, however, Carlson Brown and Parker come close to occluding the reality of day-to-day violence and death by “whitewashing” worship, to forgetting the anamnesis of the True Sacrifice alive everlasting, and to rejecting ethical notions of sacrifice in the psalms and prophetic texts that emphasize loving one’s neighbor as oneself as true worship pleasing to God.

[133] Especially important is a vital reconnection of Jesus Christ, the Body of Christ, and bodies who are members, the Church as corpus verum, binding together a strong sense of mutual responsibility that dispels a long historical tendency toward a docetism with regard to the Body and the flesh.

[134] R. Williams, “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,” Sermon delivered in Ain al Sukhna, Egypt, October 28, 2005.

[135] Forgiveness, of course, is a touchy subject worthy of examination in its own right, especially given that without the ability to set appropriate boundaries worthy of dignity or a willingness to engage in some form of truth and reconciliation encounter, forgiveness can be cheapened and even used to return to abusive ways of relating. It is likely under certain circumstances given the reality of sin, that separation from abusive circumstances and getting on with the business of life is the best possible outcome. This may require outside intervention. In this sense, forgiveness is akin to setting proper boundaries, releasing oneself from ongoing inner conversation of worthlessness and victimization, wiping the dust off one’s feet, so to speak, by turning the matter over to God, and never forgetting in the greatest sense, of never again accepting that one, anyone, should to be treated with indignity. Forgiveness holds out the possibility of reconciliation, of being swept up in the fullness of God’s outpouring love, without relinquishing dignity while also opening space for one victimized to recollect her or his agency and standing before God as very image by undoing that he or she must be perpetually defined by victim/perpetrator dynamics.

[136] Book of Common Prayer, “Holy Eucharist II, Prayer A,” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 362.

[137] Based on the reforms in Martin Luther’s 1526 Deutsche Messe. Bryan Spinks, Luther’s Liturgical Criteria and his Reform of The Canon of The Mass (Bramcote: Grove Books, 1982).

[138] Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 272.

Once-for-all[1]

“Once-for-all”[1] :