Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Stephanie Perdew

Metaphors of Sacrifice in the Liturgies of the Early Church

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This paper responds to the following question posed in sub-theme 3a of this year’s Colloquium on Violence and Religion.  The question reads:

“How may we understand violence in Scripture and in the theologian tradition with its notions such as the last judgment, the classical doctrine of reconciliation by the blood Christ, the focus in the Roman Catholic Church on the Eucharist as some kind of a sacrifice while reducing and concealing the notion of the Eucharist as a meal as much as possible?”

 I will focus on the final phrase of query, the question of how to understand violence in the focus on the Eucharist as some kind of a sacrifice, while reducing and concealing the notion of the Eucharist as a meal as much as possible. 

The question posed by the Colloquium begs more questions: historical, theological, and from the vantage point of Girardian theory, anthropological.  The way the question is posed implies that metaphors of sacrifice in Christian liturgy are inherently problematic in that they are inevitably interpreted violently.  The way the question is posed suggests that Christian rituals may inevitably slide toward the sacrificial even when exposed to the light of the Gospel, and furthermore asks why this is so.  Certainly, those of us who work with Girardian theory tend to hear any language of sacrifice skeptically and suspiciously, and to view any imagery of sacrifice through a clouded lens. 

The question posed by the Colloquium begs not only theological but anthropological reflection but historical reflection first of all.  The question suggests that as Eucharistic prayers and practice are infused with sacrificial metaphors, the quality of the Eucharist as a real meal recedes.  And so we must ask: when did early Christians begin to employ sacrificial metaphors and references in their Eucharistic celebrations?  Were these metaphors present from the start, in all prayers and places, or did they accrue in the liturgy over time, and for what reasons?  If they were present from the start, where did they come from: from Jewish practice, or from Greco-Roman meals and rites, or from some combination of the two?  When did the practice of celebrating the Eucharist in conjunction with a real (rather than symbolic) meal come to an end, and why?  And finally, what was the intent of using metaphors of sacrifice in a meal where no human or animal sacrifice was actually taking place?  How did those participating hear and understand the imagery of sacrifice when used in the context of Christian worship and Christian Eucharist?  Were they participating in an unconscious slide back into captivation with the scapegoat mechanism by interpreting the Eucharist in sacrificial terms?  Or were they using the metaphor of sacrifice for the Eucharist in a parabolic and critical way?

My argument here unfolds as follows: with the fall of the Jerusalem Temple to the Romans in 70 C.E., the Jewish ritual setting for sacrificial worship was destroyed, and from the ruins of the Temple, two new religions emerged: what would later become Rabbinic Judaism, and what would later become Christianity.[1]  Both nascent religions grappled with questions of what would constitute their scriptural canon and what would constitute Mishnah and Talmud (in the case of Rabbinic Judaism) or creed and doctrine (in the case of Christianity).  At the same time, the liturgical practice of each religion was evolving, and neither religion adopted or re-instituted a program of animal sacrifice according to Biblical (Levitical) law. 

The liturgical practice of each religion came to focus around meal, prayer and study, although in different ways.  Within Rabbinic Judaism, the Sabbath meal took place in the home; prayer and scripture study took place in the synagogue.  Among Christians, scripture study, prayers and meals took place first in gatherings in private homes (the earliest sites of Christian worship) and then in churches.  While the ritual practice of sacrifice was abandoned by each religion, Christian liturgy took up images of sacrifice and employed them in Christian worship.  These metaphors of sacrifice were taken from scripture and from prior Jewish liturgical practice, but also entered the liturgy due to influence from---and perhaps mimetic rivalry with---Greco-Roman mystery cults.

It can be argued from a review of primary evidence that early Christians were quite intentional in using metaphors of sacrifice for a meal which was not in fact a sacrifice, and that their use of such language was self-consciously parabolic.   Just as Girard has argued that Jewish and Christian scriptures are texts in transition showing us an evolution away from a reliance on sacrificial violence toward the recognition of the innocence of the victim, Christian liturgical language is also a text in transition, trying to employ and reshape the language of sacrifice, reorienting this metaphor toward images of self-giving, kenosis, and vulnerability of God, self, and community.[2]

A paper of this nature entails obvious limits.  One such limit is to define what I mean by early church.  For the purposes of this investigation I will confine my exploration to the ante-Nicene period, that is, prior to the ascension of Constantine as Roman Emperor and prior to the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E.  Another limit is to define what source material will be used.  I will rely on primary sources rather than secondary interpretations as much as possible.  The ante-Nicene Eucharistic prayers we know of are those found in the Didache (c. 100 C.E.), in Justin Martyr’s First Apology (c. 150 C.E.), and in the earliest version of the Egyptian liturgy of St. Mark (the Strasbourg Papyrus), c. 200 C.E.).  The pertinent ante-Nicene commentary comes from Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110), from Justin Martyr, from Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 115-202), and from Origen (c. 185-251).

                  When we survey this evidence, we find Christians beginning to employ sacrificial metaphors and references in their Eucharistic celebrations as early as the Didache            or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a catechetical manual from Syria (c. 95-100 C.E.).  The Didache offers instruction in discernment between the “Two Ways” (of life and death), combined with instruction on prayer and fasting, Baptism, Eucharist, and on the discernment of false prophets and teachers.  The redactor, or Didachist, seems to see no discontinuity between observing the Torah and following Jesus.  The Didachist, while still belonging to a Jewish-Christian community, addresses a situation in which questions of ritual observance, church order, and liturgical leadership are arising. 

                  We find two treatments of the Eucharist in the Didache which can be treated separately and are not dependent on one another, given the history of their redactions.   The first, in Didache 9-10 obviously surround a meal and give us a prayer-meal-prayer sequence which undoubtedly originates in the genre of Jewish blessing prayers.  Finkelstein has shown that Didache 10 is related to the birkat ha mazon, but more recent Jewish liturgical scholarship such as that undertaken by Reif, cautions us against assuming that there are fixed, written forms for these prayers during the Second Temple era.[3]  Rather, we must suppose that the forms and their varying content circulated orally and only gradually became codified into the type of prayer and instruction we find in the Mishnah.

Based on recent research into Jewish prayer forms, Didache 9 seems to be based on the meal or Kiddush blessings in which a cup and bread are blessed at the beginning of a meal. The prayers in Didache 9 and 10 do not contain explicitly sacrificial metaphors in reference to the meal or to Christ himself.  Jesus is referred to as God’s “child” (the same Greek word might also be rendered “servant”).  Jesus is proclaimed as the agent of knowledge, faith and immortality, and this immortality is somehow bestowed in part through the “spiritual food and drink” of the Eucharist.  The first prayer over the cup is:

“We give you thanks (eujcaristoumevn), our Father, for the holy vine of David your child, which you made known to us through Jesus your child.  To you is glory forever.”[4] 

The second prayer over the bread is:

“We give you thanks (eujcaristoumevn), our Father, for the life and knowledge which is revealed to us through Jesus your child.  To you be is glory forever.  Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and having been gathered together, became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.  For yours is the glory and power through Jesus Christ forever.”  

In Didache 10 the prayer following the meal seems to be based on the birkat ha-mazon, a three strophe prayer at the conclusion of a meal which includes a blessing of God for sustaining the universe, a blessing of God who gives the gifts of food, earth, and covenant, and a prayer for the restoration of Jerusalem.  What we find in the Didache is a Jewish-Christian interpretation of these prayers in which the content is ‘Christianized’ but the form remains Jewish.  The prayer reads thus:

“We give you thanks (eujcaristoumevn), holy Father, for your holy name which you have made to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge, faith and immortality that you made known to us through Jesus your child.  To you is the glory forever. 

You, almighty Master, created all things for the sake of your name, and gave both food and drink to people for enjoyment in order that they might give you thanks.  To us you graciously bestowed spiritual food and drink, and eternal life through your child. 

Above all we give you thanks because you are powerful.  To you is glory forever. Remember you church, O Lord, to save it from all evil and to perfect it in your love.  And gather it together from the four winds into your kingdom, which you prepared for it.  For yours is the power and the glory forever.  May grace come and this world pass away.  Hosanna to the God of David.  If anyone is holy, come.  If anyone is not, repent.  Maranatha.  Amen.”  

                  In Didache 14 we find further instructions concerning the Eucharist which are most likely part of a different strand of source material from chapters nine and ten.  The instructions in chapter 14 instruct the community to gather on the “day of the Lord” and before giving thanks, to “confess your failings so that your sacrifice (qusiva) may be pure.”  The instructions urge reconciliation among those in conflict prior to the Eucharist, and end with a reference to Malachi 1:11-14 .  Here the sacrificial metaphor employed refers not to Jesus, but to the meal the community is about to consume in his memory, a meal which is likened to the pure sacrifices offered in the Jerusalem Temple (thus the reference to Malachi) but which is not in fact a sacrificial meal as it contains no meat, no animal or human victim.  The text reads:

                  “And on the divinely instituted day of the Lord, having been gathered together, break a loaf.  And give thanks, having confessed your failings beforehand, so that your sacrifice may be pure.  Everyone, on the other hand, having a conflict with a companion, do not let him come together with you until they have been reconciled, in order that your sacrifice may not be defiled.  For this is said by the Lord: ‘In every place and time, offer to me a pure sacrifice.  For I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is wondrous among the Gentiles.’”  

It is supremely significant that the Didache uses the term sacrifice (qusiva) to refer to a meal in which no meat is consumed, for a meal in which no meat was consumed was not in fact a sacrifice in the eyes of the ancient Greco-Roman world.[5]  The use of Malachi 1:11-14 cannot be anything other than metaphorical or in fact parabolic: the offering of bread and cup in the name of Jesus is the only pure sacrifice but is not in fact a sacrifice at all.

                  The next series of evidence comes from Justin Martyr.  In his Dialogue with Trypho (c. 135), an imaginary dialogue with a Jewish interlocutor, Justin is concerned to show that the Christian Eucharist supersedes Jewish sacrificial practices, though we have no evidence that Jewish sacrificial practice continued into the second century of the Common Era.  In Dialogue with Trypho 41 Justin refers to Malachi 1 : 11-14 in association with the bread of the Eucharist:

“the bread of the Eucharist, the celebration of which our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed, in remembrance of the suffering which he endured on behalf of those who are purified in soul from all iniquity, in order that we may at the same time thank God for having created the world…Hence God speaks by the mouth of Malachi, one of the twelve prophets…about the sacrifices at that time presented by you: ‘I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord; and I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands: for from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering: for my name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord: but you profane it.’  So he then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to him, i.e., the bread of the Eucharist, and also the cup of the Eucharist, affirming both that we glorify his name, and that you profane it.”[6]

 In Dialogue with Trypho 117 Justin makes another reference to Malachi 1:11 in arguing that Christian prayer and thanksgiving is the only pleasing sacrifice which can be made to God:

“Accordingly, God, anticipating all the sacrifices which we offer through this name, and which Jesus the Christ enjoined us to offer, i.e., in the Eucharist of the bread and the cup, and which are presented by Christians in all places throughout the world, bears witness that they are well-pleasing to him.  But he utterly rejects those presented by you and by those priests of yours, saying, ‘And I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name is glorified among the Gentiles; but you profane it.’  Yet even now, in your love of contention, you assert that God does not accept the sacrifices of those who dwelt then in Jerusalem, and were called Israelites; but says that he is pleased with the prayers of the individuals of that nation then dispersed, and calls their prayers sacrifices.  Now, that prayers and giving of thanks, when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God, I also admit.  For such alone Christians have undertaken to offer, and in the remembrance affected by their solid and liquid food, whereby the suffering of the Son of God which he endured is brought to mind…”  

Here it is important to note that for Justin the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices are those offered by command of Jesus in the Eucharist of bread and cup---sacrifices which, as in the Didache are not at all sacrifices in the eyes of the Greco-Roman world.  In his First Apology 66 (c. 150 C.E.), Justin further defends the reputation of the Christian Eucharist, insisting that the Greco-Roman mystery cult of Mithras is but a rivalistic and wicked imitation of Christian practice:

“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.  For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, said ‘this do you in remembrance of me, this is my body;’ and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, he said ‘this is my blood;’ and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done.”  

And in the First Apology 67 Justin describes the typical order of a Sunday Eucharist, in which bread, wine and water are shared after the presider offers prayers which are apparently extemporaneous “according to his ability.”  In this description of Christian practice c. 150 C.E., the full meal has apparently been replaced by the symbolic meal, although the bread, wine and water are distributed to those who are not able to be present:

“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in the cities or in the country gather together in one place…[scripture is read and the president verbally instructs]…then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.”

Our only other extant evidence of a pre-Nicene Eucharistic prayer or celebration is that found in the Strasbourg Papyrus version of the Liturgy of St. Mark (c. 200 C.E.).  The fragments of the prayer include reference to the Eucharist as a “reasonable (logiken) sacrifice” and a “bloodless service” and also make reference to Malachi 1 : 11-14 :

“You made everything in your wisdom, the light of your true Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; giving thanks through him to you with him and the Holy Spirit, we offer the reasonable sacrifice and this bloodless service, which all nations offer you, ‘from sunrise to sunset,’ from south to north, for your ‘name is great among all the nations, and in every place incense is offered to your holy name an a pure sacrifice.’”

                   In addition to the reflections quoted from Justin Martyr, we find a few significant metaphors for the Eucharist in the writings of Ignatius, Irenaus and Origen.  In his letter to the Ephesians 13 , Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110), admonishes them:

“therefore, be eager to come together to give thanks (eucaristivan) and glory to God.  For when you gather together frequently as a congregation, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and his destructive force is vanquished by the harmony of your faith.”[7]  

In Ephesians 20 .2,  Ignatius refers to the broken bread as “a medicine that brings immortality, an antidote that allows us not to die but to live at all times in Jesus Christ.”

In Against Heresies 5.2-3, Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 185 C.E.) argues against the

heresy of Docetism, the conviction that Christ only seemed to take a human form but in fact did not.  In order to build his argument, Irenaeus asserts that Jesus Christ must have joined his true flesh and blood with ours (in the Incarnation and in the Eucharist) to bring about our salvation.  Thus in this passage we find some of his Eucharistic theology illuminated: 

“But vain in every respect are they who despise the entire dispensation of God, and disallow the salvation of the flesh, and treat with contempt its regeneration, maintaining that it is not capable of incorruption.  But if this indeed do not attain salvation, then neither did the Lord redeem us with his blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of his blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of his body….And as we are his members, we are also nourished by means of the creation (and he himself grants the creation to us, for he cause his sun to rise, and sends rain when he wills).  He has acknowledged the cup (which is part of the creation) as his own blood, from which he bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase to our bodies…When, therefore, the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God and the Eucharist of the blood and the body of Christ is made…how can they affirm that the flesh is incapable of receiving the gift of God…?...Just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its season…and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God granting them resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father, who freely gives to this mortal immortality…”[8]  

Irenaeus is of course concerned to show that Christ truly became flesh, and argues that if he did not, the cup of the Eucharist (“his blood”) nor the bread (“the communion of his body”) cannot serve as a source of our own regeneration and immortality.  Though he does not explicitly cite I Corinthians 11: 23-26 or any of the Institution Narratives from the Gospels (Mark 14: 22-26, Matthew 26 : 26-29 , Luke 22 : 14-23 ), his association of the bread with Christ’s body and the cup with his blood clearly echo I Corinthians.[9]

                  Finally, two references from Origen (c. 185-251 C.E.) are worth noting here.  The first is from his the Peri Pascha 33:

“…We partake of the flesh of Christ, that is, of the divine scriptures…”

[lines missing]

 “…of the true Lamb, for the apostle professes that the lamb of our Passover is Christ when he says: for Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed; his flesh and blood, as shown above, are the divine scriptures, eating which, we have Christ; the words becoming his bones, the flesh becoming the meaning of the text, following which meaning, as it were, we see in a mirror dimly the things which are to come, and the blood being faith in the gospel of the new covenant, as the apostle attests…”[10]  

Here the metaphor of Christ’s flesh and blood refers not to the Eucharistic meal but to a strategy for exegesis in which the Scriptures themselves, when we learn and recite them, become for us the flesh of Christ.

                  Likewise, in his Homilies on Leviticus 9 .10.1, Origen associates Christ’s blood with the Word of Scripture. 

“Indeed, how the rite of atonement for men, which was done to God, should be celebrated was taught among the ancients.  But you who came to Christ, the true high priest, who made atonement for you to God by his blood and reconciled you to the Father, do not hold fast to the blood of the flesh.  Learn rather the blood of the Word and hear him saying to you, ‘This is my blood which will be poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.’  He who is inspired by the mysteries knows both the flesh and the blood of the Word of God.  Therefore, let us not remain in these which are known to the wise and cannot be laid open to the ignorant.”

We can speculate that Origen resists associating the Eucharist with Christ’s body and blood in favor of a Scriptural association due perhaps to his own well-known asceticism.  In any case, these passages from Origen illustrate the various ways in which metaphors concerning Christ’s body and blood were used by patristic writers.  The flesh and blood not only symbolized the Eucharist, but for Origen at least, symbolized the Scriptures which could be learned and digested as well.

                  To return to the questions posed at the outset of this paper, we can now chart some clearer answers.  We see from the evidence of the Didache and from Justin Martyr that our earliest descriptions of Eucharistic prayers and practice already employ sacrificial metaphors, though perhaps not in the ways we expect.  Here we see the metaphor of sacrifice drawn from Malachi 1 : 11-14 , and the association of the sacrifice made with the whole Christian offering of prayers and thanksgiving, not with Christ’s flesh and blood in particular. So in fact some metaphors of sacrifice do seem to be present in Christian liturgy from its earliest days, but accrue in the liturgy over time, as their meanings and purposes shift.  The primary metaphor of sacrifice drawn from Malachi 1 : 11-14 was used to differentiate Christian worship from Jewish worship and later, from the rites of the Greco-Roman mystery cults.  The Christians who wrote and used these texts seem conscious of their metaphorical nature when they use the language of sacrifice to refer not to a victim, not even to Christ, but to the entire liturgy of prayer and thanks offered to God in Christian worship. 

                  As early as Justin’s description in the First Apology (c. 150 C.E.), we find that the Christian celebration of Eucharist takes place on Sunday morning and does not seem to entail a full meal, yet Justin’s witness is only one, and we cannot make an argument from silence and therefore presume that other Christian Eucharists do not contain full meals at this time.  Certainly we can say that by the end of the ante-Nicene period, the meal celebrated by Christians as Eucharist was a symbolic consumption of some bread and wine, though post-Nicene evidence from the Apostolic Tradition indicates that on certain occasions the symbolic meal also consisted of cheese and olives.  Andrew McGowan has also documented the practice of bread and water Eucharist (excluding wine) among various Christians in the early church.[11]

                  So why did the Christian communities described by the Didache, by Justin Martyr, and in the Liturgy of St. Mark, surround a service of prayer, thanksgiving and meal (whether actual or symbolic) with images and metaphors of sacrifice, when they knew full well that in the ancient world, a meal with no altar, no victim, no priest and no meat did not constitute a sacrifice?  This is perhaps the most difficult question to answer because in order to do so, we would need to make inferences and rely on arguments from silence, both of which are suspicious activities for historians.  When we rely only on the evidence at hand, we can make three claims.  First, early Christians (such as Origen) employed metaphors of body, blood, sacrifice and consumption not only to the Eucharist, but to the practice of reading and assimilating Scripture as well.  This use of sacrificial metaphors for activities which were not in fact sacrificial seems to subvert the expectation of the reader that where one finds language and imagery of sacrifice, one necessarily finds an actual victim.  Second, early Christians employed metaphors besides sacrifice to their celebration of the Eucharist.  Ignatius likens the Eucharist to the medicine of immortality.  Irenaeus focuses on the Eucharist as a means of regeneration, not a metaphor of violent sacrifice. 

And third, these Christians seem well aware that their language and imagery is metaphorical, is subversive of common expectations, and is in fact a parable.  Justin says it best: “that prayers and giving of thanks, when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God, I admit” (Dialogue 117).  Yet Justin is willing to publicly employ the language and imagery of sacrifice in his defense of the rites of Christians, which are yet not sacrificial.  What purpose could there be except to subvert common expectations of what constitutes sacrifice, and what it produces?  We know from Girard that what constituted sacrifice in the ancient world was the collective consent in the murder of a victim, and that what it produced as a communal feeling of calmness, satisfaction and solidarity, displacing feelings of rage, anger and suspicion onto the victim, who, because of the peace that ensued, was often likened to a God.  We could look at the early Christian practice of Eucharist and view it in much the same way.

                  Yet Justin witnesses to just the opposite intent: he and his fellow Christians know that theirs is a sacrifice of “prayers and thanksgiving” only.  They know that there is no victim present.  And instead of the gifts being offered to appease a god, the gifts are shared among the community and then offered to the poor, the widowed, and the absent.  Justin’s use of the vocabulary of ancient sacrifice to describe Christian worship which is in fact not a sacrifice is by no means accidental.  In the following passage he draws on the vocabulary of sacrificial ritual to describe the Christian Eucharistic assembly, yet the purpose of that assembly is clear: to help those in want, to meet together, to bless God through the name of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, and to share bread together with wine and water---to turn away from the commonly sacrificial to a kind of self-giving to one another:

“Those who have the means help all those who are in want, and we always meet together.  And over all that we take to eat (prosfereivn), we bless the Maker of all things through God’s Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit…then we all stand together and offer prayer (pempeivn).  And…when we have concluded the prayer, bread is set out to eat (prosfereivn) together with wine and water.  The presider likewise offers up (anapempeivn) prayer and thanksgiving, as much as he can, and the people sing out their assent saying Amen.”[12]

                   Perhaps the challenge for us today, both as readers of these early Christian texts and as performers and participants in our own liturgical rites, is to recall and reclaim the self-consciously critical, subversive and parabolic way in which these writers and worshippers used the metaphor of sacrifice in their rites.  Gordon Lathrop, in his own reading of Justin Martyr, notes this very thing:

“We have become numb to the surprise of this use of sacrificial language for what is no sacrifice…It is better to say that sacrifice is the wrong word in these cases, but that is just the point.  ‘Sacrifice’ is used metaphorically when it is applied to the death of Christ or to the Christian assembly.  Metaphor…intends to use the wrong word in order to reveal to the imagination a plurality of meanings that otherwise could not be spoken…The wrongness of the word needs to be heightened, not tamed, in order for the figure of speech to work.  We need to inquire what truth about God is proposed by our calling our assembly action sacrifice when it is not.”[13]

 John Dominic Crossan offers a succinct and startling summary of the function of parables in his book The Dark Interval: Toward a Theology of Story, and what he says regarding the use of parables in the Gospels is helpful in understanding the parabolic structure of Christian language and liturgy as well.  Crossan notes that parables are the exact opposite of myth, but cannot function without pre-existing myths, because the function of parables is always to undercut and subvert our myths from the inside out.  Those familiar with the word of Rene Girard will understand immediately the implications: Christian language and liturgy seeks to subvert prevailing myths of the sacrificial by taking up, and intentionally subverting these myths by using the same vocabulary and imagery in a purposely parabolic way.  Crossan describes the experience of reading a Gospel parable:

“Parable shows us the seams and edges of myth…Parables are fictions, not myths; they are meant to change, not reassure us.  Parable is always a somewhat unnerving experience.  You can usually recognize a parable because your immediate reaction will be self-contradictory: ‘I don’t know what you mean by that story but I’m certain I don’t like it.’”[14]

Those of us who hear the language of sacrifice in the Christian Eucharistic assembly may have much the same experience as Crossan describes: we don’t know what it means, but we’re sure we don’t like it.  Yet Crossan reminds us not to dispense with parable, lest we allow the parables of Jesus (and by extension, the parables of the liturgy) to slide back too easily toward myth and allegory:

“Parables give God room.  The parables of Jesus are not historical allegories telling us how God acts with mankind, neither are they moral example-stories telling us how to act before God and towards one another.  They are stories which shatter the deep structure of our accepted world and thereby render clear and evident to us the relativity of the story itself.  They remove our defenses and make us vulnerable to God.  It is only in such experiences that God can touch us, and only in such moments does the kingdom of God arrive.”[15]

Lathrop admonishes us: “We need to inquire what truth about God is proposed by our calling our assembly action sacrifice when it is not.”[16]  Crossan reminds us that when we lose our ability to hear and read parables, we fail to give God room to touch us and make us vulnerable.  Girard often reminds us that it is just this vulnerability from which we flee, and the scapegoat mechanism and reliance upon the sacrificial always ensure that we can transfer our feelings of vulnerability onto someone or something else.  Yet Christian liturgy, if we can hear it in all its parabolic intent as its earliest practitioners envisioned, can extract from us precisely the condition of vulnerability which is necessary in order to have the mind of Christ.  The truth about God proposed by our calling our Eucharistic assembly a sacrifice when it is not is the same truth about God proposed by Paul when he called Christ a servant and slave who humbled himself and emptied himself to the point of death:

“Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, being found in human form, having become obedient to the point of death, and death by a cross.  Wherefore also God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.”

                                                                                                                                                                                              ---Philippians 2: 5-11