The Eucharist And Wirzba's

The Eucharist is central to both Wesley’s and Wirzba’s theological and ethical formulations. Long argues that, “Wesley’s ethics can only be understood in terms of a common ecclesial life based on practices such as the Eucharist, a common doctrinal confession, and the General Rules. It is no surprise that Wesley’s work disappears when “ethics” becomes the essence of Methodism.” Wesley maintains that the introduction of “ethics” into a society that has suffered “the death of God” has caused a disappearance of communal pietistic practices such as “creedal profession, church membership, sacramental symbols, ascetic practices, emotional experiences, modes of worship, sabbath observance,” and so on. That is to say, Long recognizes that Wesley’s framework
for ethics is only compatible in the context of community. Where Long does not explicitly portray Wesley as having a theology of eating, Long does make note of the significance of Wesley’s understanding of the gathering, the community and the sacrament of Eucharist.
For Wesley, faith and action are inseparable.
Faith necessitates and produces proper action. As such Long notes that, for Wesley, the Eucharist was never to be an optional activity. As Long writes, “Prudence is the name for the virtue that fulfills well Aristotle’s practical reasoning. Wesley seems to assume that if the syllogism works, the Christian only has one response: attend the Lord’s supper as often as possible.” Wesley himself writes, in his sermon “The Duty of Constant Communion,” that “it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as he can.” Consequently, the Eucharist becomes for the Christian, and by extension the community, the formational practice that embodies the way Christians are to live. Just as Christ broken body and shed blood celebrated in the Eucharist create space in the life of the Triune God for creation, so the call for the Christian is to extend hospitality and create space for the other in their own life. This extension of hospitality (grace) at the Table to creation and the embodiment of such a grace in the practice of the Christian community is the bridge from Wesley to
Wirzba. Wirzba takes Wesley’s notion of constant Communion a step further, suggesting that “when it is done in the name of God, eating is the earthly realization of God’s eternal communion.” In other words, Wirzba takes the notion of the Eucharist as an ecclesial sacrament afforded only in the liturgic gathering, to a vision of the Eucharist that accommodates the meal we share at the table surrounded by others. In effect, Wirzba is affirming the sacramentality of the common meals, with its inherent unity forming character, by equating it to the unity of the Body of Christ formed by the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist. Wirzba takes a Wesleyan approach to Communion and extends its sacramental nature to envelope our relationship with what we eat more holistically; “Jesus calls his followers to a deep commitment to fellowship (koinonia) with others. Eating Jesus ought to lead to new patterns of relationship in which exploitation – whether the exploitation of fields, animals, farmers (often women) , cooks (often women), servers (often women) – is overcome with compassion for and service to the needs of others.” This very well may be a stretch for Wesley, except that Wesley’s focus on the virtues in the context of community potentially make space for this idea of the sacramentality of the shared meal within community.
In many ways, Wirzba picks up on Wesley’s embodied virtues as taught by the sacraments in his contention for the sacramentality of the shared meal. While Wirzba certainly goes beyond Wesley’s theology, by asserting that eating when done in the God’s name is the earthly realization of God’s eternal communion, Wirzba makes an essential point that eating, much like the Eucharist for Wesley, is a “training ground.” Wesley clearly views the practice of the sacraments as a means of grace that form us for holy action in the world. Likewise, Wirzba is affirming the formational and relational value of the shared common meal for holy living in the world. If holiness is to be understood as embodied in the relational nature of the Triune God, then those practices that train the Christian community must also be relational in nature. And here is where Wirzba and Wesley meet. It is not that Wesley needs an explicit theology of food to be in agreement with Wirzba, rather Wirzba is translating the heart of Wesley’s embodied theology and extending it to encapsulate all of creation and not just ecclesiastical life.
Contemporary Application Modernity saw a rejection of Wesley’s theology because of his refusal to conform to a worldview shaped more technology than by the Church. For too long theologians and ethicist alike missed the value of Wesley’s theology. As Long writes, concerning Wesley’s doctrine of illumination, “is one reason Wesley’s work cannot make the passage to modernity well. His inability to make this transition is precisely why his theology should interest us again at the end of modernity.” Wesley believed, and Wirzba builds upon, this idea of illumination, that is that humanity can participate in the eternal ideas of God. While that did not work for a society that rejected God, it does work for a theology that seeks to proclaim the activity of the Trinue God in food.
The theme of sacramentality flows throughout both the work of Wesley and Wirzba.
Each seeks to make theological formulations based on an ontology centered around the Eucharist. So the question becomes how do Wesleyans live sacramental lives. Much can be said of Wirzba’s further of Wesley’s emphasis upon the Eucharist in claiming that every meal shared in the name of God has Eucharist overtones. A modern day sacramentality is an extension of hospitality in its most extreme forms. Following in the example of the Word who became embodied flesh to extend the hospitality of God to a fallen creation, the Church as the Body of Christ can now by the presence of the Holy Spirit be that same extension of God’s hospitality around our common tables. When Christians intentional create spaces in their lives for the other they practice the same love that Christ did on the cross creating space for creation in the life of the Triune God. Christian can become intimately connected with their food and the environments they inhabit. Each meal can be received with gratitude, each table opened for the other, and so the cycle of hospitality continues as Christians died to themselves so that they can participate in the life giving actions of a Savior who was broken open and poured out for the sake of the life of the
world.
Conclusion
While there are differences between the approaches of Wesley and Wirzba, the similarities between the two allow for a Wesleyan understanding of a theology of food to be developed. The sacramentality at the heart of Wesley’s moral theology and Wirzba’s theology of food give a foundation for a modern ethical construct for Christians to live into. Too long rejected, Wesley’s belief in the transformational grace of God manifested in the life of the believer in the embodied practices and community of the Church find a modern application in Wirzba’s theology of food. It is when the interconnectedness of all of creation is recognized in the endless cycle of sacrifice of one life for the life of another the sacrificial gift of the cross becomes present everywhere. This ceaseless drama of death leading to new life is a constant reminder of God’s work of new creation even in the midst of a fallen world. In the end, as Wirzba writes, “As many church fathers reasoned, if God can create the world from nothing, God can also create something new and whole from what already, if imperfectly, exists.” As Christians embody a spirit of hospitality that is first experienced in the salvific work of Christ celebrated in Eucharist God will make something new and whole.