Since texts are
literary constructions incorporating conventions designed to supply for the
tacit clues which supplement oral-aural communication, it is quite impossible
to read them literally. And for a
critical reader, it is far too easy to show that Christians who pretend to read
the Scriptures literally read the text as a whole through a code derived from
carefully selected passages and ignore passages which defy any literal reading.
In this context,
I read the stories of the Last Supper and the Agony of the Garden through a
code derived from the belief that Jesus is both fully God and fully human and
from the meta-narrative implicit in the Prologue of John.
The first code
implies that, when Mary said "Be it done unto me according to thy word,"
the eternal Word became fully human while remaining fully God. Most Christians assume that, since Jesus was
fully God, from the moment he called Judas to be one of the Twelve, he knew
that Judas would betray him. But if he
did, he was not fully human, since he did not really experience the pain of
betrayal that a spouse who commits adultery inflicts on a vulnerable, trusting
mate.
(Addendum: The Gospel accounts
are full of indications that Jesus "grew in wisdom and knowledge"
like any other human being. In this
regard, a careful reader must be struck by the constant hints that Jesus
expected that his gospel of love would be warmly received and that he only
gradually understood how God was active in a special way in and through him.)
The second code
uses a language of event and process to illuminate striking differences between
the meta-narrative which frames Catholic and Protestant theologies of
transcendence and the meta-narrative which frames an incarnational
theology. In the Third Installment of my
Reflections, I explore these differences in depth and detail. Here, I merely note that the meta-narrative
which frames theologies of transcendence is centered in two events, an original
sin committed by the father of the human race and the sacrificial death of the
incarnate Word on the cross in reparation for human sinfulness. In marked contrast, the meta-narrative which
frames an incarnational theology locates Jesus' saving activity in his
willingness to share fully in a process fraught with promise and peril.
Consequently, in
no. 2 above, I read the stories of the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden
as the unfolding of a process within Jesus.
I trust the tradition which understands (reads, interprets) the Last
Supper as the occasion on which Jesus instituted the Eucharistic celebration
and asked us to repeat it in memory of him.
Working backward from my understanding of the Eucharist after fifty
years as a priest, I celebrate the Eucharist as Jesus' promise to me and to all
human beings that he is willing to share intimately in our lives, despite the
fact that we exclude him from our lives when we refuse to let him face
cross-situations in our lives with us.
To assure us of his everfaithful love, despite our breaks with intimacy,
he instituted a ritual in which he entrusts himself to us in Communion, even
when our reception of Communion is a mockery.
In this context,
the Agony in the Garden is not a discrete event in which Jesus stood naked
before the Father, in the manner canonized by a doctrine of justification by
faith alone. Rather, a reading which
presents the Eucharistic celebration and the Agony in the Garden as a continous
process insists that, in his intense agony, Jesus first realized that loving
each and every human being with an everfaithful love required him to share
intimately in the pain of all wounded individuals throughout the ages.
At times, I have
pleaded with God, "No more," when wounded person after wounded person
invited me to walk with them through the grieving process which would bring new
life out of otherwise intolerable pain.
At times, I gladly said yes, since it enriched my own grieving process,
but I was sometimes resentful that so many priests were unwilling or unable to
accompany wounded individuals through a grieving process that enabled them to
embrace the quest for a more abundant life in God's love and the love of
others. I was painfully aware that there
is no way through emotional pain except through it. In the end, though, I have found that,
instead of judging other priests, I must nuture the profound awe evoked by
Jesus' willingness to embrace the pain of all so that no one need embrace the
grieving process alone.
Please note: I do not minimize the physical pain that
Jesus suffered from the time that he was taken prisoner in the Garden to his
death on the Cross. Quite the
opposite. One must appreciate the
magnitude of this pain in order to appreciate Jesus' willingness to embrace the
pain of abused children, battered wives, victims of the cruel Inquisition,
anyone subjected to torture for whatever reason, etc., etc.
Often, when I celebrate
the Eucharist, I ask Jesus if he really wants to entrust himself to me in
Communion. He reminds me of his Agony in
the Garden during which he willingly embraced the pain of all and forgave even
those who betrayed and crucified him.
And he also reminds me that the Resurrection was the fulfillment of the
promise he made when he instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
Here, I cannot
resist a polemical aside. Jesus' embrace
of the pain experienced by all human beings in his Agony in the Garden awes me
far more than his submission to a brutal scourging, humiliating crowning with
thorns, and excruciatingly painful death on a cross. And since we sin because we are wounded, not
because we are wicked, it is this willingness to accompany us as we grieve that
frees us from the hold of sinfulness.
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