8 - Eating the Word
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
Summary
A group of friends gather for a meal, each bringing something to the table. They bring bread and wine. Their host brings himself. He has called them together, to share food and drink with one another. He tells them that in sharing the bread and drinking the cup they are sharing in him. He has given himself to them. He has given them his life.
On a thorsday a soper y made
With frendis and foys to make hem glad
Of brede and wyne the sacrament
Euyr to be oure testament …
The Eucharist enfolds all the themes of narrativist theology. It is itself a narrative that enfolds the participants within the biblical story, not simply in each performance but in the cycle of performances throughout the Church's liturgical year. The biblical story is present not only in the readings of the lectionary, but in the very language of the liturgy which, through penitence and acclamation, comes to focus on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The participants’ absorption into the story is made possible through their absorption of the story in and through its ritual enactment. They are not simply witnesses of the story, but characters within it. They do not simply recall the forgiveness of sins but ask and receive forgiveness; they do not repeat the praise of others but give praise themselves; they do not merely remember the night on which Jesus was betrayed but, mindful of their own daily betrayal, gather with the apostles at that night's table, themselves called by the one who in that darkness called his disciples to eat with him.
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- Telling God's StoryBible, Church and Narrative Theology, pp. 223 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996