Nonviolent Ways Project:
Nonviolent networking for peace with justice ...

Witnessing as a sacred trust and vocation

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The Eucharist and Resistance - Why a "Eucharist of Peace?"

November 11, 2002

By Wes Rehberg

At a recent antiwar protest in Holland, Michigan, I offered the Eucharist as an expression of the incarnation of peace with justice, setting up a small altar, praying the consecration, and sharing the Eucharist with several persons there. This was not done without prayer first, without an understanding of what this celebration of the Last Supper stands for, nor without respect for its holy implications.

The Eucharist has a beautiful sense of ordinariness about it - bread, wine or juice, sought to be made sacred with the intonation of liturgical words, including those said to have been Jesus of Nazareth's at the Last Supper - "As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me." But in divine space, where justice, peace and love unfold into the world, the Eucharist is sacramental. It becomes a sacred act of liberation, marking a common sharing of ordinary elements to an uncommon commitment in a community to peace. The notion of liberation comes from the Passover meal celebrated in Judaism marking the exodus of Hebrew slaves from Egypt. The Eucharist's origin is in this meal.

In Christianity's version, there are closed tables, and open tables - in some churches anyone can receive it, in others, only those can who are privileged by membership, however that is defined. The Eucharist is said, in Roman Catholic liturgy in the West, to be the transubstantiated body and blood of Jesus, his actual presence. In other Christian denominations, the Eucharist is a symbol and a mover of the action of God's grace. Generally, only persons so ordained can offer it liturgically, as a holy priesthood, while others can if designated by license or commission, in restricted settings, among a congregation to which one is appointed or in the presence of one ordained to the sacraments.

Rev. James Callan, breakaway priest from the Roman Catholic Church, drew a perspective on the role of priest and pastor and the Eucharist during a service welcoming him during his temporary stay in Elmira, NY, after being expelled from Rochester NY's Corpus Christi Church in 1998. The service was at the Riverside United Methodist Church, organized by Rev. Donald Hoff, maverick pastor who welcomed homosexuals, those dying of AIDS, and other often disregarded persons into his congregation. Callan said to all of us there, including those female and male pastors who shared the altar space with him, that clergy are "waiters at the table of the Lord. That's all we are." We don't set the terms: Jesus of Nazareth did, at the Passover meal he shared with his friends and followers.

I can't imagine that this was a meal exclusive to the "apostles," specially chosen male followers of Jesus. It's hard to envision the person of Jesus excluding his family, his mother, the women who helped contribute to his ministry, and children from the last meal of his life. It's inconceivable, given his reportedly inclusive healing nature. It's also inconceivable that Jesus meant the common Passover meal celebrated by families and friends to become an exclusive expression of who he was. As the Passover meal was a remembrance of the Hebrew story of God's hand at work in liberation, so did Jesus pick up that theme with his declaration: "Do this in remembrance of me" - meaning, do it within the mission of peace and life and justice and love and liberation that he and his community embodied.

In the Eucharist, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, drawing on a corporate story of liberation from oppression by a peasant Jew who himself became extraordinary by offering an alternative "kingdom" within and among humans in the face of oppressive and imperialist kingdoms, those of Rome and its client "kings" in Palestine.

As a theologian and an ordained clergyperson, I embrace the Eucharist, holy communion, as a sacramental and sacred connection with the one who was called the Prince of Peace, and who is quoted to have said these words on a hill alongside the sea in Galilee: "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God." Children in divine space of a creator who called for four things through Jesus: Acts of justice, love, righteousness and liberation. In divine space, those of us who celebrate the Eucharist celebrate these sacred acts as the way of life and peace, as peacemakers, too.

During the recent weekly protest in Michigan, in opposition to a U.S. war against Iraq, the Eucharist was situated into the protest and offered there as an expression of the incarnation of peace in this action - a space of the expression of the justice that Jesus sought.

Divine space opens an incarnated site, thus, in resistance to acts of oppression, war, actions that choose death rather than life as an option, that destroy the dignity and freedom of others. Offering the Eucharist celebrates this space as a site of peacemaking.

© 2002 Wes Rehberg

December 27, 2003

Going towards God

Going towards God isn't linear only, moving through time as a progression. It's going in all directions, the same directions God comes from: forward, backward, inward, outward, up, down, all the lateral directions, radiating out and in, settling and sending, going and coming -- with the inclination that fits the moment

So it's to speak of an omnidirectional journey, and also a rejourneying, still with time in mind, but also connecting with the other directions in which we are situated. Age makes me aware of time's passing, the seasons here in northern North America. Yet there's a "within" point from which I can't move, and though as some suggest, the perception of a point in time is always a beat beyond that actual instant, the intuition of it is constant.

So within and without conjoin and are made apparent to perception in consciousness, a simple truism. The conjunction is also a constant, the one direction, within, appearing eternal and infinite, the other, without, appearing transient yet also eternal and infinite, spacebound and timebound, yet beyond that as well.

The question I ask, then, is: From where comes the notion of nonviolence? What settles within a person or a community that draws each to recognition, and then its power? The answer, to me, is that inhabits all the directions, and that the "going toward God, omnidirectional as well, is eased by the presence of the condition of nonviolence.

If one resolves to do no harm, one eases the journey's pathway. If one resolves to be true, true to justice, to right relationships with others, creator and creation, and honest, one eases the journey's pathway. If one resolves to be less concerned with self and more with others, to yield self to the settling in of nonviolence, one eases the journey's pathway. The negative energies are transformed.

The pathway is power as well. I've just recently spent four days with friends from Michigan Peace Team, and others from various nonviolent activist organizations at a Training for Change workshop in Philadelphia titled: Opening Space for Democracy: Third Party Nonviolent Intervention Advanced Training for Trainers.

The workshop was well-designed, no question, and the participants highly experienced in training and deciding about long-term placement of people in fields such as those in Indonesia, Colombia, Palestine, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. For me, and for the project I've been involved with, the engagement was humbling. We've been small, by design, and basically unfunded, personal and local, part-time and somewhat anarchistic. This doesn't mean there is a lack of experience, or thoughtfulness, or mindfulness, or a sense of presence within the whole effort that nonviolent activism represents. It's been our belief that small presences like ours are integral to the whole, and that paths of nonviolence, however they may be manifested, are legitimated by the call to nonviolent lifestyles and activism.

Following the course of the workshop, and engaging with others, and with the designers -- George Lakey and Daniel Hunter, with Winnie ? assisting -- the course illuminated in ways I know will remain and will yet surface realizations. Hopelessly right-brained, the sequentialism was daunting for me, as it is in any engagement. I was also the oldest person there, at age 67, so felt "late" in context of time and future, even in realization. Peter Dougherty of Michigan Peace Team, and George Lakey are peers in age, but have been full-time dedicated to the work, whereas my activism was shared in recent years with work as a pastor (where this activism was not always kindly greeted) and with a two-year series of treatment for prostate cancer.

Yet this notion guides the idea of staying small as a project -- it will be the proliferation of such projects at this scale that will be critically significant for transformation -- nonviolent "cells" that radiate in local contexts the power that the call to nonviolence opens. Movements from central agencies are most important, but "situatedness" geographically is the critical key to what all of us engaged in nonviolence activism hope will be revolutionary transformation of violent attitudes and practices.

The center is wherever we are, the contact point between within and without the juncture where power becomes intention, the intention lived out in local streets, local spaces, local engagements, named and given a personal face, represented by a recognizable presence, identified and identifiable. This presence, local, has no less a connection with the infinite and eternal, with God, as has any project of any magnitude.

I like to think of this in terms of the Eucharist, local bread broken open to eat, local wine to drink (even in this age of globalization and mega-marketing). The communion is local, shared hand to hand, consecrated in a local space, connected locally yet through the call to nonviolence, to the whole.

© Wes Rehberg 2003, all rights reserved