to get a bit more than 1/2 hour with Dr. Kleinig all to myself. Wow. So many things I need to jot down notes on, but one thing he expressed that I absolutely loved:
We have tended to speak in terms of the sacramental as God's doing and the sacrificial as our response. He suggested that we must not forget that the sacrificial is also the action of the Trinity:
Even as the Father sends the Son, who sends the Spirit, to give us life which consists of the Spirit uniting us in saving faith to the Son, so that the Son as perfect representative Man might present us in and with Himself to the Father.
The sacrificial is also the act of the Trinity in which He carries us along!
2 comments:
Amen!
Well, the reason why we aren't still sacrificing animals is because those sacrifices are fulfilled in Christ's sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice that God performed alone, in time and before eternity / tou arniou tou esphagmenou apo kataboleen kosmou.
We believe that Christ's Body and Blood avail for our sins because He said so, which is most certainly true. However, that which Christ said He also gave in the form of the Sacrament, where the Body and Blood of the sacrificial Victim are given separately. The sacrificing of the victim was complete when the blood was separated from the body, which is all the more mysterious because it is Christ's living, breathing, heart-beating Body and Blood which He gives to us the way they were when He had died. It might be more helpful to think, not of sacrament vs. sacrifice, but first of The One Victim, who sacrificed Himself and then (alive!) gives his sacrificed Body and Blood to his baptized priesthood for their holiness.
Liturgy then has really one part in that it is concerned with the living Victim, the Lamb Who was slain. "Sacrificial" in the Melanchthonian-Kliefothian sense really means "Eucharistic-Sacrificial" or "Thank-offering-sacrificial", not "Sacrificial" in the totality of the word.
We need to regain the sense of the liturgy as coming out of the temple as well as the synagogue. Margaret Barker, who is quite kooky, does have some interesting points to make here.
What is the quotation from Luther where he describes Christ carrying us on his back to present us to the Father?
What have I to sacrifice to God, after all? Nothing. Absolutely nothing that He needs or that is worthy of being a gift to Him. I've only my wretched self to offer.
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