RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

finds positive expression when basic human needs
are met and the common dignity of creatures is
affirmed. Let me turn to one example. M.F.K.
Fisher believed that “the art of eating” must be
encouraged, and it could be nurtured in better and
worse ways. Over against “impatience for the
demands of our bodies,” inattention “to the voices
of our various hungers,” or “shameful carelessness
with the food we eat for life itself,” she counseled
training in attention and enjoyment. In a postscript
to her book on cooking and eating during the World
War II years, she concluded: “To nourish ourselves
with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing
enjoyment,” is one of the ways persons can “assert
and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty
and war’s fears and pains.” Fisher commended “a
kind of culinary caution,” learned in the experience
of wartime food rationing, that was attentive to food
as precious (butter, meat, spices, in particular) and
not to be wasted. She noted that the art of eating can
aid knowledge of other things, including of
ourselves and of the powers that threaten human
survival and dignity. 8
As Paul and Irenaeus taught centuries ago,
vulnerable creatures can be strengthened to receive
and bear the grace and glory of God. At their best,
this is what both daily bread and the great
celebration of the Lord’s Supper do: they
strengthen persons to the fullness of human
dignity, and they strengthen the church to receive
and bear the grace and glory of God. In the twentyfirst
century, shared Christian life and “prophetic
witness” may entail marches and coalitions, but they
more likely involve a persistent faith and a canny
practicality that ensure basic human needs.
John Calvin argued that what united and ensured
Christian life was ministry—not structure, not
doctrine—and specifically the ministry of right
proclamation and of right reception of the
sacraments. For example, Calvin pictured persons
as being delighted, strengthened, transformed, and
reoriented by partaking of the Lord’s Supper: “We
see that this sacred bread is spiritual food, as sweet
and delicate as it is healthful for pious worshipers of
God, who in tasting it, feel that Christ is their life,
whom it moves to thanksgiving, for whom it is an
exhortation to mutual love among themselves.” 9
Calvin offered his own “culinary caution” about
right participation in the Lord’s Supper. He saw
much at stake in the rightful administration and
Culp • Christian Unity, Prophetic Witness, and the Unity of Humanity
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participation in the Lord’s Supper: proper honoring
and discernment of God, of Christ’s body, of
other members of the body, and of one’s self, as well
as the ability to offer healing, solace, and aid to sick,
distraught, and needy persons. Such attention and
care for right administration and participation,
especially when combined with tendencies to order
and restraint, may degrade into rigorism and
formalism, serve to divide insiders from outsiders,
and close off participation—as the Campbells
discovered in their day.
Much is at stake in the art of eating—whether
it is daily bread or the Lord’s Supper.
Much is at stake in the art of eating—whether it is
daily bread or the Lord’s Supper. Right participation
in shared meals and in the waters of birth and
life, and right proclamation spoken and lived offer
means of shaping response to God and to the basic
needs and dignity of other creatures. We might call
these arts of eating, washing, and proclaiming the
arts of Christian unity. Such ministry can foster
delight and gratitude, respond to hunger and other
basic needs, and anticipate the full welcome of
God’s table. Doing so, these arts may serve as means
of God’s grace and also to upbuild the unity of
humanity and to bear testimony to the dignity and
integrity of God’s creation.
I began with the suspicion that sometimes Christian
unity becomes too associated with the structural and
ideological unity of the church, that is with the
consolidation of organizational, ministerial, and
theological authority. I also suggested that at other
times appeals to a higher “invisible” unity in Christ
may function to divide Christian insiders from
non-Christian outsiders and to divert attention
from the commonalities of human need and the call
of human dignity. A measure of suspicion can help
churches and theologies be responsive to human
need, to life’s complexities, and to a living God. I’ll
conclude by noting two additional matters where a
hermeneutic of suspicion may be useful: first,
sometimes Christians talk about unity when
reconciliation and transformation are really the
tasks at hand; second, even the sturdiest reconciliation
and most profound transformation are
likely to fall short both of creaturely need and of the
grace and glory of God.