Always be ready to make a defence when you are called to give an account of the faith that is in you. (1 Peter 3.15)
What does Scripture mean here when it speaks of ‘an account’ of the faith ?
A comprehensive theological explanation? Presumably not.
Our Christian leaders generally advise that we focus on what our Christian faith has meant ‘for us’. We should consider the words of the man blind from birth in the ninth chapter of John’s Gospel when called to account by the Pharisees following his healing by Jesus: ‘One thing I know: that, though I was blind, now I see!’ In other words, concentrate on the difference it has made in your life!
Our leaders are surely right about this. Nevertheless, in my own (admittedly very limited) experience, the point in my conversations is quickly reached where I am challenged on the question of what I suppose to have happened all those years ago, and how and why Christians like me want to claim it is relevant to our lives today.
So this here is what I say – and it is a form of presentation I would recommend to everyone else:
All religions – including Christianity – centre on sacrificial worship through which we relate as human beings to the source of our being. Religion ‘binds’ us (the etymological meaning of the Latin ‘religio’) emotionally and relationally to this origin. All relationships are founded in giving (as social anthropologists remind us). Our sacrificial worship is no different. It is a giving back of the blessings we have received to the sacred source from which we received them – a counter-gift binding us to the author(s) of our existence.
That counter-gift may be ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘physical’. Think of the ‘grace’ traditionally said by Christians at the start of a meal. It doesn’t involve the transfer of anything material, but it nevertheless expresses the recognition that the meal is not just a something we consume to keep body and soul together; it is also a means by which we experience a grateful union: first and foremost, with the source and sustainer of our lives (God in this case), but also with those involved in the production of our food, and the people with whom we are sharing the meal. As we see in this example, the ‘counter-gift’ of sacrifice may involve, not only what we do in religious settings, but every department of our lives. By means of it all the actions of our human lives can become a means of expressing a relationship to the divine. This gives our lives purpose; simultaneously it institutes bonds of communal living with those who share the same relationship to the same perceived source of existence. In a very real sense, sacrificial worship has always formed the basis, not only of individual fulfilment, but of community itself. (Chapter 3)
From the Christian perspective, such sacrificial worship – performed both in church, and with our whole lives – is owed to the one God of Christian monotheism, the Father of Jesus Christ, in exchange for his initial gift, not only in creating, but also ‘restoring’ us. It is the one God of Jesus Christ who is the initial giver, and to whom our own response is a due expression of love. Such love binds us into a right relationship, not only with the one who is the origin of our being, but also with our fellow-humans who share that common origin. It gives God glory, and our lives purpose, through sustaining social relationships that give our lives meaning. (Chapters 3 & 4)
The implications of the above paragraphs invite serious reflexion. On the one hand, it follows that sacrificial worship is at some level a deep-seated human need, and even a necessity – if for no other reason because humans cannot live without purpose and community of some kind. On the other, humanity, for much of its history, would appear – seen from a Christian perspective – somehow to have lost the knowledge of the true source of its being, and, along with that knowledge, the wherewithal to offer its sacrificial worship worthily. At any rate, the diverse objects of human worship, and the broken and divisive forms of community instituted by our apparently mis-directed devotion, litter the course of history.
This curious situation poses the question: if humanity really was so constituted by God as to find its goal and its unity in the worship of Him, why it would not, over time, have somehow found its way to agreement on that goal – as it has so conspicuously failed to do?
Rightly understood, the story of the Gospel offers an answer to that question. Not only does it recount how the one whom Christian believers call the messiah (or ‘Christ’) makes for the first time, in his own self-offering, a worthy sacrificial return to the source of his and our being. It also makes clear why, in the present conditions of humanity, the task of offering such a sacrificial return would far exceed the capacities of any other than Christ himself. Correspondingly, it claims for the one who finally makes that offering the status of God, become human and acting on our behalf. (Chapter 5)
Yet all this would have a mere historical interest but for a further, all-important, aspect of Christ’s self-offering – something only comprehensible in the light of the Gospel understanding of Christ’s sacrifice as an act on the part of God himself. In doing what he does, Christ offers his sacrifice on OUR behalf. And the implication of this ‘on our behalf’ is that he simultaneously offers US the possibility of participating in his perfect self-offering. By this, I mean nothing less than that he allows US to share in his sacrificial agency, so establishing, for the first time, the possibility of a universal human community – a community in his sacrificial offering. (Chapters 5 & 6)
How do we know? Because this is what Christ claimed to be doing, above all, at the Last Supper, when he offered up bread and wine symbolizing his sacrifice, and instructed his followers to carry on doing what he was doing after his death. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost marks symbolically the moment, following the Resurrection, when his followers came to understand what Christ had done, and at last assume his sacrificial agency for themselves. This was the moment when the Church was born. It was also the moment when humanity was restored to the possibility of right sacrificial worship and universal human community.
The essence of the Christian Gospel-event, then, is an act of sacrificial self-offering that is properly both Christ’s, but also, potentially, ours. In practice, we participate in Christ’s sacrificial return: perfectly at the level of what we do in church – in the divinely-instituted eucharistic worship that moulds our hearts and desires; rather less perfectly, at an everyday level, in our lives to the extent that these are brought into line with the pattern set by what we do in Church. It is this lived conformity to the eucharistic paradigm is that St Paul refers to as ‘living sacrifice’ and ‘spiritual worship’. And it is this sacrificial worship that constitutes ultimate goal of human life.