9 - Embodying the Eucharist

Summary

Part I: Introducing the Christa

Since the earliest days of the church, childbirth has been used as a metaphor for Eucharist. In Christ's farewell discourse at the Last Supper (Jn 16.21 cf. 19.24), Christ's coming passion, death and resurrection are compared to a woman giving birth, thereby placing Christ in the prophetic tradition that compared the coming of the Kingdom (and also the Day of the Lord) to a woman in labour (Isa. 42.12–16, 66.7–14; Jer. 50.43–46; Mic. 5.3; Hos. 13.11–14; gal. 4.19–20; Mt. 24.7–8; Jn 3.1–8). This is in keeping with Job's use of childbirth as a metaphor for Creation (Job 38.8). Indeed, this metaphor is over determined as revelatory of the sacred, for the prophets also compared God's election of Israel, and later, God's suffering in bringing Israel to conversion, to a woman giving birth and then carrying her babe through the desert (Jer. 6.24b; cf. 30.21; Isa. 42.14, esp. 42.3, 66.13). The early Church Fathers maintained this tradition as the foundation for their eucharistic theology. For them, when Christ's side gushed with the fluids of birthing—blood and water—then Genesis was recapitulated as Christ gave birth to a redeemed creation, simultaneously creating and inseminating his Bride, the Church. In this dispensation Jesus becomes the New Adam and Mary, the New Eve, through whom Adam and Eve's sin is graciously redeemed. This conflation of Eucharist and Baptism meant that childbirth was also the privileged metaphor for Baptism (Jn 3.1–8; Tit. 3.5). This tells us something about the nature of divine reality—creation is accomplished through suffering that ultimately brings its own ecstatic joys.