Eucharistic Missiology: Mission Paradigm of the Orthodox Church

Introduction

The contours of the Orthodox Church history testify the fact that the word ‘mission’ has been haunting to the Orthodox Church due to its underlying contentions of proselytization. Over the centuries, the unwarranted penetration of foreign mission agencies with an intention to convert the Orthodox faith community has validated this fear. Ion Bria writes;

There are many martyrs and saints in the Orthodox calendar, for example, who suffered not only from persecution from early Roman Emperors and later under Ottoman domination, but also from Roman Catholic Uniatism and Protestant proselytism, especially in the Balkan and Middle East countries.[1]

Thus the Orthodox Church rejects such corporate enterprise ideological framework of mission which focuses on conquering geographical frontiers by patronizing, colonizing, dominating and oppressing a faith community using the Gospel of Christ as a pretence to legitimize certain political and economic vested interests. This refusal of the Orthodox Church to engage with the then prevailing conception of mission of extending the topographical territory has fetched the Church few titles viz. – “A non-missionary Church”; “Defenders of Faith”[2] etc.  David Bosch, concludes his chapter on the mission paradigm of the Eastern Church with a similar assessment;

The Church adapted to the existing world order, resulting in Church and Society penetrating and permeating each other. The role of religion – any religion – in society is that of both stabilizer and emancipator; it is both mythical and messianic. In the Eastern tradition the Church tended to express the former of each of these pairs rather than the latter. The emphasis was on conservation and restoration, rather than on embarking on a journey into the unknown. The key words were ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and the ‘Fathers’ and the Church became the bulwark of the right doctrine. Orthodox Churches tended to become ingrown, excessively nationalistic and without a concern for those outside…The Church established itself in the world as an institute of almost exclusively other-worldly salvation.[3]     

These misconstrued appellations are the result of improper and naïve appropriation of the mission of the Orthodox Church; there is much more to it than meets the eye. The Orthodox Church has never been at odds in fulfilling the fundamental apostolic vocation of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to the world but the Church has her own way - a unique way - of executing the same. The Orthodox mission sprouts from a Eucharistic Ecclesiology. The Church is the outcome of mission and not vice-versa. To be precise, it is the ecclesiology that determines the missiology of the Orthodox Church and thus the most credible paradigm of mission for the Orthodox Church is Eucharistic Missiology. Before we venture into the overtures of Eucharistic Missiology it is imperative that we discern few principles of Orthodox Ecclesiology.

Principles of Orthodox Ecclesiology

1. The Living Tradition

Tradition is indeed prominent in our attempt to theologize thus it is one of the formative factors of theology. The Orthodox Church considers her tradition to be living thus the Church is not a petrified archival enterprise whose sole intention is to ‘conserve’ the past but she envisions to continue the legacy by constantly re-receiving it. This is known as the Reception of Tradition. John Zizioulas remarks;

What we have inherited from the Fathers, be it dogmas, ethos or liturgy, must be received and re-received all the time and in this process the past becomes existentially, and not simply mentally or ritually, present…The Orthodox are there in the Ecumenical Movement to remind us of the importance of Tradition but also its creative re-reception.[4]

In the erosion of faiths by the invasion of modernity, defending ones faith and ethnic identity is not to be exclusive rather the ethical imperative of one’s survival. Tradition makes the past meet the present hence preserves the historical continuity. Re-membering the past is essential for renewal and change. The past is not always regressive as thought about. There are subversive elements in the past whose embers need to be rekindled. For instance, the Order of Deaconess is one such tradition which was never abolished but thrown into the abyss of disuse. The Statement issued by the Orthodox Liturgists for the support of the Revival of the Order of Deaconess by the Patriarch of Alexandria states;

The reinstitution of the female diaconate does not constitute an innovation, as some would have us believe, but the revitalization of a once functional, vibrant, and effectual ministry in order to provide the opportunity for qualified women to offer in our era their unique and specific gifts in the service of God’s people as publicly commissioned and authorized educators, evangelists, preachers, counselors, social workers, et.al.[5]

The Orthodox Church that considers a woman to be the Mother of God could possibly have no excuses for not ordaining women. The Orthodox Church could contribute immensely to the world if she re-members such revolutionary facets of her past. At the same time, we should not fall into the danger of being fixated on the past rather should consider it as a point of departure. Heed the words of Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) - a retired hierarch in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA);

The Orthodox faith has the capacity to engage social transformations with dignity and peacefully. We must, however, be willing to accept that the past does not have all the answers. The past may be a foundation, but it is not a destination.[6]

2. The ever - continuing Liturgy

One of the common comments the Orthodox Church faces is that the Church is extensively liturgy oriented. So what is wrong with that? In fact a Church ought to be Liturgy oriented. Liturgy as most people understand is not ritualism and the frenzy of ceremonies rather the etymology of the word leads us to the discernment that it is derived from the Greek words laos (people) and ergon (work). This points to the fact that Liturgy is essentially the ‘work of the people.’ The priest cannot exercise monopoly over the Liturgy; both priest and people are the co-celebrants of the Liturgy. Moreover the Liturgy cannot be confined to the four walls of an establishment rather it is to be continued by the ecclesia in all walks of life. Thus the phrase “The liturgy after the Liturgy”[7] becomes the subsistence and the living expression of the Orthodox Ecclesiology.  Ion Bria reckons;

The Liturgy has to be continued in personal, everyday situations. Each of the faithful is called upon to continue a personal ‘liturgy’ on the secret altar of his own heart, to realize a living proclamation of the good news for the sake of the whole world. Without this continuation, the Liturgy remains incomplete. Since the Eucharistic event we are incorporated in Him who came to serve the world and to be sacrificed for it, we have to express in concrete diakonia, in community life, our new being in Christ, the servant of all. The sacrifice of the Eucharist must be extended in personal sacrifices for the people in need.[8]   

Unless and until the liberation we experience through participating in the Liturgy, is manifested in tangible forms to our fellow human beings and to the entire cosmos, the Liturgy is incomplete. St. John Chrysostom stated;

Do you want to honour Christ’s body? Then do not honour him here in the Church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked…or what use it is to weigh down Christ’s table with golden cups when he himself is dying of hunger? First fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his table.[9]

Liturgy and mission are intertwined in the Orthodox tradition. One cannot exist without the other. Emmanuel Clapsis states;

Liturgy without social concern is reduced to ritualism and leads to introversion. It is equally true that mission apart from worship reduces Christianity to a religious ideology, either of the left or of the right. It becomes a subject of human pride and self-will and may not serve Christ but its proprietor. Worship as a communal and God-centred event can help mission to recover its true nature as participation in God’s mission. More specifically, the Eucharist is the unique liturgical act that brings together in a creative but disturbing unity the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Christian mission and living.[10]

3. The Church as the Realized Eschatology

Species survive only when they learn to live in a community and humans are no different. The basis of all theological propositions of the Orthodox Church is Trinitarian. The perichoresis (mutually indwelling) embedded in the Trinity makes the Orthodox Church affirm the cosmic dimension of salvation where the entire cosmos becomes the ecclesia, the church, the body of Christ. Church is thus the beloved community of Christ unceasingly ‘becoming’ in Christ through perpetual repentance and transformation. The Orthodox ecclesiology considers church as the historical expression and the foretaste of the reign of God on earth hence the realized eschatology. The church is an eschatological Eucharistic Community[11] where it is not the past but the eschaton that becomes the beginning of the church. Petros Vassiliadis opines;

In Orthodox theology and liturgical praxis the Church does not draw her identity from what ‘she is’ in the present or what ‘was’ given to her as institution in the past but from what she ‘will be’ in the future, that is from the eschaton.[12]

Since the Orthodox Church affirms church as a ‘becoming community’ she perceives Church in a Pneumatological sense. Christ has never occupied the kernel of Orthodox ecclesiology rather it is the Spirit which has been the breath of the church.  John Zizoulas explicates;

The Spirit is not something that ‘animates’ a Church which already somehow exists. The Spirit makes the Church ‘be’. Pneumatology does not refer to the well-being but to the very being of the Church. It is not about a dynamism which is added to the essence of the Church. It is the very essence of the Church.[13]

He further elucidates this point;

In a Christological perspective alone we can speak of the Church as in-stituted (by Christ) but in a pneumatological perspective we have to speak of it as con-stituted (by the Spirit). Christ in-stitutes and the Spirit con-stitutes. The difference between these two prepositions: in- and con- can be enourmous ecclesiologically. The ‘in-stitution’ is something presented to us as a fact. As such it is a provocation to our freedom. The con-stitution is something that involves us in its very being, something we accept freely, because we take part in its very emergence. Authority in the first case is something imposed on us whereas in the latter it is something that springs from amongst us.[14]

Spirit is the disruptive and transformative being of the Church which urges her to dismantle and breach the existing order which is contrary to the divine order. A church is never built rather is born. Today when the Church is validated in terms of assets and jurisprudential constitutions we relegate the Church into a bare ecclesial institution devoid of the Spirit of disruption and transformation i.e. its very being. Here occurs the demise of Ecclesiology. K. M. George writes;

The Mission of the Church is an act of epiclesis, calling the Holy Spirit to descend upon the whole creation. It constitutes an act of creative unification. The priestly gesture at the moment of epiclesis in the Syrian Orthodox liturgy is especially significant. In the fluttering and cyclic movements symbolizing the Spirit, the priest invokes the Spirit to hover over the elements and to dwell within the Holy Eucharist, thus infusing the whole created reality. If the Church’s historical existence can become an act of epiclesis, calling upon the Spirit to descend and dwell within our world, to transfigure it, then the Church’s mission is accomplished.[15]

Having succinctly comprehended the few (of the many) basic principles of Orthodox Ecclesiology we now try to understand the mission paradigm of the Orthodox Church which is Eucharistic Missiology.

Eucharistic Missiology

Christianity in a nutshell is a story of a boy being born in the House of Bread (Bethlehem) eventually becoming the bread to be broken for the cosmic redemption. The Liturgy of Eucharist commemorates this breaking of bread. The Eucharist is considered so sacred in the Orthodox Church that it is known as the Queen of Sacraments. Eucharist consummates all the sacraments of the Orthodox Church. Thus Eucharist is the heart of the Orthodox Liturgy. Church is first and foremost a worshipping community; the doctrines fall secondary to worship. George Florovsky emphasises the fact that lex orandi has a privileged priority over lex credenti.[16] Metropolitan George Khodre of Mount Lebanon throws light on this;

In the Eucharistic act the church is a witness and calls for witnessing outside the sanctuary. There is no wall of partition between the altar and the cosmos; the Eucharist is the meeting point of the fallen world with the world to come. It is its beginning, the sign of transfigured time. The Eucharist is that which should be carried and transmitted with all its implications outside the Temple.[17]

In Latin, the word companion literally means to “break bread”. Food fellowship is the most powerful form of companionship. Jesus resorted to this impactful form of fellowship. Jesus compared his body with bread. What else could he have compared his body with in a poverty-stricken world? How else could he have conveyed his conviction in a world where people were and are impoverished by the dominant? Mahatma Gandhi reckoned, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

Food fellowship is gaining huge prominence today and is one of the thriving models for sustaining Churches especially in America where the churches are closing at an alarming rate. In the modern parlance this is known as the “Dinner Churches”. The backdrop of this model is a book written by Verlon Fosner - “Dinner Church: Building Bridges by Breaking Bread.” Verlon and Melodee Fosner are the founders of Dinner Church Collective. Chris Morton writes on this. He opines;

Dinner Church is inspired by Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” As Fosner says,”The only question remaining is, ‘Who is going to set his table?'” Could it be that setting a table for sinners, seculars, and strangers to have dinner with Jesus might be one of the great callings of the church? What if when Jesus was telling Peter to “feed his sheep,” he wasn’t speaking metaphorically, but was actually directing him to a physical table?”[18]

The founders of the Dinner Church initiative Verlon and Fosner describe;

The Apostolic Era used the dinner table as their primary form of church for the first three centuries. That historic sociology of church is making a strong comeback in the past decade. Interestingly, secularized populations are again flocking to these Agape dinner tables to eat & talk about Jesus.[19]

Take a look at this video;

The Orthodox Church perceives mission as an extension of the love of the Triune God. Mission is conceptualized as ‘coming together’ rather than ‘going forth’. This framework has its roots in Didache which says; “Just as this loaf was scattered all over the mountains and having been brought together was made one, so let your church be gathered from the ends of the earth in your kingdom”.[20] This also reverberates in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus states; “Whoever does not gather with me scatters.”[21]

Eucharist is not only about breaking bread or a fellowship of food but also a divine praxis which disturbs us with the anamnesis of Jesus by the re-enactment of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ. Eucharist is the bread of pilgrims and this is made known through the benediction of the Orthodox Church where the faithful are commissioned to continue the liturgy outside the Temple by gaining energy from the bread and having been nourished in the mind, body and soul. The Eucharist also teaches us the difference between need and greed. The sacrament encourages us to shatter our complacency and educates us not to satisfy our wants at the expense of usurping the needs of our fellow humans and other creations. That is what monasticism enlightens us too and thus could also be considered a genuine missional model of the Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Emilianos Timiadis of Sylibria argues;

Monks practice poverty not because the administration of wealth is an evil in itself – if this were so, how could Christ have worked as a carpenter? – but on the contrary because the existence in society of a group of devoted men and women, who have freely given up the right to possess wealth, may help others in that society to escape from a life which makes the acquisition of wealth its supreme end. Monks are called to celibacy, not to despise conjugal life or marriage but on the contrary to give a witness to the transfiguration of the sexual instinct in marriage and in celibacy so that people can serve higher goals and become servants of the spirit. Monks are called to obedience, not in order to escape their responsibilities of adulthood but in order to help man escape the instinct of self-centeredness and self-dependence so that he increasingly depends on the will of God and less and less on his own.[22]

To conclude, mission for the Orthodox Church stems from her most sacred sacrament i.e. Eucharist. There exists no mission without worship; both complement each other. Any attempt to disunite these two is detrimental to the fundamental missiological affirmation of the church.  Church is not a corporate enterprise that salvages few rather she is a cosmic presence of healing and koinonia realized by the scattered ecclesia in their coming together to celebrate the foundation of mission i.e. Eucharist.   

Where a people is being harshly oppressed, the Eucharist speaks of the exodus or deliverance from bondage. Where Christians are rejected or imprisoned for their faith, the bread and the wine become the life of the Lord who was rejected by men but has become ‘the chief stone of the corner’. Where the church sees a diminishing membership and its budgets are depressing, the Eucharist declares that there are no limits to God’s giving and no end to hope in him. Where discrimination by race, sex or class is a danger for the community, the Eucharist enables people of all sorts to partake of the one food and to be made one people. Where people are affluent and ease with life, the Eucharist says, ‘As Christ shares his life, share what you have with the hungry’. Where a congregation is isolated by politics or war or geography, the Eucharist unites us with all God’s people in all places and all ages. Where a sister or brother is near death, the Eucharist becomes a doorway into the kingdom of our loving Father.[23]

Prayers 

Dn. Basil Paul 

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[1] Ion Bria ed. Martyria/Mission: The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980), 3.

[2] The Orthodox community in any particular place is “the defender of faith”, according to an expression used in the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs.

[3] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis Books, 1991), 212-13.

[4] John Zizoulas, “The Self Understanding of the Orthodox and their Participation in the Ecumenical Movement” in Petros Vassiliadis ed. Orthodox Perspectives on Mission (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 86.

[5] https://panorthodoxcemes.blogspot.com/2017/10/orthodox-liturgists-issued-statement-of.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR0gHeyZN0mNn_J0AwQMQYFAnwi9k2Omyz30AAIYu8PoHkgwn_vFzbrygoA

[6] Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo), “A Brief Note: The Past is not our Destination, Fear is not the way.” https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/2018/07/13/a-brief-note-the-past-is-not-our-destination-fear-is-not-the-way-by-archbishop-lazar-puhalo/?fbclid=IwAR2P_1nW7KCbVq8tA_ZQECrJYCsJLSeQSztlvoSgzZgkTBdk4yr7vILvnHI

[7] In the discussion of the consultation organized by CWME Desk for Orthodox Studies and Relations in Etchmiadzine, Armenia, 16 – 21 September 1975, “the indispensable continuation” of the liturgical celebration was spoken. It was stated clearly that “the Liturgy must not be limited to the celebration in the Church but has to be continued in the life of the faithful in all dimensions of life.” See. “The Etchmiadzine Report, International Review of Mission, Vol. 64/256, 1975, 417-421.

[8] Ion Bria, “The liturgy after the Liturgy” in Ion Bria ed. Martyria/Mission: The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980), 67.

[9] St. John Chrysostom. Homily 50.

Christians must remember that the Christ who is really, truly and substantially present in the Eucharist is the same Christ who is also personally present in the poor and downtrodden of this world. These two presences of Christ must be kept together and understood as complementing each other. We cannot consistently choose the comfortable real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and ignore the disturbing personal presence of Christ in the poor and downtrodden. – See Emmanuel Clapsis, “The Eucharist as Missionary Event in a Suffering World” in Petros Vassiliadis ed. Orthodox Perspectives on Mission (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 65, footnote 7.

[10] Emmanuel Clapsis, “The Eucharist as Missionary Event in a Suffering World” in Petros Vassiliadis ed. Orthodox Perspectives on Mission (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 62.

[11] This is an Ignatian concept. Church is a Eucharistic community with the Bishop as the image of Christ. Thus a Bishop is not just to identify with Christ but bound to be identical to Christ.  

[12]Petros Vassiliadis ed. Orthodox Perspectives on Mission (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 5.

[13] John D. Zizoulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: SVS Press, 1985), 132.

[14] John D. Zizoulas, Being as Communion, 140.

[15] K. M. George, “Mission for Unity Or Unity for Mission: An Ecclesiological/Ecumenical Perspective” in Petros Vassiliadis ed. Orthodox Perspectives on Mission (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 113.

[16] George Flosovsky, “The Elements of Liturgy” in C Patelos ed. The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC, 1978), 172.

[17] Metropolitan George Khodre, “The Church as the Privileged Witness of God” in Ion Bria ed. Martyria/Mission: The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980), 31.

[18] Chris Morton, “Churches are Closing: These Four Models are Thriving”, https://www.missioalliance.org/churches-are-closing-these-four-models-are-thriving/?fbclid=IwAR1gSCd5PD6o-j1U1Gl6uurlGIZwb94gxIdlYZVNX4hRwMat4h5hFuivFUQ

[19] Chris Morton, “Churches are Closing”

[20] Didache 9:4

[21] Matt 12:30 - NRSV

[22] Metropolitan Emilianos Timiadis, “The Missionary Dimension of Monasticism” in Ion Bria ed. Martyria/Mission: The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980), 43.

[23] Your Kingdom Come: Report on the World Conference on Mission and Evangelism (Geneva: WCC, 1980), 206.