"The Cup of the Lord" and the "Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death"

I was honoured to participate in the project by Young People's Theology: Theology in the Episcopal Tradition on the Articles of Religion. My essay on Article XXX - alongside an excellent essay on the same Article, exploring what the Article means for the dignity of the latiy - can be found here. As always, reviewing my essay (written in early May), I would change aspects of it and seek to make the central arguments clearer. The section I am most content with, however, is reproduced below, exploring how partaking of "the Cup of the Lord" is effectual sign of the Eucharist as the "commemorating rite and representment" of the Lord's sacrifice, or, in other words from Jeremy Taylor, as "commemorative sacrifice". The section is entitled 'Sacrifice'.

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Classical Anglican critique of communion in one kind drew attention to how it disrupted the sacramental sign. The Homily on the Sacrament warned that “the author” of the sacrament must be heeded, “lest, of two parts, we have but one.” Jeremy Taylor similarly urged against going “from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half”. This continues to have relevance in a contemporary Anglican context in which the Eucharist as fellowship meal, rather than the “Sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death”, can be evident, a fruit of the “shallow and romantic sort of Pelagianism” which Michael Ramsey perceived in aspects the Parish Communion movement.

There is why attention should be given to the particular significance in the relationship between “The Cup of the Lord” and the Eucharist setting before us “the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ”, “the merits of the most precious death and passion of thy dear Son”. In the words of Jeremy Taylor:

Whatsoever the Spirit can convey to the body of the church, we may expect from this sacrament; for as the Spirit of Christ is the instrument of life and action, so the blood of Christ is the conveyance of His Spirit.

Partaking of the Cup – “his blood in the Sacrament of Wine” [Jewel] – in a particular manner sets before us the Lord’s sacrifice, recalled in the Eucharist as “commemorating rite and representment” [Taylor]. As Fleming Rutledge states with admirable clarity:

The use of the phrase “blood of Christ” in the New Testament carries with it this sacrificial, atoning significance in a primordial sense; we cannot root out these connections even if we want to.

This is evident in the third Exhortation in the 1662 rite:

the innumerable benefits which by his precious blood-shedding he hath obtained to us.

It is, however, in the the words of administration for the Cup in the classical Prayer Book tradition that the particular relationship between the Cup and the sacrificial commemoration of the Eucharist is given most its profound and beautiful expression:

The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life: Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.

The repetition of “shed for thee,” rather than being awkward and unnecessary, is an almost poetic device unfolding to the communicant the assurance of the tender mercy poured out in and through “the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby”.

To partake of “The Cup of the Lord,” then, is to encounter the gift and reality that the Eucharist is “not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another,” for “the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ”. That “primordial sense” referred to by Rutledge is presented to our senses, is tasted by us, the effectual sign of the fruit of sacrifice made present in the Eucharist:

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine [Herbert].

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(The illustration is a detail from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Grünewald.)

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