(All references to Dunn come from Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?. There need not be any familiarity with this work though, or Dunn’s project, for the short essay that follows.)
1 - Did the first Christians practice worship through their work as well?
While Dunn touches upon prayer, hymns, the sacred and sacrifice as early Christian practices of worship, he does not discuss the dominant practice of Paul’s faith community, namely the collective effort to produce the group’s communal meal:
“Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you.” (2 Thessalonians 3:6-9)
In this passage Paul calls his disciples to work for their bread, to earn it together through the blood and sweat of their labour. That this is a worship practice is suggested by Paul’s telling us that when we work in this way “it is God who is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for His pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)
What better way is there to worship God than to do what is pleasing to God?
2 - Does the Crucifixion seal the deal made in the Lord’s Supper?
But whether this collective labour is a kind of worship or not, it brings up a problem with Dunn’s discussion of sacrifice, which begins with a reference to Hebrews 9, where the subject is the new covenant and Eucharistic blood (versus the blood of the Crucifixion), but which is soon engrossed by Corinthians 15, where “Christ died for our sins.”
While I would make a connection between Christ’s Eucharistic blood offering and the passage I cited from 2 Thessalonians, where there is a shared idea of a sacrifice and communal meal, Dunn instead links it to the bloodshed of the Crucifixion, suggesting that Christ’s death plays the same basic role as the blood shared in the Lord’s Supper, or at least that they have the same redemptive power.
Dunn ties the two bloodlettings together by suggesting that Christ sees “his imminent death as a covenant sacrifice, a sacrifice that sealed the covenant” (54) made in the Lord’s Supper. But is this the case? Does the crucifixion seal the deal of the Last Supper as if it were a repetition or a fulfillment of the Eucharistic blood gift? Or does the blood of Christ’s death have its own redemptive significance?
3 - Does Christ die so that we do not have to, or does his death redeem humankind in some other way?
In order to bring out the redemptive difference between Eucharistic blood and the blood let at the Crucifixion it is worth noting what Dunn concludes about the first Christians, that to them “Christ was generally understood as the sacrifice that dealt effectively with sin,” (56) but in such a way that Christ’s death pays the price so that we do not have to.
While I would agree that this is true of Christ’s Eucharistic blood offering, that it pays our way, I do not think that the same is true of the blood Christ spilled on the cross.
To see that Christ’s death indeed redeems us in a different way, it is worth considering a passage that Dunn refers to, where we clearly see two moments of redemption, one brought about by Christ’s death, and the other by his new life:
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-11)
What Paul describes here is two kinds (and moments) of redemption, one where we are justified or reconciled to God by the blood of Christ’s death, and the other where we are saved by Christ’s lifeblood (in what I wager is Eucharistic communion).
So despite Dunn’s suggestion, it is not the blood that Christ sheds on the cross that seals the deal of the new covenant, but rather the resurrected lifeblood that Christ shares with his disciples is what repeats or fulfills the new covenant (so sealing the deal).
4 - How does the blood of Christ’s death redeem us, or, as Paul puts it, how does it reconcile us to God?
Unlike the Eucharistic blood offering, Christ’s death does not redeem us by paying our way, but rather it justifies us in the same way that Job does: When an adversary comes to accuse us, Christ proves his humanity and the potential humanity of us all. He does not give a gift by dying but rather his example demonstrates to those who would say otherwise that there is something of worth in humankind, something that needs saving, and that in its needing to be saved saves us all.
The blood of Christ’s death and the pain of Job’s ordeal redeem humankind like the one among the many that would have convinced God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Christ and Job are the ones who through their suffering reconcile the rest to God, not by giving so that the others do not have to, but by justifying all of humankind in the revelation of their humanity, a humanity that could be revealed through all.
What Dunn describes of the first Christians then is a conflation of the Crucifixion with the Eucharist and a lack of recognition of what is truly redemptive about Christ’s suffering and death. It is not that Christ pays for us with his life in dying, but rather that he reveals his humanity by proving his commitment to grace through death.
5 - What humanity does the crucifixion reveal?
The humanity that Christ reveals during his crucifixion is his commitment to grace. Christ is faithful to the giving and taking of the Lord, and in his faithfulness to grace his humanity is revealed.
But this commitment to grace has two sides: it is being faithful to both the giving and the taking of the Lord, where the giving clearly comes first. The humanity that Christ reveals in his crucifixion is his commitment to the giving of grace, which means Christ exhibits patient receiving.
In other words, Christ is not giving a gift in the crucifixion (a gift that pays our way) but rather he is waiting for one to be given. Through the blood and tears of an awful death and three days of being dead Christ waits for the gift of life from the Lord. He does not take life for himself but rather he waits for life to be given by grace through the most brutal conditions. In this way Christ reveals his humanity and justifies the humanity in us all, whether we reveal it or not.
6 - The blood of waiting and the blood of working?
In my first question I suggested that Dunn misses the practice of worship evident in Paul’s Christian community, where everyone must work for their bread in Eucharistic communion. Is this at odds with what I say now, that Christ proves the worth of humankind by patiently waiting, and by shedding blood in his endurance? Are we to both work (and bleed as we work) and wait (and bleed as we wait)?
In the giving and taking of the Lord the Lord’s giving comes first, which means that humankind must receive before it can give (or before the Lord can take). Christ reveals his humanity by patiently receiving, just as Abraham waits into old age for a son. Once we have received then we can labour in worship of God, using the gifts that we have been given to pay the way for others, either in straight up offering or by working with what we have been given to produce a communal meal.
With this in mind, it is not an either/or mentality but a both/and. We are to both patiently await grace as Christ does in the Crucifixion and we are to use what grace has given to work out our own salvation in Eucharistic communion.
Underneath both of these redemptive efforts is a commitment to grace that lets humanity be revealed through us, a humanity that only grace could ground.
