Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [265]
The other obvious liturgical rite of the Early Church was “the Lord’s Supper.” Paul himself used this title when describing the rite (1 Cor 11:20). The title itself establishes the relationship of the rite with the name of Christ, as we already know that the designation of kyrios is part of the church’s primitive proclamation of the risen Christ’s divinity through association with Daniel 7:13, Daniel 12:3, Psalm 110, and probably Psalm 8. Likewise, in 1 Cor 11:27 and 10:21 Paul referred to the “cup of the Lord” and the “table of the Lord,” which only underlines the same liturgical use of the name Lord in early Christianity.
When Paul described the tradition he knew about the eucharistie words of Jesus, he stated that the ritual was to be done in remembrance of the Lord until He returns: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). The presence of the Lord in community was assumed by Paul to be liturgical.
At the Jewish passover, the Rabbis of the Mishnah instituted the practice that “each generation should think of itself as if it too was brought out of Egypt, as if it too stood at the sea, as if it too stood as Sinai.” This involved an act of imagination, and an act of telling, “and you shall tell …” which turns the ritual from being merely a remembrance to being an reenactment, a liturgical act of remembrance.
For Paul, the purpose of the Lord’s Supper liturgy is, quite similarly, an imaginative reenactment, through the wine and bread, an anamnesis for the Lord until he comes. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul alluded directly to Jesus’ death as a Passover sacrifice. Again, it is the proclamation of the death of Christ in the Lord’s Supper which Paul connected with remembrance of Him. So this rite confirmed the believer’s coming to be “in Christ.” This is a strikingly different view from that of the Synoptic Gospels.
The Transformation of All Believers in Suffering
OF COURSE, the mystical experience of conversion is not only with the risen Christ in liturgy but with the crucified Christ, as well. The most obvious relationship between the believer and Christ is suffering and death (Rom 7:24; 8:10, 13). By being transformed by Christ, one is not simply made immortal, given the power to remain deathless. Rather one still experiences death as the Christ did, and like him survives death for heavenly enthronement. This is a consequence of the Christian’s divided state. Although part of the last Adam, living through Spirit, the Christian also belongs to the world of the flesh. As James Dunn has noted: “Suffering was something all believers experienced-an unavoidable part of the believer’s lot-an aspect of experience as Christians which his converts shared with Paul: Rom 5:3 (‘we’); 8:17 (‘we’), 2 Cor. 1:16 (‘you endure the same sufferings that we suffer’); 8:2; Phil. 1:29ff. (‘the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine’); 1 Thess. 1:6 (‘imitators of us and of the Lord’); 2:14 (’imitators of the churches of God in Judea: for you suffered the same things’); 3:3 (‘our lot’); 2 Thess. 1:4-6.”62 And if the suffering were not actual, it was vicarious in the liturgy of baptism and the Lord’s supper. If it was real, it was the price of bringing the end. The believers fully participate in the coming end, through their missionary efforts, through their personal transformation, and finally through their suffering.
Thus, the persecution and suffering of the believers were a sign that the transformation process had begun; it is the way to come to be “in Christ.” Paul was convinced that being united with Christ’s crucifixion meant not only immediate glorification but suffering for the believers in this interim period (2 Cor 4:8-10 again). The glorification follows upon the consummation of history. The connection between suffering and resurrection was clear in Jewish martyrology; indeed the connection between death and rebirth was even a prominent part of the mystery religions as well. But the particular way in which Paul made these connections was explicitly