I was listening to “Art and Faith” (Fujimura) while I was tromping around the yard, looking for daffodils I planted last fall (like a squirrel). This section jumped out:
Hyde identifies the blind spot of modern economics and provides an alternative; he presents a hybrid model combining elements of market economies with his framework for a gift economy that would take into account creativity, the arts, and sustainability. He proposes inventive ways to share creative gifts, such as creative commons and agreements for open sourcing of creative gifts.
For me, reading Hyde’s book for the first time was like walking into the wardrobe that leads to Narnia. Hyde’s words reverberate into the enchanted heart of culture making, and the Good News presented in the Bible. Hyde writes: “A gift may be the actual agent of change, the bearer of new life. In the simplest examples, gifts carry an identity with them, and to accept the gift amounts to incorporating the new identity. It is as if such a gift passes through the body and leaves us altered. The gift is not merely the witness or guardian to new life, but the creator.”
Though Hyde does not go so far as to say this, the gift of God, “the bearer of new life,” is Christ, whom the New Testament calls not only the Savior, but also the Creator (Colossians 1:16). Christ is an example of a pure gift, and he is the Gift. During communion, the Gift literally passes through our bodies and leaves us altered (or altared, if you will)—both transforming us and sanctifying us. There is no reciprocity in this transaction: God likes to give one-way gifts that cannot be reciprocated. We cannot outgive or outgift God.
For a long time I’ve been thinking about Communion/The Lord’s Table and what I find to be the insufficiency of the memorial view that I’m most familiar with . [J. Todd Billings wrote a splendid book on the matter that I still need to finish.] Rememberance (alone) doesn’t seem to reflect what Jesus was doing, when he instituted it. We even call it The Lord’s Table, but we don’t invite him to join us there.
Hyde quote by Fujimura above, and Fujimura indicate what I think is closer to the reality and purpose. Jesus uses this gift and all that it represents to alter us.
Strangely, in a similar vein, I recently read Blood Music, which may seem to have nothing to do with all of this. But considering that what we bring into ourselves becomes part of us and also changes us, is a valuable tangent. Granted, we are not infected with intellegent noocytes, which will completely alter our biology and being. However, we take in other types of “intellegence” in the vast forms of media, in relationships, experiences and the like. Living our lives alters us. At least it should. We are not the fixed selves we like to think we are.
