Thus, every proud discourse, experience, and belief is invited at the ecclesial assembly again and again to be given away. In their prayers the fabric these people weave all week long unravels outward to a world made new, an outside, an eschaton, an eschatos,82 that is to liberate what was and is—in the future of the particular body of redemption in whose name they pray. The telos of work is here no longer the “goal” of Greek teleology, the stately oak already hidden in the acorn.83 A new bright, sunless dawn breaks in on and thus dis-closes all 360° of every work-horizon. In time the geometric circle, as such, encloses only dead water. It is as it is spilled that water lives, i.e., that circles, coming to their end, empty what they might have contained, in deferral to the host, the guest,84 who kindly refuses both the offer to property rights and the threat of eviction. These liturgical prayers declare that there will have been “perfection,” “fulfillment,” “satisfaction,” “abundance,” “maturity,” “sanctification.” Even now, it is said, there is a donation of that eschatological teleios. Yet it will have happened only because it will have come; “so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:9). It is a holy circle, one precisely as many partake ecstatically85 in that elusive Holy Trinity that will forevermore occur, gratuitously, as a kind of “other-ing,” partake enhypostatically, not in every respect unlike the glorified mutilated body of Jesus Christ—that is to say, to love in a certain way.86
The liturgy of the eucharist is gift. It is given with the particularity of the name Jesus,87 a name with a baptismal history, a name washed in the coming of the Reign of that Holy Father who opens among and to one after another “little one” of this world and speaks there in the wingbeat of the dove: “this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” This corporate work is no healing act, i.e., not as the institution of a closed integrity, a “wholeness.” It heals only as sacrifice,88 standing out prayerfully into the faithfulness of the Holy One who comes to dwell in the work of these people—without ceasing to be holy. It is a healing act in the way that the evocation of Abram from his Chaldean home, never to return, was a healing act, viz., as a journey of promise (Gen 12:1). It is a healing act in the way that the march of Moses into Egypt from the backside of the desert was a healing act, viz., carried by the shout of the unimaginably free God: “Let my people go!” (Ex 5:1; cf. 3:14). It is a healing act in the way that the raising of Lazarus was a healing act, viz., as a call issuing out of the coming Reign of God to “come forth” (John 11:43). It is a healing act in the way that the resurrection of Jesus was a healing act, viz., as the emptying of a tomb by the egress of a body still wounded—gloriously open and inviting (Luke 24:39; John 20:27). It is that healing act that breaks through “what is” from a future never to be cordoned off by the locked arms of a company of guards.
(Let us say that a Brazilian mother and her little baby make their way across the Sonoran Desert, elude the watchful eye of Homeland Security in the Imperial Wildlife Refuge, find kindness among strangers, are given transport across Imperial County and beyond, and at long last find a place to bathe and sleep and eat in South Central Los Angeles. One Sunday morning she, perhaps, makes her way with her baby and the man with the wide face, with broad shoulders and huge hands, who from all appearances could never have begun to finance such a long, long pilgrimage north, to this little church. Let us say that she and they sit just across the aisle from a politically sensitive and intellectually curious man who, because he could, has driven into the neighborhood from across town to attend a vigil at South Central Farm. Let us say that he and they rise together one moment, fall together into one line, walk one after the other toward the front of the church, and together kneel side by side at one altar rail to receive the one crusty bread and drink the one sweet wine. When that bread and then that wine touch their tongues, with what have they been fed? How are they now nourished to live, to respond, to pray?)89
1. Mark 2:22: “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”
2. Jenkins, Next Christendom, 2–3, 90–105; and Jenkins, New Faces of Christianity, 8–10. Cf. Senior, “‘Beloved Aliens and Exiles,’” 27–28: “Contrary to human wisdom, those who are comfortable in place, fortified with the security of land and possessions and food, are also in danger of delusion about ultimate reality. In the overall landscape of the gospel stories, the rich and powerful are often ‘in place’—reclining at table, calculating their harvest, standing comfortably in the front of the sanctuary, or seated on the judgment seat passing judgment on the crimes of others. The poor, on the other hand, are often mobile or rootless: the sick coming from the four corners of the compass seeking healing; the crowds desperate to hear Jesus, roaming lost and hungry; the leper crouched outside the door of Dives.”
3. Cf. Hagan, “Faith for the Journey,” 5: “poor and working-class Latin Americans share a long historical tradition of turning to religion for solace and guidance in times of personal crisis, such as illness or job loss. . . . The hundreds of thousands of daily petitions that pilgrims leave at shrines and churches throughout Latin America testify to people’s reliance on their church, its saints, and holy images when faced with personal problems or formidable challenges.”
4. Ruiz Marrujo, “Gender of Risk,” 226, 235: There are “growing numbers of women leaving their homes without documents. Estimates for the northern border [of Mexico] show that women now make up 20 percent of the migratory flows across that border, while data from the southern border reveal even higher rates. . . . [This is] reflected worldwide, where female migrants make up almost 50 percent of the planet’s migratory flows.”
5. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “belief, n.”: “The word shows considerable semantic overlap with the later French loan faith n. Especially in theological use, a distinction is frequently made between the two words, belief referring