The cover of David Grumett's book immediately captures the viewer's attention: Christ's emaciated body on a cross-shaped winepress, head bent down, half-opened eyes watching blood pouring from his hands into the vessel beneath. The crimson blood then saturates the bottom half of the book cover, where the title is announced: Material Eucharist. Before even opening the book, we know that this monograph will take seriously three things: the centrality of Christ, the messy material stuff of life and the integral relationship between the two.

Grumett follows through admirably on the promise of the cover, offering a wide-ranging constructive theological investigation of the eucharist rooted in attention to materiality, an oddly neglected theme in contemporary eucharistic theology. To begin, he attends closely to the materiality of bread and wine: to the natural and cultural processes that shape these material products used in eucharistic rituals. Even in natural and human cultural processes, Grumett argues that the presence of Christ is already at work. There is no corner of creation that is not always already animated by the living Christ. He rejects any secular materialism that presents ‘matter and its products as self-sufficient and self-sustaining’ (p. 4). His exploration of ‘material elements’ is not biological or anthropological, but relies primarily on patristic and medieval interpretations of grain, salt, oil, water, leaven, grape and vine, drawing out layers of symbolic interpretation of these ingredients. Thus does Grumett evoke the ‘transformative, spiritual, and sacramental character of all natural objects’, a universal character of the created order which is fulfilled in the eucharist (p. 70).

Chapter 2 turns to embodied liturgical actions. Like many liturgical theologians of the past few decades, Grumett argues that we need to pay more attention to actions, not just texts, to appreciate the fullness of the eucharist. Notable in this chapter is his appeal to allegorical interpretation of the liturgy (from his ample use of patristic and medieval writings). Despite critiques from theologians like Alexander Schmemann, who derided the Western tendency toward excessive allegory, Grumett argues for the power of allegory to nurture materialist appreciation for the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. As liturgical actions become symbols for events in the life of Christ, or for events in the heavenly realm, worshippers are drawn to participate in both the earthly life of Jesus and eternal worship in heaven.

Following these opening chapters, Grumett goes on to describe a fully trinitarian vision of the eucharist as a primary site where Christ is at work drawing all things to himself. He explores, in turn, creation and preservation (in which Christ is the ‘bond of creation’), incarnation and reconciliation (in which Christ is substantially present in the eucharistic elements, but also overflows those elements to be present in the entire world), and resurrection by the power of the Spirit (by which each communicant receives the risen Christ and is received into the body of Christ). The epilogue presents this concise summary of the project: ‘In the Eucharist, the bread and the wine are transformed into [Christ's] flesh and blood, and taken into the material flesh and blood of believers, who are in turn assimilated into the flesh and blood of the Christ whom they consume. By means of physical proximity and assimilation, whether at the altar or in the wider social world, this flesh and this blood thereby draw believers, whether living, departing, or at rest, into the life of Christ’ (p. 299).

A self-identified ‘Anglican with Roman Catholic leanings’, Grumett relies heavily on patristic and medieval sources as well as liturgical practices from Christian traditions that have set texts and rubrics. His command of such liturgical sources is impressive: Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran, and wide varieties of Orthodox and other Eastern churches from early centuries to the present. Even so, for readers from traditions with more freedom in liturgical expression, the lack of attention to such contemporary eucharistic practices feels restrictive, with little attention to Presbyterian and Reformed practices until the final chapter, no mention of Baptists and virtually no engagement of Pentecostalism. Having said this, as a Reformed theologian I celebrate that when Grumett does turn attention to Calvin's eucharistic theology, he presents a lucid and helpful account that shows how Calvin's strong eucharistic pneumatology might enrich both Catholic and Lutheran interpretations.

This volume offers a compelling vision of the whole creation, in all its fleshly mess, dynamically drawn into the risen body of Christ, singing out in glory to God. In this way, Grumett resonates with Gerard Manley Hopkins’ radiant vision in ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’:

As for Hopkins, so too for Grumett, ‘each mortal thing’ attests not only to itself, to its own individual materiality, but (by the Spirit) to the Christ who creates, sustains and animates the whole material cosmos. For a world so often bereft of any sense of sacramentality, it is a hopeful vision indeed.