COMMUNICATING COMMUNION
Scriptures: Ezekiel 44:15-19
Galatians 4:8-11
Last spring when I was working with Jason and Lura in the Confirmation Class we had a section where we were talking about the sacraments and in particular the meaning of communion. We talked about contemporary words that sounded like “communion”, and the one that came to mind right away was “communication”. This led to the insight that The Lord’s Supper is itself an act of communication that reaches across the centuries and connects us in thought and deed with those who were present there in that Upper Room.
What might it mean to think of this sacramental service as an act of communication? We are bombarded in our time by too much communication – or, maybe I should say “information”, since so much of what we take in each day is really one-way supposed “communication”. “Information overload” has become almost a clichéd phrase. From radio and television and newspapers and billboards and now, of course, more than ever, the Internet we cannot escape the tumult of words, words, words. Maybe like me you’ve gotten into the habit of hitting the “Mute” button on the remote whenever the TV program goes to a commercial.
But that doesn’t really resolve the issue, does it, because there are still those pictures – those images – which have their own communicative power. It’s instructive to me how quickly the Internet went from a largely text-based medium to one which is now dominated by visuals; your web site or blog just isn’t very effective if it doesn’t have lots of pictures, and animated ones at that, on them.
Back in 1990, just as the Internet was getting going in terms of our awareness of its potential for communicating, a colleague of mine with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Ted Nottingham, produced a half-hour video for a mission education theme I was working on called “The Power of Image”. In that video Ted demonstrated how by just using visuals alone some powerful truths about religion and the nature of reality could be communicated.
Another video, produced about six years ago by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called, “The Face: Jesus in Art”, went to locations around the world to examine artistic representations of Jesus throughout the ages. Using what were then fairly new morphing techniques, an opening special-effects montage started with cosmic images that gradually morph into the eyes, then the many faces of Christ. Even though there was no pictorial representation of Christ during his lifetime, or even physical descriptions recorded, this visual morphing technique, which really blew me away the first time I saw it, captures how Christ has been seen in different cultures, centuries, and periods of art. One note in this documentary that’s important for our discussion of “communicating communion” is that during the Byzantine period in the eighth century images of Christ were destroyed by the iconoclasts for nearly a century, before it was again acceptable to venerate sacred images. Those iconoclasts knew just how potent pictorial images could be in communicating who Christ is to common people – just as seven centuries later Guttenberg’s invention of the printing press made words about Christ available to the masses thereby limiting the authority of the priesthood. The power of Christ’s image truly can inspire the peoples of the world.
Even though we use a lot of words during it, the service of The Lord’s Supper at its in-depth level is a non-verbal, symbolic form of communication. The words we use – indeed, the words I’m using right now – are symbols which are translated through your hearing of them and given that meaning and content which you give to them. That’s why we often have so much trouble communicating with words, because you may hear words differently (that is, give different meaning to them) than I intend when I say them. We are constantly needing to “define our terms”. There are those who would say that the only pure form of communication is mathematical symbols – the only real universal language – and so SETI (the “Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence”) uses mathematical symbols to see if anyone out there is “listening”. If you’ve ever watched a great mime, like Marcel Marceau, you certainly know that it’s possible to communicate content and meaning through pantomime, without using a single word. And, of course, this is the same principle a dancer uses in communicating with the body’s movements, as with an Hawaiian hula in which every gesture has its own meaning.
The Bible is filled with all sorts of non-verbal communication. Bible stories, of course, come out of oral traditions, long before the printing press, and so it was important for the story-tellers to have vivid imagery to help their listeners grasp the meaning of what they were hearing. In this strange story that Ezekiel tells about the word of God for the priests of the Temple there’s a lot of concern that the priests might communicate something of the holiness of the Temple to the people in the streets just with the visual images of the garments they are wearing. In Hebraic thinking linen was ritually clean, while wool, which came from animals, was not. So, the priests needed to change clothes before leaving so that the clothes themselves would not communicate holiness to the people outside of the Temple, since in the priestly tradition holiness communicated outside of the Temple would have been blasphemy.
But we want communication to go forward – we want the reality of Jesus the Christ to be available to everyone. And so we offer these symbols of his communication: the bread and the wine. They speak of who Jesus intended himself to be for those who believe in him. Around the elements of communion we have crafted some words, although these are not nearly as important for communication as the physical stuff of the earth that we eat and drink.
However, if communication is to be a two-way street, as we would surely want it to be, we must bring our own symbols to this table. Initially, our symbols are woven into sort of airy concepts – ideas such as repentance, forgiveness, the power of transforming love. But these symbols tend to lose their meaning because they are over-used, and so we need to look for new symbols to offer before this table that will communicate back to Jesus what we are offering here. A communion service may well be sterile for you unless you can find ways to invest old ideas with new meanings by the symbols you bring into communication with the symbols of this bread and this wine.
Why do we communicate? Well, on the surface: to exchange information. But I think there’s a deeper level to it: we hunger and thirst to know something of reality. When we see a painting by Raphael or hear a sonnet by Shakespeare something more than just words or pigments on canvass are communicated – something of the reality of the beauty in this world comes through, and we, in turn, give something of ourselves back to the picture and the poem so that we might better participate in this reality.
Throughout the centuries many have tried to find proofs for the existence of God. No one yet has proffered a proof, though, that has been universally accepted. But Jesus, and thus also the communion service, does not try to prove God exists – Jesus simply knows God – knows God as the ultimate and final reality. Just so: when we receive communion we are not looking for ways to prove God’s presence in our lives. That activity may have its own philosophical validity, but here around this table we simply – profoundly – accept God’s love for us as it is communicated through these very ordinary things of the world – through this bread and wine.
Paul’s insight into this as he writes to the Galatians is striking: “Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God…..” When we come before the communion table it is not so much to have communicated to us the full knowledge of God, but rather to let God know us – to be known by God – to open our hearts in confession and acceptance – to be known through the acts we will perform after leaving this table – to be known as creatures who accept God’s word for our lives. Paul, then, completes the thought: “Now…that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again?” Once we realize that through our acceptance of this sacrament we are known by God a change has taken place, and our lives can never be quite the same again.
What is it that is communicated in a communion service? In a nutshell: the reality of God’s presence and the actuality of our acceptance. Both must be realized for true communication to have taken place. The knowledge of the immediacy of God in our lives is communicated in a non-verbal way. The knowledge of our acceptance of God’s love is communicated by receiving these elements. So, The Lord’s Supper is two-way communication at its highest level
-- a level that reaches into the depths of human understanding and the heights of ultimate reality.
How do we know that we love God and that God loves us? Here’s a paraphrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous poem that, despite its archaic language perhaps gives us an answer to this question:
How do we know Thee? Let us count the ways.
We know Thee in the depth of love and joy
Our souls can reach, when having known Thy love
As it comes to our lives encased in Thy Grace.
We know Thee by encountering everyday’s
Most urgent need, by bread and blessed wine.
We know Thee freely, as folk of free choice!
We know Thee wholly, since Thou makest us whole.
We know Thee in the passions of our lives;
Even in our griefs; and through increasing faith.
We know Thee because Thou hast loved even me
As with the saints. We know Thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all our lives! Since Thou willest,
We shall but know Thee better after death.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
February 4, 2007