More Than Words Can Say

As part of my theology class last year I began exploring the topic of sacraments, most of us evangelicals do not have much knowledge or experience of the role of sacraments and symbols in our faith, one person in my class had even never heard the term sacrament before. Even Anglicans who tend to be more sacramental in their approach rarely have a good understanding of the sacraments (unless they have studied). I have been wondering ever since if we have lost our ability to express our faith and our community through sign, symbol and sacrament and what impact this loss is having on our faith.

A sign is an arbitrary reminder or expression of something invisible (a green light). In a sacrament the symbolic is linked more overtly to the invisible concept it expresses (e.g. blood and wine). Originally the word ‘sacrament’ came from secular usage of the term ‘sacramentum’. This was the oath of fidelity and obedience to one’s commander sworn by a Roman soldier upon enlistment in the army. Or the term could designate bond money deposited in a temple pending the settlement of a legal dispute.” So sacraments give us an opportunity to reaffirm our oath of fidelity to God and our community of faith but there is more to them than that. They have also been described as outward signs of an invisible grace, and they are an opportunity for divine interaction and action. Symbols signs and sacraments can usefully mediate God’s truth to our human understanding. In the pre-reformation church there were seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Ordination, Last Rites and Communion. After the reformation this was reduced to two: communion and baptism. Post-reformation (particularly due to the reformers emphasis on the word) and assisted by the rise of modernity our faith came to be word oriented and rooted in conceptual language. Robert Weber states: “the use of imagery, symbols, and even subtle language is relatively unknown among many of us. We have locked ourselves into discursive speech as the preferable, if not the only form of communication.” One reason why we evangelicals prefer verbal communication over symbolic speech has to do with our view of the Bible. We see the Bible as a book of words. It is God’s written revelation. This emphasis on the written words of Scripture coupled with neglect of the symbolic forms of communication (which constitute a large portion of Scripture) cause a loss of understanding.”

This loss of understanding is reflected in our attitude to the two sacraments that are left to us. It seems (especially for Baptists) that communion and baptism become became memorial events focussed around the words we speak and the actions themselves are not understood or seen as having as much importance. Robert Weber again says: “Baptism has become the means by which the converting person declares his or her faith; the Lord’s Supper has been reduced to an intellectual recall of Jesus hanging on the tree. We have reduced the ritual of water and of bread and wine to understandable actions. The mystery is gone.”

When faced with situations that defy verbal description, when words cannot express our relationship with God, when we are left in a place where God’s action seems incomprehensible the Church has not given us the space or tools to express ourselves. Yet our faith is one that contains a great deal of mystery, signs, symbols and sacraments are one way that the mystery can be expressed. Do we gather together as Christians just to talk or to be talked at? Grenz suggests that our gathering should be more than that “we gather to tell and enact the story and to go forth to live by the Christian metanarrative”.

It is time to expand our ways of expressing ourselves and our mysterious faith. I and many (post-moderns) that I know are looking for a holistic faith, one that is not just based on the rational that engages more than our minds. Robert Weber says “We now live in a new communication era. Communication is shifting from conceptual language to symbolic language. Information is no longer something that can be objectively known and verified through evidence and logic. Knowledge is more subjective and experiential. Knowledge comes through participation in a community, and in an immersion with the symbols and meaning of the community.”

Are words enough to express our faith? What role can and should other forms of expression play in our gatherings?

Christina