The visible sign is bread and wine, which Christ commands us to receive.
To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism
How are we to perceive the presence of God in the world? We see throughout the Bible from the time of creation to Christ’s living among humanity that God communicates through the material. More specifically through the use of signs and symbols. It is through signs, symbols that our rites and sacraments become animated by the Spirit so that we can more tangibly participate with God in our present church-age.
Megan McKenna, in her book Rites of Justice, says that “our rituals, our sacraments, like Jesus Christ, are more than words in a language we now understand. Sacrament is symbol, mystery, an icon, a doorway where God comes in. The sacraments and liturgy provide us with endless opportunities to encounter God, to respond to the Spirit, to convert our lives.”1 She is emphasizing that we tend to be overly verbal persons when it comes to understanding God, but as embodied persons, it is in our engagement with symbol and action that our rites become most powerful.
As Anglicans, we believe that matter matters. Humanity was created by matter and “we exist bodily, not just mentally. There is nothing we don’t know that we do not know through our bodily powers of perception.”2
In Nonna Verna Harrison’s book, God’s Many-Splendored Image, she explains that the early church fathers and Greek philosophers understood human perception of having two realities, one of the invisible world and that of the visible world. We are able to perceive the visible world through the material via our bodily senses of sight, hearing, touch and the like. She says, “We see something more when we see God in the things he has made. The natural world becomes a window or a door into God’s presence.”3
We perceive God more fully in the sacrament when our whole body, senses included, are able to enter into the rite. It is no wonder that within the Sacrament of the Eucharist we experience very tactile, sensory-engaging elements within the ritual. The visible sign of bread and wine speak of a deeper spiritual reality that we perceive through the sense of seeing it, breaking it, touching it, smelling it, corporately receiving it, chewing it, and drinking it. God engages all our senses with matter so that our whole person can more fully perceive the grace being given. It is the visible sign that we receive, perceive, ingest which beckons us to encounter the deeper reality it represents.
Richard Hooker, Anglican theologian in the 16th century, wrote the experience of the Eucharist this way, “Since God’s Person is invisible and cannot be discerned by us, it seemed good, in the eyes of His heavenly wisdom, that we should be able, for some particular purpose, to recognize His glorious presence. He gave us a simple and reasonable token whereby we might know what we cannot see.”4
The visible sign helps our entire being interpret the spiritual reality of Christ’s presence in death and ascension in the Eucharist. Knowing how God speaks to us, we can plausibly believe that by feeding on bread and wine we are very truly experiencing the spiritual food of Christ’s body and blood. The visible signs are lines of communication signaling our memory to recall and recommit to our covenantal relationship with God.
Engaging with the outward signs of the sacrament, according to Schillebeeckx, a Dutch theologian in the 1950s and 60s, opens up the possibility of falling in love with God.5 These visible signs make the invisible mystery of God more apparent to our perceivable senses. The signs awaken our awareness of God’s presence in the world.
When our senses awaken to God’s communicating to us through created matter we can begin to perceive the inward graces offered through the sacraments.
Next Week: Eucharist as an Invisible Grace
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Footnotes:
- McKenna, Megan. Rites of Justice: The Sacraments and Liturgy as Ethical Imperatives. Orbis Books. Maryknoll, NY. 1997. p. 19
- Cooke and Macy. Symbolism, Root of Ritual. Oxford University Press. New York, NY. 2005. p. 7
- Harrison, Nonna Verna. God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation. Baker Academic. Grand Rapids, MI. 2010. pp. 51(paraphrase), 53 (direct quote)
- Secor, Philip. Richard Hooker on Anglican Faith and Worship: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Book V—A Modern Edition. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London, England. 2003. p. 218
- Martos, Joseph, Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introduction to the Sacraments in the Catholic Church. Liguori/Triumph. Liguori, Missouri. 2001. p. 110
