Are Sacraments “mere symbols”?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

          It is common among some circles of Protestant Evangelical Christians to exalt the preaching and teaching of the word and to look for signs of spirituality while feeling that those of us who make much of the sacraments simply don’t understand the real spirituality of Christianity.  The thinking is that God isn’t really interested in ceremonies, mere symbols, or rituals.  He sees the heart and he wants faith that doesn’t resort to resting on trinkets, magic incantations, or anything but a spirituality of the heart.  So when those of us who happen to believe that God is present in the sacraments are trying to express what we believe we are often asked a question something like, “Isn’t baptism a mere symbol?”  “Isn’t the Eucharist or if you prefer “the Lord’s Supper” a mere symbol?  I don’t want to be too hard on people who think that way.  I once thought more that way than I would like now to admit.  But now that sort of thinking seems strange to me and I am going to try to say why it seems so strange to me.

          First, does it seem strange that only in religion and in discussing theology we feel this strange need to couple two words together that never go together anywhere else in life?  It is so easy for someone discussing religion to describe one of the religious rituals known as the sacraments as a “mere symbol.”  Have you ever thought how you don’t refer to “Stop Signs,” the letters of the alphabet, the words formed by the letters of the alphabet, the books written with the symbolic words spelled by letters as “mere symbols?  The fact is, in ordinary life we almost always seem to couple “symbols” not with mere symbols, but with actual realities described and expressed in the forms of realities?  Symbols almost always are linked to realities in ordinary life.

          Try an experiment to see how others regard symbols in real life.  If you are driving an automobile and come up to an intersection with a stop sign at that intersection and there is a policeman behind you instead of stopping at the stop sign, push the gas pedal to the metal and squeal out as fast as you can.  Chances are the policeman will prove to be very sacramental in his understanding of stop signs.  He will not be the least amused when you tell him “Sir you do realize that stop sign was a “mere symbol”.  He will tell you something that effectively says, “Yes and its meaning was to stop and since you didn’t I am writing you a ticket and you will need to pay this fine or appear in court on such and such a date to present to the judge your belief that this stop sign is a mere symbol.”  The policeman, and probably the judge as well, and most of everybody you know will probably think you were quite a fool for imagining that a stop sign was a “mere symbol” so you shouldn’t have to stop for it.

          Let’s imagine that a woman is wearing a wedding ring.  Some people I suppose have an understanding that a wedding ring is a mere symbol.  But most people still imagine that once someone has said their marriage vows and a ring has been placed on their finger that the ring that is worn is worn symbolizing something unique and sacred to be shared in by two people and two people alone.  If a guy, whether he hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care flirts and comes on to a woman wearing a wedding ring, what sort of thing is the woman saying, if she raises her hand towards the man and with her other hand points out the wedding ring she is wearing.  Somehow the idea “mere symbol” doesn’t come to mind.  On the other hand if after a heated argument the married woman says some expletives to her husband and says I’m going out and throws her wedding ring on top of a dresser while dressing for a night on the town is that act with that mere symbol meaningless or does it convey all too much meaning?  So what is it about baptism, and about the Lord’s Supper or the Holy Eucharist that has turned these symbols from being symbols with very real meanings into “mere symbols?”  I guess I have lost my ability to think of Holy Baptism or the Holy Supper as mere symbols.  The two words don’t seem to go together any more than stop sign and “mere symbol” or wedding ring and “mere symbol.”

          A lot of churches, where the sacraments are commonly viewed as “mere symbols”, take the preaching of the Scriptures very seriously.  I actually think this is part of the reason why these churches and the Christians in them are often quite blessed even if they disagree with how Christians through the centuries usually viewed the sacraments.  But I wonder if they have thought through why they exalt the preaching of the Scriptures and imagine the sacraments to be mere symbols.  What if they used the same way of viewing the sacraments to look at the Bible and human preaching of the Scriptures?

          Can you imagine how frustrating it would be for a minister to see his wife and children carrying on as if nothing important was taking place while the minister preached the word?  The minister says to his family when they are at home, “Why were you carrying on so while I was proclaiming the Scriptures today?”

          One by one the members of the family talk about how they realized that preaching was just the use of “mere symbols” to point to Christ and so had nothing really at all to do with Christ.  Surprised the minister says, “What do you mean?”

          A daughter says, “Well Daddy remember when I asked you if it is true that the alphabet is a group of symbols representing certain sounds human beings can make?”  The minister replies, “Well yes, the alphabet is a group of symbols.”  An older child then said, so if the alphabet is merely a group of symbols representing sounds then words are merely symbols also, simply names we give to ideas, and if words are merely symbols, then whole books are merely collections of large numbers of mere symbols.  Then the minister’s wife said, “After our discussion I realized that the Bible is as much a collection of symbols as Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  So your preaching must be as much a mere symbol as some ritual like baptism or the Lord’s Supper.”

          Perhaps this is a far-fetched example.  But would people think differently of the proclamation of the Scriptures, of Baptism, of the Eucharist, or of other ministries of the church sometimes described as sacraments if we separated the concept of symbol forever from the slander of "mere symbol"?  We can consider how instead of thinking of Holy Communion as a “mere symbol” we think of it as a true symbol.  Was Jesus saying nothing when he said to his disciples “this is my body” of the bread and then “This is my blood” of the cup?  In some ways isn’t the symbol a reminder to us that He has promised to be present in our partaking of these blessed symbols?  Am I to take and eat or take and drink thinking “this is a mere symbol” or am I to take and eat, and take and drink thinking of him saying “This is my body” and “this is my blood”?  The symbol is important because the symbol is connected and cannot be separated from an unseen but dramatically essential reality.  The symbol of the body and blood of Christ is only so much a symbol as it relates and presents to us the unseen reality that in taking what Christ has offered in this supper we partake of him; of his body and blood unto our present and eternal salvation.

          Once one begins to think in that way, then our thoughts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper begin to be viewed with real substance in the Christian life.  If for instance you are a member of a church that baptized you as an infant, you are reminded by the baptisms of other infants that your parents as Christian parents made vows to raise you in the fear and teaching or admonition of the Lord.  They brought you to be baptized because they believed that God had placed a claim on the offspring of Christian parents so that they were to be raised in the Lord.  Someday you have to decide, in addition to your parents' decision for you, to live as one having been baptized or to reject your baptism outright.  To live as if one is baptized is to live as if one has been baptized into the death of Jesus Christ and to live as if one has been raised in Christ’s resurrection to live a holy life unto God the Father.  Baptism grows in meaning because it was a sign and symbol connected to the reality of Jesus Christ; his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and resurrection.  The same is true of Holy Communion.  We partake of Christ, he wishes for us to partake of him and to invite him in to our innermost being.  We eat knowing that we live, and have our beings in Christ and that his life is meant to be expressed through us.  Baptism is done once because it is the beginning, the initiation, our birth into the kingdom of heaven.  We partake in the Supper often and continually throughout life because life even once born needs nourished and fed and grace once granted to us needs to be fed and nourished continually if it is to grow and mature unto completion.  We are born into God's kingdom through Christ and we are granted to mature towards Christ, always in Christ.  The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the God-given symbols that both explain and enable the realities symbolized.

          These sacraments furthermore are not private rituals or devotions.  They are meant to be celebrated and partaken within the assembly of the gathered church.  While the quiet time of an individual in prayer and Scripture reading takes place hidden from our brothers and sisters in Christ, the sacraments are partaken in the company of our brothers and sisters in the Lord and in his church.  So, as we partake of the sacraments, we look at ourselves and know that each of us as individuals are no more baptized than our brother or sister, and am given no more truly the body and blood of Christ than others who partook of the supper with faith.  So we are reminded by the sacrament that we are not holier than others but rather are baptized in the same person of Jesus Christ and partake of the same body and blood of Christ as the least among us.  Indeed it is the least among us that Christ wants us to be concerned about, even as we are concerned about ourselves.  How can we doubt that if we partake of the same body in the bread and the same blood of the cup and are washed with the same washing of baptism?

          Do you see why I know longer understand what it means for a sacrament to be a “mere symbol.”  It may be more than a symbol, but even if it were only a symbol then it would be forever linked to that which it symbolizes and could not be regarded as separated from the reality it was meant to illustrate, communicate, and enable.  I believe in the symbol to such a degree that when Christ says “This is my body” that though I do not know how to explain it, that it must be that when I partake of the supper that through this supper I partake of him as he offers himself for us to become in us so that in him we might be transformed into expressions of his life in the world.  Because I believe in the symbol I am assured of the presence of the reality which the symbol communicates.

         In the early or ancient church the goal of worship was to proclaim Christ through Word and Sacrament.  The faith was presented not in intellect alone but also in the power of participation in the sacraments as a Christian community.  Sometimes I am not really sure what I believe about the mystery of the Lord's Supper.  I suppose I believe in the real presence, but I'm sure I would never know how to explain that.  But here is what I think would be helpful if every Christian could say they believe this:  I think it would be a source of great blessing if instead of thinking of the Lord's Supper as a "mere symbol" every Christian reading this article could think of the Supper next time as a "real " rather than "mere" symbol instituted by Christ to enable the faithful in every participation in the Lord's Supper to understand that in the bread and in the cup he presents himself unto us in connection with our salvation, and this is for every one who believing participates in this supper.  Then I think that Holy Communion will be more meaningful and you will see your religious duty not so much in what you do but in your participation in Christ, and you will see your brother and sister more truly as those who with weaknesses just as each of us also has weaknesses.  As we share a supper together of bread and a cup we will visibly be reminded that each of us partakes of Christ for himself and with the greatest and the weakest among us, and that neither the greatest nor the least is to be forgotten as having partaken of the bread and the cup.  We may look to our brethren and realize that as we partook together of this supper we must surely support one another in the life of Christ in which we have together participated.  Then as we partake in a private devotion in the morning or evening hours later in the week we will be reminded that the church gathered in unity remains as truly unified and standing with one another when the church is scattered.  The sacraments will remind us that as wonderful as it is that Christ died for me, it is also as wonderful that he died for my brother and sister; and that beyond death he was raised unto life eternal to be shared in him as one shares a meal of bread and a cup with one another.  This is no "mere symbol" but the presence of inescapable reality assured because Christ himself rose from the dead and gives Himself for us and to us and for our brethren as well.  So I will ask you, do you think this supper should be viewed as a "mere symbol"?