At church this last Sunday, when Rob asked the congregation the question, “What are some ways we might be the peace of Christ in the world?” I sat kind of dumbly in a fog and couldn’t think of anything.
I walked in late to church today, even though the building where we meet is only a 6 minute walk from my house, because I really couldn’t decide whether or not it was worth all the fuss of going, the fuss of impending socialization and demand on my brain and emotions and all. But I had told my girlfriend I’d be there, and she said she’d bring me coffee, so that was enough accountability to make the guilt of skipping outweigh the potential relief. Good thing there are girlfriends.
It was Christ the King Sunday, the last day in the Christian liturgical calendar. Rob preached out of Ephesians 2, primarily focused on the beginning line of verse 14: “For he is our peace…” When Rob posed his peace question, “What are some ways we might be the peace of Christ in the world?” to the congregation, he had us share answers among ourselves, and then had us volunteer to share some of our answers out loud with the rest of the church.
It is as an important time as ever to brainstorm what it means to be the peace of Christ in the world, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. This is, in part, because I am worn out by the hyper-virility of words. I am especially worn out by words that are meant to signify actions and a willingness to do them, which I do not have, even if those words and actions are good and worthwhile.
The reason I don’t have this willingness to talk or act could be because of life season, or depression, or cowardice, or because of white privilege, or an addiction to comfort, or for a whole slew of other endless reasons we could discuss endlessly with endless words. We could then respond to those discussions with poignant counterpoints and with fresh critical perspectives and with more words and ideas, and we could do this forever.
Most of this discussion could take place online, the most convenient place for sharing ideas and arguments and perspectives.
But the reason I have a hard time speaking up or thinking of ideas is largely endemic of the problem itself, which is this: even with our many words, we are failing to fully share ourselves with each other. We are failing to understand, and more frustratingly, to be understood.
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Rob’s sermon was direct and poignant. He did little tip-toeing in regard to the tensions within our country and culture right now, especially in light of the election. He mentioned, up front, “Normally I like to sprinkle in some humor in my message, but I am just not going to do that today.” But while he strode boldly into his sermon, he did so without angry condemnation nor with righteous defense of this or that political figure or party. Rather, he preached on the Kingdom politic–the idea that God’s kingdom is NOT apolitical, but nor are the politics of God’s kingdom embodied in any one political platform as we see in our country. The church, as the body of Christ, is meant to live in such a way that we are the embodiment of Good News, which involves, for one example, caring for the life of an unborn child just as much as it means caring for the expecting, unwed mother.
The ideas Rob shared in his sermon were not revolutionary ideas, as far as ideas are contained as words. The historical church has been talking about how to be the “body of Christ” in radical ways for a long time. And lately, this discussion has multiplied into a passionate and robust cacophony of voices, at least in my own circles.
But the problem is not with the words and ideas themselves. The problem, rather, is embodied in my own self in this very moment: even in writing the above synopsis of some of Rob’s sermon, I already became tired of my own words. Right now, I’m already starting to shutdown, which is my habit in the face numerous, opposing viewpoints.
Due to how we live and talk these days, goaded by the nature of Facebook and internet mediated discourse, we have a hyper-virility and excess of words. This, of course, makes me question the utility of this very post: there is a certain irony that tends the attempt to use words to talk about the low value of words, and then posting those words online to be accessed through a Facebook feed. Even if they are good words, or true words, they are still reduced to almost worthlessness because of the sheer number of words already blowing around like valueless paper cash in a hyper-inflated economy.
And yet, at church this last Sunday, and in Sunday’s past, I keep being reminded of something urgent and true, something that transcends the irony of using words to talk about the low value of words. In my experiences at Immanuel in Spokane, WA, I am somehow finding access to my deep need, the need driving me to write all this out anyway, and that need is this: to return to the place where words gained their meaning in the first place.
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Words, as they are supposed to function, are symbols, and a symbol is composed of two things: sign and signified. The sign is the thing processed by your senses: E.G. Shiny chunk of red, octagonal metal with the characters S-T-O-P emblazoned across.
The sign then signifies something which is processed by your brain. E.G. Slow your car down to a halt before passing the shiny chunk of red, octagonal metal.
In the case of words, the signs are the jumble of letters on a page or sounds gurgling from somebody’s mouth. And when you take in this data with your senses, something magical happens. The jumble of letters and the gurgles of sound are transformed into meaning!
The signified is obviously the more complicated piece. While we can get pretty close to “saying what we mean” through symbols–words or otherwise–we don’t have full control how another person interprets our messages. Our interpretation of words is packed with our own histories, lenses, and biases.
The word cat, for instance, seems objectively to mean “small, domesticated carnivorous animal with short fur and retracted claws,” but even with the ‘objective’ definition or image in our head, that definition is attended by our own particular histories and experiences with cats. Is a cat a loyal, intelligent, play companion? Or is it a snotty, entitled, piece-of-crap-killer of mice and joy, secretly plotting your murder? Or is it something in between? Or is it your friend, Catherine, who goes by “Cat” for short?
Your interpretive definition of the word cat will be as nuanced and individual as you are. Add that to the fact that we string hundreds and thousands of these words together in sentences, multiplied by the number of responses we have even just to the person crafting the message in addition to the message itself, stirred up by other factors such as tone of voice or body language or what mood we happen to be in, and it’s a miracle that we understand the signified meaning in the signs of language and communication at all.
Words, as symbols, are most effective when sign and signified are in their proper alignment, when the words and how they are employed, as signs, are arousing the same signified meaning in your audience as they signify within your intended usage. You, as the user of words, arrange words into sentences and sentences into messages and utilize methods of delivering those messages to an audience in order to foster a union of meaning with your audience. You want them to understand, to reason, and to feel about things in the way that you do. It’s why you’re putting all those articles and status updates on Facebook, after all.
The study and practice of this attempt to generate unity, to use words and symbols in such a way to get people to understand things like you do, is classically called “rhetoric.” And rhetoric has more to do with the Christian faith and how we arrive at meaning than you might initially think.
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The word “rhetoric” is almost always used and understood in a pejorative sense (i.e. “You wouldn’t BELIEVE the rhetoric coming out of that idiot’s mouth!”). We hear “rhetoric,” and perceive “malicious verbal trickery!” But it need not be. We are constantly conversing with each other rhetorically, crafting messages and using symbols strategically in order to persuade others of something we believe to be true. Your construction of your Facebook profile–your profile photo, posts, interests, relationship status, etc, is a rhetorical act. You are trying to signify something about yourself through the signs (words, photos, updates) that decorate your page.
One aspect of the heart of the Christian faith, as I have grown to love and understand it, is the fact that Jesus is a rhetorician. Did you know that? These are things you discover when you study theology and communication at the same time.
But the rhetoric of Jesus, as far as we are talking about Jesus himself (his followers, “the church,” are a different story), is without the flaws, malice, and disconnect that are inherent in all symbols. That is because the symbols that Jesus uses to win others over to himself are…himself. Jesus is both sign and signified, in perfect alignment. “For he is our peace,” says Ephesians 2:14, our text from Sunday, “…in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”
Jesus certainly used words in his teachings, but he also is the Word (John 1). It’s no wonder Jesus makes statements like “I am the bread of life” and “I am the vine” and “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He wasn’t being cryptic; just direct. But the truth wasn’t in his words alone, the signs and signifieds of which could be (and often are) received and interpreted in misunderstanding and error. Rather, the truth is in his selfhood, the meaning to which even his own words are the signs of.
Our country is suffering from many things right now, and one aspect of that suffering is a failure of our words to symbolize the meaning we so desperately want others to share. It’s a tough time for an aspiring writer, whose whole endeavor depends on the economy of words. But it isn’t that words are now meaningless. It’s just that in the way they are being used, they are failing to be effective signs for what we are hoping to signify. If our words are hyper-inflated, like too much printed cash added in a country’s struggling economy, the solution can’t be in simply generating more words. Rather, we need to return to the meaning we’ve been wanting to communicate all along, to the source that gave our metaphorical dollar its value in the first place. As Christians, we believe this source to be Jesus, and, per Jesus’ own teaching, is to be found in his body, the church.
All of the things we do at my church, even if they are extremely ordinary, are becoming important to me, because they are the actions of the body of Christ attempting to follow one of the Kingdom Politic’s most basic dictums: that we gather together. And while there are certain intentional things we do as Christians as symbols of our Christian life together (represented in the liturgy: worship, prayers, the sharing time, communion, etc), there is also just the ordinariness of a bunch of people gathered in one spot for something: inside jokes, schedules, in-groups and out-groups, not knowing who to talk to during meet-and-greet, forgetting people’s names, saying hi to people you know, saying hi to people whose names you’ve forgotten, making social plans. But this ordinariness, too, is redemptive and healing.
I am in a weird place in my life right now (but who isn’t?) which is plagued with a lot of withdrawal and isolation. It’s hard for me to want things, even good things, like serving the community, working on behalf of the marginalized, even just hanging out with my own friends, even though I know that these things are healthy, worthwhile, and good.
I think something magical starts to happen when the body, people truly after the heart of Jesus, physically gather together and sing together and share things out loud together. And even though this last Sunday, and this current season in my life in general, I hardly feel like I’m participating, and even though I just sat by my girlfriend instead of talking to people during meet and greet, and even though a lot of the service still felt like just more words, and even though I maintain the cynical suspicion that it doesn’t matter how special things feel on Sunday if it doesn’t make a difference in your life on Monday, and even though I left pretty much right away afterwards without saying goodbye to anybody, I still believe that this body of people is a body to which I am being drawn into and healed, that I am being invited into something wholesome and true, and that when this healing is done, I will be sent “out” again in mission to proclaim the truth, that Jesus is who he says he is, that the world will be as he says it shall be.
The paradox, and the beauty, is that this restoration of ourselves and being sent out into mission is often a process that happens all at the same. I am in that process, and I proclaim that mission here in the small way I feel willing and motivated.
If you want to join us, please do. We meet at the Youth For Christ building off Sharp Ave. and Ash at 10am on Sundays. I’ll be the guy not talking to you.
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“All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 14:25-27
jonathanstrain 