Exhortation, January 2

God is a communicative being. He doesn?t just use words; He is the Word. He made us in His image and likeness, as communicative beings. Even if we keep our mouths firmly shut, we cannot avoid saying something; we cannot not communicate.

Suppose you want to spend an airplane flight reading instead of talking to the person sitting next to you. You want to be non-communicative. What do you do? You avoid making eye contact, working to rivet your gaze to your magazine. Your body closes up, and you might turn slightly away. You keep conversation to the minimum level of politeness, and if your neighbor begins to talk you answer with monosyllables or grunts or monosyllabic grunts. You communicate your desire not to communicate. (Husbands know these tricks, and often use them sinfully to avoid talking to their wives. We can sin with our lips without even opening them.)

This aspect of being human is critical for thinking about liturgy, as we will be doing in the sermon this morning. Whether we do something in worship, or avoiding doing it, we communicate something. When a minister leads worship in a business suit, his clothing is not silent. Whether we put a tablecloth on the table or don?t put a tablecloth on the table, we are saying something about the Supper, about beauty, about what the table is for.

Let me say a word about liturgical colors. Historically, many churches have marked the seasons of the church year by colors that represent the spirit tone of the season. Advent, at the beginning of the church year, is marked either by a blue that represents the royalty of Jesus whose birth we await, or by purple, which symbolizes Israel?s penitent waiting before the Messiah appeared. Christmas celebrates Jesus?Ebirth, and its color is white, representing the glory and purity of the Incarnate Son.

We have begun to use these liturgical colors, and that says something about our understanding of the Christian life, about the importance of material things in life and worship, about the role of beauty, about how we see ourselves in relation to other churches and churches of other centuries, and much more. We need to remember that these particular colors are not prescribed in Scripture, and so we should hold loosely to particular practices and symbols. They are unnecessary to Christian worship. But we should also recognize that not using liturgical colors says something too. And we should remember that love delights in the unnecessary.