Communi-Capsules

Covid introduced the American church to a handful of impediments to worship. Singing through facemasks, social distancing in the pews, and giving your deacon a spiritual elbow bump, were all inane, and, as it turns out, wholly ineffectual penetrations of the State sphere into the Church. Perhaps the most cringe-worthy addition was the introduction of these prepackaged communion cup/wafer combos. Though not invented for Covid, it was for many congregations their first exposure.

First reactions to the capsules were generally positive, as are most inventions that are efficient, compact, clever, and, let’s be honest, kind of adorable. Americans are very good at trimming fat and streamlining unwieldy processes. Inefficiency is a mortal sin to the innovative. Comparing apples to apples, the efficiency of the Lord’s Supper was greatly increased with the advent of these little widgets when measured in the raw number of saints per hour that can be sacramentalized.

Their introduction seemed a good idea at the time; solving problems is what Americans do best, and covid presented us with a whole caboodle of problems. Unfortunately, less thought was given to the repercussions created by solving the problems themselves. As Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Blind problem-solving makes us deaf to this proverb that whispers truth unable to be heard over the impact drivers and hammers of those busy with solutions. But some corners cannot be cut without an essential aspect of the act losing meaning.

Perceived problems of communion Sundays are not invented, there are impediments that need to be workshopped. Making bread, buying crackers, and pouring juice into the communion cups is inefficient – downright cumbersome with large congregations. Residual waste from unused sacraments can be costly. It takes a considerable amount of time for large congregations to exit pews, waddle down the aisle to receive the sacrament and return to their perch. Then, with the advent of covid, came the septic concerns of snotty kids rifling through open plates of communion crackers and the tray of communion cups vulnerable to fresh sneezes. Your local church community was relabeled as a coven of mouth-breathing vector bags whose nefarious virus-shedding needed some serious mitigation. Given these problems, the communi-capsule solution seems like a type of savior, if you will excuse the expression.

However, the ill-begotten assumption behind the solution was that significant changes could be made to a symbol medium without the loss of meaning intended by the symbol. There was a trade-off: we got the efficiency and sterility, and in exchange, we lost a familiarity with the symbol that obscures meaning.

My son captured the brow-furrowing nature of this new-fangled capsule the first time we used it in our church. Pulling out the foamy wafer, he leaned over to me, and in a whispered interrogation/exclamation said,”‘Mana?!” In our family devotions that week, we had discussed God’s provision of mana to the Israelites, and that in Hebrew the word means “what is it?” In what has to be the best religious pun in the history of the state of Colorado, he succinctly punned together that Jesus was the true mana from heaven (John 6) with the Hebrew exclamation of bewilderment over that abnormal substance. And the angels of heaven rejoiced.

He is not wrong. There is something alien about the capsules, so much so that they have become a standing joke in many circles. Juxtaposed in the wholesome ingredients at the Lord’s table, and the highly processed juice and food-based foam, is the history of the American food industry in a meme. It’s the Lord’s Supper meal deal; a rip, sip, and nip solution for the busy Christian on the go. There is a phoning it in-iness about it. It bears the most similarity to the body of Christ in that neither His eternal body nor the foam wafer will ever see decay. This is His body, prepackaged for you.

I have spoken with Christians in many churches who share a similar jocular incredulity toward such kitsch. One man quipped they are to the Supper as a Twinkie is to a wedding cake. Another said the wafer reminds him of the dissolvable antipsychotics he gives his schizophrenic patients. Just today, a woman told me that the little wafer always reminds her of a slice of tampon. And, my favorite, another man referred to them as the “Last Suppository”. In a day where there is increasing interest in the source and wholesomeness of food, the Christian church has demonstrated we give as much thought to the centrality of our worship as a long-haul truck driver selecting a Slim Jim.

Now, you may disagree with my sardonic take on these little guys. Perhaps you are the one who purchased the first batch for your church. Maybe you even keep a few in your purse for a quick nip, like a 5-Hour Energy for the soul? If that is you and you are quite content with these cups, allow me to make an observation and then leave it to you for your consideration.

Marshall McLuhan adroitly observed in the 1960s that, in a world of changing media “the medium is the message.”  This means the medium through which a message is carried has a vital role in the way that message is perceived; the mechanism through which a message is delivered is itself a message. Compare the medium of a handwritten letter to a serial post on X (Twitter). Patience, care, thoughtfulness, and intimacy are the medium message of pen and parchment, where impersonal, disconnectedness, non-linearity, and flippancy are just a few adjectives that come to mind with X. If a young man wants to communicate love, affection, and tenderness to his fiancé, choosing the medium of X would be in poor taste, even if his sentiment towards her is no less ardent. Mediums matter.

Applying McLuhan’s observation to the communi-capsule is a rather depressing exercise, even when the message of the Lord’s Supper remains intact. This is because in this case, the medium is much closer to the message; I am not merely “reading the text” of the medium, the bread and cup, but eating and imbibing the medium through which I receive the message. One link in the chain is removed. I am not hearing the message and then translating the symbols in my mind to comprehend it. The sacraments are their own medium/message combo capsule, if you will. So what is the message in this medium?

Prepackaged cups are single-serving, individualized, and atomistic. Echoes of Fauci’s isolationism reverberate. Participation is pulseless. Aesthetics are absent. The message is an unnatural one. Though there is no option to purchase the cups “pre-blessed”, this was an actual question addressed on the FAQ page on one company’s website, implying the cups are the type of product where this is considered a sensible request. They are shipped in a box of 500. It is quick and digestible to modern sentiments. They were manufactured for speed, efficiency, and sterility – a solution to protecting our time, our health, our comforts. Consequently, much effort is spent to encapsulate our values, while less effort could not be put into symbolizing the most precious substance in history.

Suppose we had all the accouterments of Thanksgiving dinner, but all reduced and dehydrated into multicolored capsules, and gathered around a table with a handful of pills rolling around on our plates. Wouldn’t we all feel as though we had missed out on some central aspect of the meal? Thanksgiving is augmented by the aesthetic bounty. Its purpose is not to fulfill an annual requirement or tick a box, prove that we accomplished giving thanks that year. Our sharing of the Lord’s Supper as a body is to remember the great Abnormality of God rescuing us from death through a body and blood symbolized in most familiar, normal forms.

As I say, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is a mashup of both medium and message where the medium is the message. He did not write a message on the bread and hand it to his disciples to read, or scribble a note on the table with a wine-dipped pinky. The word was to be eaten, his blood drank. The medium of the message was familiar and natural, they are the gospel concisely stated.

Of course, the reality of his bodily death and resurrection is more important than the symbol, as a marriage is more important than the wedding ring that symbolizes it. Yet our Lord provided for us the medium through which the message was to be understood; a message that becomes obscured and unnatural as we remove it from its natural form.

Nothing magical will happen if, suddenly, all churches everywhere abandoned the communi-capsule and returned to wine and homespun bread. There is no such thing as instant holiness that can be absorbed through the gut. What draws us closer to the joy of God is hearing his words and seeing His heart, and we have to squint pretty hard to see how this unnatural plastic medicine cup resembles the Supper of His intention. Bread and wine were created to speak, and their voices are heard most clearly in the everydayness of the elements of His choosing. And this bread and wine is simply bread and wine, not some abstracted, freeze-dried second-cousin twice removed gluten pâté.

What I believe will happen if we abandon the communi-capsules is that it will take us a step closer to the embodiment of the gospel through a more intentional communion. That in itself is a symbol – the choice to move toward taking the joy and reality of the gospel seriously. The level of disconnect between us and real food and real drink in the sacraments is a metaphor for the level of disengagement the American church has with the world we occupy. The communi-capsule is made after our image, according to the likeness of our anxieties and preferences, manufactured to the specifications of our schedules.

Taking the step to move away from the capsules will reintroduce, perhaps, some inefficiencies, wastes, and, yes, some cracker sneezes. But the conviviality, nearness, and communal spirit of communion will be revivified as we pay new attention to the Supper, what it is, and what it intends to be for us.