Rev. Joseph Boyd It is good and right that we be changed by the world. It is good and right that we allow national and local moments of importance to offer their imprint on our souls, and steer us in deeper and newfound directions. It is good and right sometimes to not know what to do in the face of such magnanimous change and circumstance, and show up with open minds, open hearts, open hands, ready to receive some direction forward. In the last week we see continued protests in every major city in America against police brutality and state sanctioned violence toward black and brown people. We witness the response of more state sanctioned military violence to quell and subdue protesting. We witness those who open their homes to protect neighbors from rubber bullets, police who join protests and offer tweets of repentance and truth telling, callous and disconnected national leadership, and chaos fueled by grief, rage, and despair. We see this, and it is good and right that it changes us. It is good and right that it deepens us, stirs us, and steers us.
On June 4, 1923, a new Unitarian minister named Norbert Capek was ministering to a diverse membership in his congregation, many of whom had left the religion they grew up in. In his congregation, he had many former Catholics who no longer felt comfortabl taking the traditional communion of bread and wine, symbolizing the body and blood of Christ. He had many Jews in his congregation who also obviously had no desire to take part in this traditional Christian communion. So Capek invented a ritual that would highlight the beauty and diversity of his congregation. It has now come to be known as flower communion. The ritual, quite simply, is for each person to bring a flower representing the beauty they innately possess, and placing it on the chancel as an offering to the congregation. After everyone has placed their individual flower on the altar, Norbert Capek would deliver a short homily on how beauty is particular to each person, and how our community is enriched by the beauty found in diversity.
Following the homily, each person would come up to the altar to pick a different flower to take home with them, reminding that we are changed for the better by confronting differences. This ritual deepened and took on a new level of meaning once the Nazis occupied Prague, and imprisoned Capek as a dissident for his gospel that said that every person is beautiful and dignified, including the Jewish members in his congregation. It became a ritual of social justice. Capek was taken to a concentration camp in Dachau, and forced to endure medical experiments resulting in his death. His widow Maja came to the United States and introduced us to flower communion with the full knowledge that her husband not only created but was willing to die for what this ritual pointed to – beauty in particularity, beauty in difference.
Some of you may have a flower at home. If you don’t, don’t worry. In America in 2020, I think there is a new meaning to be found in the ritual that is now nearly 100 years old. In America, a nation steeped in centuries of violence toward the black community, a community that was and continues to be repeatedly attacked because of perceived difference, we have a new flower, a new symbol that shows us as Americans the beauty of particularity, the beauty of difference (holds up Black Lives Matter sign). Our church has been participating in a kind of communion for over a week now – handing out these symbols of beauty found in particularity, a beauty that is possessed in the pursuit of justice. A beauty worth living and dying for. As Americans, this is the symbol we need. For us to see that black lives matter, and enact this truth into our daily lives, into our policing, into our view of housing, healthcare, and education – perhaps we will finally see the depth to how much each of our lives matter.
Like in Capek’s day during Nazi occupation, sadly this is still a symbol that will mark you as a dissident, as someone who will not go along with the program, when the program is state sanctioned violence and oppression. Perhaps this is the kind of communion we need in America. Perhaps it’s the kind of communion we’ve needed for at least 400 years. But today we see that, we feel that. It is good and right that we let that change us. It is good and right that we lift up beauty in particularity, even if it makes us a dissident – a freeing of our mind from blindness, complacency, and excuses, a freeing of our conscience by facing that which is ours to face, so that we might courageously live, and in doing so earn our death. Before the medical experiment that killed Capek, he wrote a prayer in his cell: “It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals. Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel. Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,
I have lived amidst eternity. Be grateful, my soul, My life was worth living. He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes. He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.”
Question for communion/discussion: What do you appreciate/or are learning about yourself in the wake of the murder of George Floyd?
