The Story of the Flower Communion
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sundy May 26, 2002
***
As religious rituals go, the Flower Communion we celebrate today is a relatively young ceremony. It has only been in existence for less than a century; yet, like the Flaming Chalice (which incidentally originated in the same part of the world, and stems from roughly the same period in our history), the Flower Communion is something which, in a relatively short time, has become virtually Universal throughout our denomination.
The Flaming Chalice was originally designed in 1941 by an Austrian artist named Hans Deutsch. Among his other talents, Deutsch was a political cartoonist who had drawn some rather unflattering caricatures of Adolf Hitler during the 30’s, which eventually forced him to flee from Vienna to Paris, and subesquently (after the fall of France) by a somewhat circuitous route to Lisbon, where he met the Reverend Charles Joy, the Executive Director of the Unitarian Service Committee. The Service Committee was actively involved in those days in the effort to smuggle Jews and other political refugees out of Nazi-occupied Europe, but because it was a new and thus relatively-unknown organization, it needed a distinctive icon, which would at once “symbolize the spirit” of the organization, lend an air of “dignity and importance” to the Committee’s official papers, and likewise serve as a clandistine badge of recognition, so that in the “cloak-and-dagger world” of this true-to-life “Casablanca”-like human drama, where “establishing trust quickly across barriers of language, nationality, and faith” could literally meant the difference between life and death, its operatives could quickly identify themselves both to strangers and to one another.
The expatriate Unitarian clergyman asked the refugee Austrian artist whether he would design such a symbol, and the result was the Flaming Chalice. Deutsch took his inspiration from the life and death of the martyred fifteenth-century Czech heretic Jan Hus, who in 1415 was burned at the stake for having taught, among other things, that both clergy and laity should participate in “Communion of both kinds” -- which is to say that he believed that the opportunity to partake of the Communion Chalice, to drink the sanctified wine miraculously transubstantiated into the Blood of Christ, should not be restricted to priests alone, but should be shared among all believers. Deutsch combined these two images: the chalice symbolizing Hus’s belief in a more democratic, egalitarian church community, and the flame by which he died for that belief, in order to create the original flaming chalice, now the international symbol of our own free faith.
The creator of the Flower Communion service was Dr. Norbert F. Capek, a twentieth-century Czech clergyman and journalist who emigrated to the United States in 1914 shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, and then, in 1921, following the formation of Czechoslovakia out of the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian empire after the war, declared himself a Unitarian, returned to his native land, and set out from scratch to found a Unitarian church in the city of Prague. Within ten years, his congregation had grown to a membership of 3,395, making it the largest Unitarian Church anywhere in the world at that time.
The first Flower Communion Service was held in that church on June 4th, 1923. The symbolism of that original service was relatively straightforward and uncomplicated — an elegance of simplicity I hope to maintain today. We bring our flowers and deposit them in a common vessel to signify that we join of our own free will to create something beautiful which is greater than any of us could have created alone. And, of course, we try to bring a little extra, so that there will be enough for those who have arrived empty-handed. At the close of the service, when we take back a flower different from the one we have brought, it symbolizes first that we accept one another, each for what we are; and likewise that as we give to the common store, so do we receive back from what we have created together. It is only by our individual participation that we are able to fill this vessel, so that all might enjoy and share of it. And just in case you hadn’t noticed, the words of the Hymns, as well as the Unison Prayers of Consecration, are Capek's own, and emphasize this theme of the Spirit of Fellowship and Brotherly Love.
Yet there is a second dimension to the Flower Communion Service, which grows out of the circumstances of Capek's own life and death. Shortly after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Capek and his congregation became “objects of interest” to the local Nazi authorities. Easily identifiable Gestapo agents stood outside the church every Sunday, keeping track of who attended, while inside the service itself, other incognito informants paid careful attention to what the preacher said to his flock, listening for subversive messages and other opinons objectional to the Third Reich. Capek responded to this survellance by learning how to express his true opinons obliquely, in parables or through subtle cultural allusions which would pass over the heads of German informants, but were still easily recognizable to his Czech parishioners. Unitarians in America attempted to arrange for Capek to come to the safety of the United States, but he declined to leave, writing back in response “my conscience would make me very unhappy if I were compelled to desert my people in these days. I therefore feel that I cannot leave my people no matter what sufferings may be involved. Every one of you would feel the same if you were in my place at this time.”
In October of 1940 Capek was summoned to Gestapo Headquarters at Petschek Palace, where he was interegated by S.S. officers specializing in “church matters,” for about an hour, and then released, afterwards joking with his staff about how nicely he had been welcomed, and quipping that “they liked me so much they almost kept me there.” Five months later came the proverbial “knock at the door” (or, in this particular instance, a “fierce ringing of the doorbell”); at 7:00 AM on Friday March 28, 1941, five plainclothed Gestapo agents invaded Capek's home, and for three-and-a-half hours ransacked his study while Capek himself instructed the maid to make more coffee, and offer it to his uninvited guests. The Secret Police seized Capek’s books and papers, along with a short-wave radio which he had been using to listen to news broadcasts on the BBC, and eventually arrested the 70-year-old clergyman on charges of high treason.
For the next fifteen months, Capek essentially disappeared into the elaborate administrative bureaucracy of Nazi Germany’s wartime judicial system, shuttled around from prison to prison and often denied contact with the outside world for months at a time. Capek was initially tried on May 24th before a secret tribunal called a “Summary Court of the Inner Front,” whose proceedings were conducted entirely in German, and where the accused was not even entitled to the benefit of a translation, much less representation by legal counsel. Excerpts from his sermons were read into the record as evidence of his guilt, and an additional charge of listening to foreign radio broadcasts in violation of the “Decree on Extraordinary Measures Related to Broadcasting” was also brought against him, which likewise carried with it the possibility of the death penalty. Because of the serious nature of the charges, Capek’s case file was then immediately referred to the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor in Berlin, who reviewed the trial record and eventally decided that the original prosecutor had failed to prove the charge of treason, then remanded the case to the Dresden Court of Appeals for a retrail -- this time with both parties represented by lawyers. At this second trial Capek’s German-speaking attorney was able to get the charge of treason dismissed, but as for the crime of listening to the radio, the evidence against the defendant was overwhelming, and Capek was sentenced to a year in prison, with credit for time already served.
On the face of things, this would appear to be a fairly lenient sentence, but in reality the fact that Capek had essentially been exonerated of the charges against him meant nothing. A month following his second trial, members of the Czech underground who had been trained in Great Britain and then parachuted back into Czechoslovakia suceeded in assassinating S.S. Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious Reichsprotektor of the Districts of Bohemia and Moravia, and in retaliation Hitler ordered the arrest of approximately 13,000 blacklisted Czechs. Rather than being released from custody, on July 5th, 1942 Capek was instead transfered to the concentration camp at Dachau on the outskirts of Munich, prisoner #30323 assigned to Hut #28, the so-called “Priesterbloch” or “Priests’ Barracks,” where he lived for another 14 weeks. His official death certificate records that he died in the camp infirmiry of a cereberal hemorage on October 30th, although in all likelihood he was instead probably transported to Hartheim Castle in Austria along with 500 other “infirm” prisoners on October 12th, and gassed there shortly after his arrival.
As some of you may recall from when I preached about it last October, two summers ago I visited the concentration camp at Dachau, where I sat on the ruined foundation of Hut #28 and reflected upon the example of those who lived and died there over half-a-century ago. And I want to share with you some more of Capek’s own words. “How can a person be ready to undergo difficult trials? He must ask himself: ‘What is mine and what is not mine?’ Suppose I am to be imprisoned; must I also then lament and be discouraged? Suppose I am to be exiled; is there anyone able to prevent my going peacefully with a smile, good humor, and my head held high? ‘We will put you in chains!’ ‘Ah, dear friends, the chains you mean to put upon my legs may restrain me but no chains can restrain my will or my spirit.’ ‘We will put you in prison!’ ‘You may imprison my body....’ And so goes this exercise. The result is a will that is very disciplined; no force on earth can make it do what it does not want to do. Cleanse your own heart and put out of your mind pain and envy, ill will and passions you can’t control; then no one will be able to force you to do their will. You will be free as the west wind.”
When news of Capek's death reached the United States, Frederick May Eliot, then President of the American Unitarian Association, wrote in memorial "Another name is added to the list of heroic Unitarian martyrs, by whose death our freedom has been bought. Ours is now the responsibility to see to it that we stand fast in the Liberty so gloriously won." As we celebrate this heritage here this morning, let us keep this responsibility to "stand fast in Liberty" firmly in our minds, while we observe the simple ritual of the Flower Communion.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sundy May 26, 2002
***
As religious rituals go, the Flower Communion we celebrate today is a relatively young ceremony. It has only been in existence for less than a century; yet, like the Flaming Chalice (which incidentally originated in the same part of the world, and stems from roughly the same period in our history), the Flower Communion is something which, in a relatively short time, has become virtually Universal throughout our denomination.
The Flaming Chalice was originally designed in 1941 by an Austrian artist named Hans Deutsch. Among his other talents, Deutsch was a political cartoonist who had drawn some rather unflattering caricatures of Adolf Hitler during the 30’s, which eventually forced him to flee from Vienna to Paris, and subesquently (after the fall of France) by a somewhat circuitous route to Lisbon, where he met the Reverend Charles Joy, the Executive Director of the Unitarian Service Committee. The Service Committee was actively involved in those days in the effort to smuggle Jews and other political refugees out of Nazi-occupied Europe, but because it was a new and thus relatively-unknown organization, it needed a distinctive icon, which would at once “symbolize the spirit” of the organization, lend an air of “dignity and importance” to the Committee’s official papers, and likewise serve as a clandistine badge of recognition, so that in the “cloak-and-dagger world” of this true-to-life “Casablanca”-like human drama, where “establishing trust quickly across barriers of language, nationality, and faith” could literally meant the difference between life and death, its operatives could quickly identify themselves both to strangers and to one another.
The expatriate Unitarian clergyman asked the refugee Austrian artist whether he would design such a symbol, and the result was the Flaming Chalice. Deutsch took his inspiration from the life and death of the martyred fifteenth-century Czech heretic Jan Hus, who in 1415 was burned at the stake for having taught, among other things, that both clergy and laity should participate in “Communion of both kinds” -- which is to say that he believed that the opportunity to partake of the Communion Chalice, to drink the sanctified wine miraculously transubstantiated into the Blood of Christ, should not be restricted to priests alone, but should be shared among all believers. Deutsch combined these two images: the chalice symbolizing Hus’s belief in a more democratic, egalitarian church community, and the flame by which he died for that belief, in order to create the original flaming chalice, now the international symbol of our own free faith.
The creator of the Flower Communion service was Dr. Norbert F. Capek, a twentieth-century Czech clergyman and journalist who emigrated to the United States in 1914 shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, and then, in 1921, following the formation of Czechoslovakia out of the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian empire after the war, declared himself a Unitarian, returned to his native land, and set out from scratch to found a Unitarian church in the city of Prague. Within ten years, his congregation had grown to a membership of 3,395, making it the largest Unitarian Church anywhere in the world at that time.
The first Flower Communion Service was held in that church on June 4th, 1923. The symbolism of that original service was relatively straightforward and uncomplicated — an elegance of simplicity I hope to maintain today. We bring our flowers and deposit them in a common vessel to signify that we join of our own free will to create something beautiful which is greater than any of us could have created alone. And, of course, we try to bring a little extra, so that there will be enough for those who have arrived empty-handed. At the close of the service, when we take back a flower different from the one we have brought, it symbolizes first that we accept one another, each for what we are; and likewise that as we give to the common store, so do we receive back from what we have created together. It is only by our individual participation that we are able to fill this vessel, so that all might enjoy and share of it. And just in case you hadn’t noticed, the words of the Hymns, as well as the Unison Prayers of Consecration, are Capek's own, and emphasize this theme of the Spirit of Fellowship and Brotherly Love.
Yet there is a second dimension to the Flower Communion Service, which grows out of the circumstances of Capek's own life and death. Shortly after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Capek and his congregation became “objects of interest” to the local Nazi authorities. Easily identifiable Gestapo agents stood outside the church every Sunday, keeping track of who attended, while inside the service itself, other incognito informants paid careful attention to what the preacher said to his flock, listening for subversive messages and other opinons objectional to the Third Reich. Capek responded to this survellance by learning how to express his true opinons obliquely, in parables or through subtle cultural allusions which would pass over the heads of German informants, but were still easily recognizable to his Czech parishioners. Unitarians in America attempted to arrange for Capek to come to the safety of the United States, but he declined to leave, writing back in response “my conscience would make me very unhappy if I were compelled to desert my people in these days. I therefore feel that I cannot leave my people no matter what sufferings may be involved. Every one of you would feel the same if you were in my place at this time.”
In October of 1940 Capek was summoned to Gestapo Headquarters at Petschek Palace, where he was interegated by S.S. officers specializing in “church matters,” for about an hour, and then released, afterwards joking with his staff about how nicely he had been welcomed, and quipping that “they liked me so much they almost kept me there.” Five months later came the proverbial “knock at the door” (or, in this particular instance, a “fierce ringing of the doorbell”); at 7:00 AM on Friday March 28, 1941, five plainclothed Gestapo agents invaded Capek's home, and for three-and-a-half hours ransacked his study while Capek himself instructed the maid to make more coffee, and offer it to his uninvited guests. The Secret Police seized Capek’s books and papers, along with a short-wave radio which he had been using to listen to news broadcasts on the BBC, and eventually arrested the 70-year-old clergyman on charges of high treason.
For the next fifteen months, Capek essentially disappeared into the elaborate administrative bureaucracy of Nazi Germany’s wartime judicial system, shuttled around from prison to prison and often denied contact with the outside world for months at a time. Capek was initially tried on May 24th before a secret tribunal called a “Summary Court of the Inner Front,” whose proceedings were conducted entirely in German, and where the accused was not even entitled to the benefit of a translation, much less representation by legal counsel. Excerpts from his sermons were read into the record as evidence of his guilt, and an additional charge of listening to foreign radio broadcasts in violation of the “Decree on Extraordinary Measures Related to Broadcasting” was also brought against him, which likewise carried with it the possibility of the death penalty. Because of the serious nature of the charges, Capek’s case file was then immediately referred to the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor in Berlin, who reviewed the trial record and eventally decided that the original prosecutor had failed to prove the charge of treason, then remanded the case to the Dresden Court of Appeals for a retrail -- this time with both parties represented by lawyers. At this second trial Capek’s German-speaking attorney was able to get the charge of treason dismissed, but as for the crime of listening to the radio, the evidence against the defendant was overwhelming, and Capek was sentenced to a year in prison, with credit for time already served.
On the face of things, this would appear to be a fairly lenient sentence, but in reality the fact that Capek had essentially been exonerated of the charges against him meant nothing. A month following his second trial, members of the Czech underground who had been trained in Great Britain and then parachuted back into Czechoslovakia suceeded in assassinating S.S. Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious Reichsprotektor of the Districts of Bohemia and Moravia, and in retaliation Hitler ordered the arrest of approximately 13,000 blacklisted Czechs. Rather than being released from custody, on July 5th, 1942 Capek was instead transfered to the concentration camp at Dachau on the outskirts of Munich, prisoner #30323 assigned to Hut #28, the so-called “Priesterbloch” or “Priests’ Barracks,” where he lived for another 14 weeks. His official death certificate records that he died in the camp infirmiry of a cereberal hemorage on October 30th, although in all likelihood he was instead probably transported to Hartheim Castle in Austria along with 500 other “infirm” prisoners on October 12th, and gassed there shortly after his arrival.
As some of you may recall from when I preached about it last October, two summers ago I visited the concentration camp at Dachau, where I sat on the ruined foundation of Hut #28 and reflected upon the example of those who lived and died there over half-a-century ago. And I want to share with you some more of Capek’s own words. “How can a person be ready to undergo difficult trials? He must ask himself: ‘What is mine and what is not mine?’ Suppose I am to be imprisoned; must I also then lament and be discouraged? Suppose I am to be exiled; is there anyone able to prevent my going peacefully with a smile, good humor, and my head held high? ‘We will put you in chains!’ ‘Ah, dear friends, the chains you mean to put upon my legs may restrain me but no chains can restrain my will or my spirit.’ ‘We will put you in prison!’ ‘You may imprison my body....’ And so goes this exercise. The result is a will that is very disciplined; no force on earth can make it do what it does not want to do. Cleanse your own heart and put out of your mind pain and envy, ill will and passions you can’t control; then no one will be able to force you to do their will. You will be free as the west wind.”
When news of Capek's death reached the United States, Frederick May Eliot, then President of the American Unitarian Association, wrote in memorial "Another name is added to the list of heroic Unitarian martyrs, by whose death our freedom has been bought. Ours is now the responsibility to see to it that we stand fast in the Liberty so gloriously won." As we celebrate this heritage here this morning, let us keep this responsibility to "stand fast in Liberty" firmly in our minds, while we observe the simple ritual of the Flower Communion.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 2:03 PM
