Vanhoozer on Word & Sacrament

The church participates in and continues Jesus’ communicative actions through the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.

The anologia communication [analogy of communication] need not always be verbal: To the extent that the liturgy as a whole unfolds the narrative which identifies Jesus, the whole liturgy is ‘gospel.’” [Marshall, Bruce D., Trinity and Truth (Cambridge, CUP, 2000), p31] The sacraments are verba visibilia (visible words), a felicitous phrase that rightly signals the continuity between words and acts…. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper represent key scenes in the theo-drama. They, too, are communicative actions, less speech-acts than acts that speak, but acts that communicate something all the same…. The sacraments, like the spoken word, have prepositional content (e.g., both refer to the death of Jesus), yet they also require to be performed (embodied, enacted) ever anew….

… the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus draws us into the theodrama. The Last Supper is a complex communicative act whose similarities with the Passover blend the story of Israel (looking back to the exodus and forward to the return from exile) into the story of Jesus (the lamb whose death would redeem not only Israel but the whole world). The supper also hints at the future messianic banquet in heaven – a complex communicative action indeed! Both baptism and the Lord’s Supper are deliberate "double dramas” [Wright, N. T., Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1996) 2:554 – referring to the Lord’s Supper] whose purpose is not merely to convey information but to draw us into the action. Indeed, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are means of grace precisely because they are able to draw us into the pattern of Jesus’ own communicative action.

The ministry of the Word and sacrament: each contributes in its own way to the transmissio of the gospel, and thus to the mission of the church.

(Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, pp74-75)