text: Love your thought. But...a parallel metaphor to consider. The long-haul truck driver loves his wife as much when he is driving through Nevada, a thousand miles and a week away but boy when he gets back home....
  To your point the church seems to have elevated the "outward sign" to be not only the "real" but the only. Jesus is not limited to rite, ritual, in our com-union, companionship. 
  The rite the ritual the ceremony is the "taste", the teaching moment, the reinforcement, the joyful expression. Would the  "long-haul truck driver"
  or his expectant wife appreciate celebrating their re-union in a museum?