Ritual

“Ritual”

Ex. 24:1-18; Heb. 10:15-25; Jn. 4:1-26 + Easter 5 + 2 May 2010

Joy Community Presbyterian Church

D. Ross-Jones

Creating God, we thank you for the opportunity to gather together as your community and approach you through your Word.  I pray now that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts here in this place be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I don’t know about any of you, but there are a number of rituals that shape my life.  One happens pretty regularly: I’ll be sitting under the gorgeous sun, enjoying the ocean breezes on a New Zealand beach, when all of a sudden a sound that can only be described as a bomb siren starts making its repetitive blares.

Once I discover that, in fact, I’m in my bed and not in New Zealand, my goal becomes destroying the offending noisemaker.  And after I add a new alarm clock to my shopping list – for some reason they keep ending up in multiple pieces knocked off the edge of my bed table – I go about beginning my day.

There are other rituals; like the drive between my apartment in Chicago and visiting family up in the Twin Cities in Minnesota three or four times a year.  Going to hockey games whenever my beloved Minnesota Wild or Milwaukee Admirals are playing in town.  Shopping at the grocery store, or people-watching on the L.

Then there are formal rituals, like academic convocations, initiations in membership societies to which I belong, or weekly worship.  These, too, shape my life.

The human experience is shaped by ritual.  Brazillian theologian Leonardo Boff explores this connection in his book, “Sacraments of Life, Life of the Sacraments.”  To suppress the physical manifestations of God’s presence in our lives to existing within rightly-administered sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion alone is impossible; to consider ritual to be stuffy, formal, and prescriptiary is simply unconscionable.

Christian worship is based on a formula that dates back to the time of the Apostles; elements of the temple ritual of the Jewish community of Jesus’ time continue forward to the common era and are present even in this celebration today.  In the Hellenistic period of Paul and the earliest Christians the worship observances came to be referred to as liturgia, meaning “work of the people.”

Unfortunately, by the time of the Reformation in the 16th Century, liturgia or liturgy as its English transliteration came to be known, became separated from how it was understood in the early Christian community.  All of life – from waking in the morning to sleeping under the setting sun – was liturgia.  The Christian community lived in a constant state of worship ritual, with the first day of the week being set aside as the new Sabbath, marked by rest and celebration of community centered around the memorial of the Upper Room: Holy Communion.

The 16th Century reformers sought to reconstitute the weekly celebration, returning the Holy Scripture to its proper place in weekly worship liturgy.  While successful in their mission in that area, a grievous separation occurred when the weekly celebration of Holy Communion was abandoned, creating a false dichotomy between Word and Sacrament that continues forward to this day.  Over the past two decades, however, the Protestant community has worked to reclaim the centrality of this celebration, and I am unafraid to stand in front of you and state my conviction that within my own lifetime there will be a major shift leading to the return of weekly observance of Holy Communion among Mainline Protestants.

The stories from Scripture I chose for today highlight three distinct views of worship ritual, views that demonstrate a portion of the diversity present among our earliest forbearers of faith.  Even in this community here we have two distinct worship experiences that are shaped both by tradition and context.  All demonstrate the beauty of ritual and the integrity of proper Christian worship.

The Rev. Dr. William Heisley is the pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan, a wonderful colleague, mentor and friend of mine.  His philosophy on the centrality of worship is simple: “If you get Sunday morning right, the rest of the week will follow.”

In the midst of our busy schedules, our responsibilities to our families and loved ones, our commitments in our communities and workplaces, we have cut corners and condensed to the point that weekly worship has dropped in duration from a day-long celebration to an hour or less.

Ritual life in the Apostolic period was marked by house churches, though not discernable in any way to the modern house church movement.  Multi-generation families, their hired help and their family, and any guests or transients would take up residences in what today would appear more as a neighborhood or small town.  The head of this household would hold ritual worship in dedicated spaces within the complex, following a developing form that had been shaped by the Jewish temple worship ritual.

We have windows into this development even today: a worship experience in an Eastern Orthodox or Coptic community is an absolutely stunning and awe-inspiring connection with the Divine, and I commend it to your discovery at some point.  The local development of each community is present in the liturgical order, language, and expression; though the similarities among each mark it as distinctively Christian.

Additional development occurred among the Latin language churches, which most directly have shaped Mainline Protestant worship.  The order, shape, and feel of worship is directly influenced by this tradition.

As American Protestants particularly of a Reformed understanding, we also are shaped by the Puritans, Pilgrims, and Great Awakenings of the 17th through 19th Centuries.  The emphasis on simplicity in worship and that ever-famous anachronism of Presbyterians as the Frozen Chosen was established during this time period.

But the church is ever-changing.  Our worship was shaped once again particularly in response to the movements of the 1970’s and 1980’s.  The advent of so-called contemporary worship emphasized connections with popular culture in music, language, and relationship styles.  We are seeing yet another transformation in what has become known as the emergent church, incorporating fine arts, a renewal of ancient practices, and a commitment to action and justice.

Corporate worship must feel distinctively separate from common life, a place set apart that is committed to God alone; yet all of life must be an act of worship.  We are people in – yet not of – this world.  Our relationship is with God through Jesus, but our mission of bringing about God’s justice for all creation is essentially earth-bound.

And so we gather in this place to be equipped for our work.  We gather in this place to commune with God and our Christian family.  We gather in this place to be nourished in faith that we might be scattered in the world.  We participate in ritual that frames our relationship and ignites our passion for Christian justice and mercy as an outpouring of God’s love.

Our worship matters, because God matters.  Our worship is ritual, because we are human beings who communicate and experience life in that frame.  Our ritual is influenced by scripture and tradition, because we are custodians of the legacy of faithful women and men who have experienced and witnessed God before us.  Our tradition continues to be shaped by our context, because we are people in this particular time and place.  Our time and place matters, because the people we serve are here in this time and in this place.  And the people we serve matter, because our worship matters… thus beginning the cycle anew.

This is my last week among you – no surprise return this time; I leave for New Zealand in a few weeks and look forward to realizing that early morning dream.  I leave you with the prayer that your lives will continue to be worshipful, that you will find divine meaning in the rituals of your life, and with gratitude that the worship of this community has shaped my own life and ministry as I leave this place.

But above all, in all of your worship, remember:

Soli Deo Gloria.  To God alone be glory.  Amen.