The Role of Ritual

I often find myself going back and forth between two somewhat 'competing' viewpoints.  This inner conflict comes to light especially when I think about the role of rituals in our Christian lives.  On the one hand, I tend to love ritual.  You know what's coming.  You know the proper response.  It's kind of like when I leave my keys and my wallet in the same place each night.  I know where they are, so when I get ready in the morning, I don't have to look over the whole house, wondering where I put them.  The ritual keeps things familiar and comfortable.

On the other hand, there also seems to be a role for creativity.  Ritual can lend itself somewhat to stagnation.  When you are always doing the same thing, it can get somewhat stale.  I have my routine when I take my shower in the morning.  But every once in a while, I like to do things in a different order.  What if I wash my hair before I shave?  Radical, I know!

Ritual helps ground our lives.  Nowhere is this more true than in our worship of God and the rituals we attend to as God's Church.  We have a number of rituals that we attend to.  Baptism.  Confirmation.  Our order of worship.  All of these have a particular pattern or order to them.  In many cases, it isn't just the pattern, but even the very words that we speak that are the same.  They become a source of comfort.  We know what's coming, and there is comfort in the familiar.

However, there is also a danger with the ritual.  The danger is that we fail to recognize what is actually happening as we venture through the ritual.  We fall into the habit, and it starts to lose some of the meaning behind it.  For example, so many of us likely know the Lord's Prayer by heart, so much so that we may not even think about the words that we are saying.  And when we don't think about what we are saying or doing, we start to take the ritual lightly.

Notice, though, that I didn't say that God takes it lightly.  God will still do what He does through the ritual, even if we don't happen to recognize His action and meaning.  It's more of our problem than God's problem.  And that's where the role of creativity comes in.  Every once in a while, it's good for us to have something a little different or new entered into the ritual.  Not to simply be doing something different, but to jog our minds and to make us think about what we are doing, and why we are doing it, and what God is doing through it.  Then we grow in appreciation for what is happening in the ritual and its meaning.  And, in the end, that's a pretty good thing.

Of Ashes and Repentance

Many Christians today observe a holy day on the Christian calendar, a day called Ash Wednesday.  You may even see some wandering around with a big cross of ashes on their forehead.  Sure, it's likely to get a few strange looks, but it also presents the opportunity to teach a little bit about our faith.

To help explain Ash Wednesday, it's necessary to explain a little bit about the overall season of Lent.  Lent is a time where we reflect on the sin that separates us from God, and which presents our need for God to send a Savior.  As Christians, we believe that God has taken care of the sin that separates us from Him through Jesus, who bore our sin on the cross and then rose victorious to give us a new, sinless life.

In a sense, God has taken our sin and burned it up in the fire of His wrath and justice.  That's what Jesus endured as He gave up His life on the cross.  Our sin has been reduced to ashes.  And so, we wear crosses of ash upon our foreheads to remember what God has done in taking our sin away, as well as how God accomplished that, which is the cross of our Lord Jesus.

So God has done that for us.  As His people who have had their sin removed, and who have been given new life in Jesus, we then strive to live according to that new life.  That puts us in a position where we face a battle.  We have our new life in Jesus right now.  The problem is, we also still inhabit this life and body, where sin exists.  Our sin that we battle against will seem to come out on top from time to time, and at other times, it may seem like the new life in Jesus wins the victory.  Regardless, what we discover is the constant need to return to God as we battle against that sin.

That's why Ash Wednesday, and in fact, all of Lent, is about repentance.  We recognize and believe in what God has done for us in Jesus.  We live in that hope and reality.  And yet, while we still inhabit this world and body of sin, we face a struggle.  We will need to turn our back on that sin and look again to God for our help, our hope, and our forgiveness.  And what we find there is what the prophet Joel spoke about so many years ago.

"Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster."  (Joel 2:13)  The God that we return to is one that has already poured out abundant grace to us.  We are His.  He has reduced our sin to ashes.  He has given us new life.  He calls for us to come back to Him, the one who knows what our true life looks like.  And He does that because He is a gracious God to us.

Rituals of Old Age

How do you know that you grown either wise enough or old enough to start conveying wisdom and knowledge to younger people?  In our culture here in North America, there doesn't seem to be any consistent sense of this.  We know of lots of people that are older than us, but do we necessarily think they are wiser?  Also, we seem to have this sense that it's not our job to help others figure out how to do things better in life, or how to grow.  We'd rather keep to ourselves and not bug anyone.

Many of the cultures of this world place a great deal of value in learning from those who are older than themselves.  There is the matronly grandmother whom the younger women seek out for suggestions in raising children, taking care of homes, or how to work through troubles they may have with their husband.  There is the old, wise man whom the younger ones approach to learn their history, to hear what it means to be a man, and how to care for and protect their family.

As I have pointed out throughout this week's series, we here in North America seem to be sorely lacking rituals which mark the transitions from one stage of life to another.  The same thing can be said when people reach a more elderly age.  We start to (sadly) see them as a nuisance, or a drain on our time and resources.  Instead of being people who have rich life experience that they could pass along, we think of them as outdated, behind the times, and of little or no importance to our life.

In much of my reading, I have come to have a great sadness at situations like this.  It seems that we, in this Western, fast-paced way of life, may have actually thrown out the most important things, like family, learning from others, moving into different parts of life, and actually knowing what those parts of life really do mean.  So much seems to have been lost, and I, for one, hope that we can turn the page back and regain some of these things which truly have been lost.

Rituals from being a child to an adult

I've been sharing that I believe rituals are an effective means of letting us know when we pass from one stage to the next in life.  I also believe that these same kind of rituals could serve us as we grow in our Christian faith.  So, while I may be generally speaking in terms of life stages, I believe that we would be wise to look at how these various rituals or rites of passage could mark our growth in our faith life.  Of course, I understand that they are much more challenging to discern, but it seems that the absence of them in our North American context sure hasn't done us any favors when it comes to growing in our faith life.

What marks the transition from being a child to being an adult?  I think this is a tough question for us to answer since we don't really have a set "time" marking when a child becomes an adult.  Is it when they move from Jr. High to High School?  (That's the age that many cultures mark as the transition from childhood to adulthood.)  Is it when they complete the education system around age 18?  Is it when they complete any higher education that they may be striving for?  Is it when they move out and get a job and a place of their own?  I think by posing these kind of questions, we may come to realize that we aren't really sure where the boundary is between child and adult in our day and age.

Could this also be the case in our faith lives?  In my tradition, we have the confirmation ceremony around the 8th grade, but there really aren't any more significant transitions or rites of passage in regard to growing up in faith.  (And perhaps not so coincidentally, this is also around the age where many young people stop attending church related activities and worship, since they have nothing left to achieve.)  I'll be the first to admit that I would have to do a lot of thinking to come up with some of these rituals, or what marks the transition in growth, but I've also really started to see the importance of them, and the damage that their absence can have.

Understandably, these would not only involve knowledge, but also components of life in the faith.  I could see that the passage from, say, Jr. High to High School would be marked by more service time toward others, and perhaps an emphasis on how to serve others in love.  Then, at the age where most young people move from High School to college or work, having a rite of passage that has both accompanying knowledge components, but also active faith life components.  I'd have to do more thinking on this to come up with some suggestions, but recognize that some of you may have ideas on this, too!

Rituals and Young People

I had the fortune (misfortune, some might say) of growing up and going to school in a very small town.  In fact, between Kindergarten and High School, we had two buildings, which had about 20 classrooms total.  In the younger grades, we would change classrooms each year, moving from one to the next as we moved up in grade levels.  But around Jr. High, we started changing rooms depending on the class, not upon our grade level.

In other words, I didn't really go through any kind of transition to mark that I had moved from Elementary to Jr. High.  Same building, I knew all the same teachers, we all ate in the same cafeteria, etc.  I know for some of you, who went to a larger school, there was probably the transition from one school to another.  You may have had an easier transition, knowing that you had moved and grown along the way.

Rituals serve that kind of purpose.  They help us realize that we have moved from one state of being to another.  In some of my reading, I have seen a number of different cultures where the beginning of manhood or womanhood is marked by a particular ceremony or ritual.  In some places, the young 10-13 year old is taken out with the men on some kind of hunt or just time spent away from the family, and when he returns, he has become a man in their eyes.  It seems that, when it comes to our faith life, this could also be a helpful thing.

In my church tradition, we have a few elements like this.  Typically around 6th grade, young people begin serving as acolytes, which has different meanings, depending on the church.  For some, this begins a more intensive period of instruction in the faith, culminating in some kind of confirmation ceremony.

I think these kind of things are helpful.  In fact, I have given much thought on how to give such transitions and rituals even more meaning, especially for younger people.  As a young man or woman grows, I believe it's helpful to have a ceremony to let them know that the expectations on them have changed, and that they have now entered a new "segment" of life.

Rituals and Young Age

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child"  1 Corinthians 13:11

Ah, to be a child.  To run around all day and not have to worry about things like bills, lunch, cars, world affairs, and the like.  To see something simple like a butterfly or a bird and be amazed. 

But, alas, those days came to an end.  The problem is, I don't really recall when that actually happened.  Let me take that back.  I actually do remember.  It happened when my mom decided that I should have my picture taken for the first day of school.  I was heading off to kindergarten.  My days would now involve sitting in chairs, listening to teachers, and learning 'reading, writing, and 'rithmatic. 

I don't remember any specific kind of ritual that attended that change in position in life, though.  I know that some cultures are very specific when a child enters into the next stage of life.  That kind of ritual lets the child know that he or she has moved from one set of expectations to another.  The stages of life are, to some degree, set, and the young person can know when they have moved from one to the next.

Should there be stages that we recognize as we grow in our faith life?  What kind of rituals could we employ to let us know when we have moved from one station in life to the next?  Do we have clear expectations of what we should be able to do or know or believe at various stages?  It seems to me that we have muddied the waters, so that we have older people who still think, act, and reason like a child, though they should have long ago moved past those ways.  Would ritual help us both in growing in life as well as in faith?

The Role of Ritual

We all have significant moments in life.  At times, there are some fairly specific actions or ceremonies that go along with those significant moment.  Just last week, I attended a couple of high school graduations.  These kind of ceremonies mark a transition from one stage in life to the next.  It brings closure to one part of life, and opens the door to the next step or stage.

As we think about our Christian life together, what is the role of rituals such as these?  For many churches, there may not be a tremendous number of rituals.  In the church I'm a part of, the most significant one I can think of is called confirmation.  It comes at the end of a period of instruction (usually fairly doctrinal), at which time the young person (in our church, at the completion of 8th grade) into the fellowship as a communicant member (which means he/she can now come forward to receive the Lord's Supper).  While local congregations may have other rituals, there really do not seem to be many that are celebrated or that mark transitions in life.

In a way, I believe that there should be more of these kind of rituals, and that we should also tie a deeper meaning to them.  When I recall my confirmation, I simply remember being able to quote back parts of Martin Luther's Small Catechism, and supposedly I learned what it means to be a Lutheran Christian.  However, I do have to admit that most of what I learned got lost along the way, and I had to re-learn it down the line.  So it seems like the ritual was significant, but perhaps lost its meaning in my life (and who knows how many others?).

Is there a place for deeper, more meaningful rituals?  Are there stages of Christian life that should be remembered and celebrated?  If you have thoughts or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear about them.  Perhaps some of these could be incorporated to make our Christian life more meaningful and significant as we grow together in Jesus.