We Root Ourselves in Ritual
Last night, four women – three I call “daughter” and I –found ourselves in David’s Bridal participating in a ritual known as wedding dress shopping.
For those of you unfamiliar with this particular rite, it involves moments of revelation, oohs and ahs, thumbs up or thumbs down, perhaps some emotions and hopefully a lot of laughter.
It’s not communion. It’s not baptism. It’s not commencement. It’s not the wedding.
But it IS a set of actions that mark a moment. It is a gathering by invitation or by obligation. It does have shape and form, tradition and meaning. And somehow – the ritual ties us to a bigger story of connection – to the past, present and future; to one another; to traditions that we perhaps can’t even fully explain or that have little grounding in our current modern culture.
So I am claiming wedding dress shopping as a ritual, of sorts.
Merriam Webster defines ritual in a few ways:
a ceremonial act or action
an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner
an act according to religious law
an act done in accordance with social custom or normal protocol
Let’s ponder that for a moment. Can you call to mind a ritual that is part of your life?
If you are here in the sanctuary, I invite you to turn to the person next to you or near you and name a ritual that you have observed or participated in sometime in the last few weeks (we are in a season rich with ritual!)…. If you are online, you might want to spend some time sharing in the chat or journaling your own response…
What were some things that came up?
(let people chime in)
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the story of Jesus’ birth as told in Luke’s gospel.
We have been exploring these stories while considering what it means to rejoice – to find joy alongside many other emotions and experiences – to find joy in the midst of our weary and complicated world.
Here on the seventh day of Christmas, our text has us moving past the birth of Jesus and on to some key rituals for Jewish families in first century Palestine. These rituals serve a purpose in Luke’s gospel – they situate Jesus firmly in the Jewish tradition. They demonstrate his family’s participation in a larger community and the story of God. And perhaps they also reveal something about the special nature of this child.
Luke’s gospel indicates that on the 8th day, Jesus is circumcised and named. Circumcision in the Jewish community is a ritual that marks males as part of God’s covenant community. It is rooted in the history of the Jewish people – from Abraham forward.
And like Elizabeth and Zechariah naming their son John, the act of naming this baby “Jesus” fulfills the angel’s instruction to Mary so many months earlier. The name Jesus means “the LORD saves,” and such a name fits in with Mary’s song of praise that announces how this baby will be a source of liberation and salvation for all the world.
Then Luke’s narrative tell us that on the 40th day, the family is in Jerusalem at the temple so that Jesus can be presented and Mary can undergo ritual purification. Much like Jesus’ circumcision, these acts root Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus in the larger law-abiding Jewish community. They are keeping the law, offering the prescribed sacrifice, counting the days.
This took me back to our conversation a few weeks ago about Zechariah serving in the Temple, removing the ashes, resetting the incense, offering the prayers and blessing the people. Zechariah was approached by Gabriel in the midst of deep ritual.
I wonder if ritual might be a threshold to thin space?
Ritual is so much a part of how we understand Jesus’ identity in this story. I even think the shepherds going to see what the angels proclaimed to them in the fields is a ritual of worship.
So what is the connection here between ritual and rejoicing?
Could it be that in the crazy realities of life – in times of exile, occupation, religious diaspora, these rituals - fulfilling these age-old mandates of the law, keeping the right fasts and offering the right sacrifices - gave the people like Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah and their families and communities a sense of God’s presence and provision?
Could it be that when they did the things that had always been done, they were reminded of the ways God had shown up in the past?
In the birth of Isaac?
In Joseph’s reunion with his brothers?
In the angel of death passing over the Hebrew firstborn?
In the crossing the Red Sea?
In the parted river as Joshua entered the Promised Land?
In seasons of exile and return, occupation and survival?
In dry spaces? In frightening spaces? In scarce spaces?
I want to invite you to reflect back on that earlier time of sharing you had with a neighbor. How might your rituals of the past 10 days or so linked you to something bigger in your past? Linked you to ways that you feel safe, a part of something bigger, or even joyful in the world?
(Pause for some reflection time)
Today is December 31. It is the eve of the New Year, a time many mark with rituals.
We might toast the new year with champagne and the kiss of a loved one.
We might spend a day journaling and reflecting, offering gratitude and setting intentions for the year to come.
John Wesley believed the people called Methodists should (at least once a year) renew their baptismal covenant – the promises they made or that were made on their behalf in their baptism.
Baptism is a ritual that we also recognize as sacrament – an outward sign of God’s grace at work in us. To provide form and shape for regularly renewing this covenant, Wesley borrowed a prayer from his parent’s puritan traditions and modified it to serve as a covenant renewal ritual – we know the traditional prayer as the Wesley Covenant Prayer.
Steve Manskar offers this explanation for the Wesleyan practice of covenant renewal:
“When we pray this prayer we remember that we are baptized. We renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of our sin. We accept the freedom and power God gives to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. We confess Jesus Christ as our Savior, trust wholeheartedly in his grace, and promise to serve him as Lord, in union with the church. And we renew our promise to live as faithful members of Christ's church and serve as his representatives in the world.
The Covenant Prayer describes missional life devoted to following Jesus and serving as Christ's representative in the world he loves and is working to redeem. It tells us that being a Christian is more a way of life than a system of beliefs. The Covenant Prayer describes the Jesus way of self-giving and self-emptying love.”
As the people called Methodist, we participate a ritual to confirm our gratitude for Jesus’s way, to reflect our understanding of and to reaffirm our commitment to this kind of life of mission and discipleship.
And so today, I invite you to participate in this covenant renewal. As you face a new year, as you consider what you are called to, equipped for, a part of as God’s beloved, I invite you to recommit to your baptism – your initiation into the body of Christ, into God’s big story of salvation.
It’s in your hymnal, but the words are slightly different than what you’ll see on screen as I’ve chosen the contemporary version for today – but some of you know this with all of the wilts, and thous and thines… It will work.
Let us pray together.
A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition (Contemporary Version)
I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you,
Praised for you or criticized for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and fully surrender all things to your glory and service.
And now, O wonderful and holy God,
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,
you are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
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