Why do We Have Rituals in the Church?

Many of you may have noticed by now that I like to read. Those who helped unload us at the parsonage really understand that just from the volume of books. And one of the areas I like to read is history. I like history because it helps explain much of what is happening in our world today. If looked at carefully, it explains a lot about what is going on – particularly in the church.

This is the third sermon in our series “Answering Tough Questions”. This sermon is focused on ritual in the church – why do we have it? What purpose does it serve?

Leviticus 4:13-21; I Corinthians 11:23-26; Matthew 26:26-30 
One part of history that I really enjoy is the English Civil War. I realize that most of you haven’t heard about it, because our high school history courses don’t mention much about it. But it had a tremendous effect upon the course of American religion and the differences between church worship styles – which is why I bring it up today.

The English Civil War of the mid-1600’s was sort of a left-over war fought after the Thirty Years War almost destroyed Europe. There were two sides in the conflict. On one side were the Cavaliers, mainly Catholics and high-church Anglicans who supported the King. On the other side were the Roundheads, mainly Puritans led by Oliver Cromwell, who supported the Parliament – the English Congress. Eventually, the Roundhead Puritan army won, the King was killed, and Oliver Cromwell led a democratic dictatorship until he died of pneumonia about eight years later.

Besides the question of who was in charge – King or Parliament – the war was driven by the fight between Catholic and Puritan views of church. Catholic churches in those days were highly decorated works of art. Around the sanctuary, one would find multiple statues representing great scenes out of the Bible – particularly the Stations of the Cross, a series of about a dozen statues and paintings which gave the story of the last day of Jesus’ life on earth. Large musical organs were present to provide musical accompaniment. These churches possessed finely decorated stained glass windows, once again with artwork showing biblical scenes. And for a group of people who mostly could not read, these statues and paintings and stained glass art provided a way to understand the Gospel. This tradition went back to Solomon’s Temple, where God commanded Solomon to have great ten-foot statues, covered in gold, with fancy decorations placed inside the Temple. Even the Tabernacle, the tent where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, had been carefully decorated with blue pomegranates and other symbols according to God’s commands in the days of Moses.

Oliver Cromwell, the lead of the Puritan Army, did not see things that way. Cromwell followed the views of the reformer Jean Calvin, who had tossed most Catholic ideas out the window. And so, Cromwell considered these decorations to be idols which needed to be destroyed. Cromwell believed that people had begun to worship the statues and paintings and organs more than God. And so in Cromwell’s churches, there were no decorations, no statues, no stained glass, no paintings. In fact, there was no use of gold or silver or even brass. No organs – perhaps no musical instruments at all. Nothing was allowed except a plain wooden cross at the altar, for Cromwell feared that people would worship anything that was “pretty”.

The two sides were fighting mainly over the issue of who was in charge, King or Parliament, but because the fighting was so intense, so comprehensive, so many people were involved, the religious questions began to separate the people. After all, who would think that a question of church worship style or the decorating style of a church could lead to war between two groups of devout Christians?

We can still see the effects of the war of our churches. Calvary is an example of a Cromwell decorating style church, while Mt Clare is about halfway to the Catholic style.

Related to all this was the question of how a church service should go. And this influence on a church service has split the American churches ever since. I personally think it is sort of silly. Can’t we move back and forth between worship styles from week to week?

At one end is the Catholic Church, which exercises great central control over every word spoken during the ceremony. In fact, a Catholic priest whom I met while teaching told me that in many ways, the Catholic church considers itself unified by the liturgy, the exact form of the service – what some people call “ritual”. Of course, when we realize that the Catholic Church considers itself the one, true and universal church, and we realize that splits have occurred throughout history from the Catholic Church expressly because local priests decided to preach on their own, it makes sense that the Catholic Church through the ages has moved to keep those splits to a minimum by central control.

In a Catholic church, there is a huge book called a Missal which contains several services for every day of the year. Not only are scripture readings and prayers specified for Sundays, but for each day of the week, with morning, noon, evening services at least, and possibly more. The responses of the congregation at each point is specified. In fact, this exchange between the priest and the people has a special name. It is called “liturgy”, which means, “The work of the people”. Even an outline of the short sermon is provided for the priest so he will interpret the scripture in the correct, “Catholic” way. All is carefully controlled. And this basic system is followed by Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, and Episcopalian churches.

The good in this system is that over about three years, every important part of the Bible is taught. It is easy to come up to a certain basic level of knowledge in the Catholic Church, because the details specified mean everything is covered. The use of regular liturgy sets those words deep into our hearts and minds and means that they will come out under times of stress. “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again!” Holy Communion is emphasized, with Communion being the core, central part of worship.

The bad in the system is that after about ten years, hearing the same short sermons every few years, the same prayers, the same words said gets dull. It is difficult as a normal member of the congregation to move to a deep understanding, because it is like every sermon is geared for an eighth-grader. Eventually, we want more.

At the other end of the spectrum are many Baptists and Churches of Christ. The pastors of these churches basically wing it through their services, with extemporaneous prayers composed on the spot, a single scripture reading which may be very long – or just a verse or two. The sermons are the high point of the service, usually long and detailed.

The good is that people recognize that prayer should become an outpouring of our heart toward God, that there is time allotted for a deep investigation of a piece of scripture – or even a topic. Things can change from week to week, which gives a feeling of excitement to the service – what’s going to happen this week?

The bad though, is that pastors tend to focus upon their favorite areas of the Bible so other sections get ignored, the beauty of prayers that have been worked on over the centuries is never heard, and the strength of repeated liturgy never hits our souls.

I’ve heard people talk about how one particular system or the other is best. And it’s usually the one they’ve experienced the most in their life, the one they are used to, the one that has become comfortable because they’ve been there so often. For both systems have strengths and weaknesses. Both help in some areas and hurt in other areas. So isn’t the best system a system that blends the best of both systems?

And so we come to the Wesley system, the balanced system developed by John Wesley and those who followed in the Methodist movement. There is a certain amount of liturgy. After all, the Methodist church is a 1700’s spin-off of the Church of England, which spun off the Catholic Church in the 1500’s. But the Methodists are also heavily influenced by Calvin’s idea that all people are in ministry and can be directly influenced by the Holy Spirit. Another influence was Wesley’s understanding that salvation is not just a matter of joining the church, but requires a series of personal decisions as we move closer to Christ. Although Wesley was always an Anglican priest, loving the ceremonies of the high church, he also understood that his movement was embraced by Welsh miners, Irish farmers, Yorkshire sheep herders, and English factory workers. His Methodist system involved ritual – but it also involved Bible education and working in small groups to become holy, walking together away from sin.

The idea is to walk between the two extremes. There is a certain degree of central control provided as resources – a hymn book, a book of worship, a high level of training provided for most pastors. Yet, while the central church provides resources, it is up to the pastor which resources to use.

Most Methodist pastors use a “lectionary”. This is a three-year cycle of scripture readings for Sundays and special church days, typically with four readings for each day – Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel. The readings cover the most important aspects of the Bible. A Methodist pastor, while encouraged to follow the lectionary most of the time can leave the lectionary. You may have noticed that I followed the lectionary from July through August, and now I am leaving the lectionary for this series of sermons.

We are to have a balance between formal prayers taken from the lectionary, and extemporaneous prayers composed on the spot. Although we have a history of Holy Communion occurring once a quarter in some churches, this was because of our history of having circuit-riding pastors come by only once every few weeks. Now, most of our churches have communion every month and many are moving to weekly communion, particularly at the larger churches where the pastor doesn’t have to dash out the door to another church. We try to balance our reliance upon Communion, Holy Scripture, and preaching to effectively worship Christ.

Our sanctuaries vary from pretty plain to highly decorated, with most being somewhat decorated. In almost all of these issues, you will see that the Methodist church attempts to take the good without becoming absolutely rigid in our rules. We want to have the good and reject the bad. And so we are in between in the use of liturgy – what many people call “rituals”.

Why do we use any rituals at all?

In short, we use ritual because they are scriptural - did you notice that the reading from I Corinthians 11 is one of the basis for the Communion liturgy? - and rituals are effective at teaching certain things. They are good for certain things – and yet an over reliance upon them is bad for us. Balance is the key.

Have you ever noticed that in our world we have rituals for many things? Perhaps the simplest are the rituals that are used in our schools and in our sports. The “Pledge of Allegiance” is said in almost every school, almost every day. I suspect that you can recite that Pledge by yourself, with no problems. The “Star-Spangled Banner” is sung at almost every sports event. You may not be able to sing it, because it is a difficult song to sing, but you know the words, don’t you? At baseball games, what happens between the 7th and 8th innings? In Atlanta, at Braves games, the crowd sings “Take me out to the Ballgame.” Every game. 

We have rituals in our families. When our children were younger and living at home, before they went to bed, we had “hug, kiss, and a prayer”. They each got a hug, a kiss, and a prayer said over them before bed. And something was wrong if that ritual did not happen.

Even at our weddings and funerals there is liturgy. “In sickness and in health” “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. Words that are strong and powerful because we have heard them so often. 

Thirty years ago, there was a trend toward writing your own vows at weddings. How many people remember those vows? Few do – yet “In sickness and in health” remains because we recognize the words, repeated at so many weddings.

Many people have come to my wife or I to get married, and it is sad to say that most of them have only seen weddings performed on television. Have you ever noticed that television wedding ceremonies only take a couple of minutes? In a real wedding prayers are said, scripture is read, a sermon is preached, and marriages are blessed, for we want to call the attention of God and all the people to the ceremony, to bless this marriage, and to make it memorable.

And it’s the same with funerals – It must be a Hollywood custom, because all Hollywood funerals are performed at the graveside, in perfect weather without any canopy, and they only take a minute or so.

Yet, a wedding is worth a fifteen minute ceremony, or even a forty-five minute ceremony with Communion if you really want the full treatment. And a celebration of a life is worth forty-five or fifty minutes, isn’t it, with those traditional words and scriptures read. It’s how we truly recognize that something important has happened – a life has ended and someone has moved on to eternity.

A friend of mine pastored a small church in Ohio. It being the second church on the charge, the pastor would arrive with the service already under way. Eventually, it would be time for the Gospel reading and the lay leader would walk down as the pastor walked up from the congregation. Where they met, they would bow to each other. My friend was curious how this ritual got started.

An old man spoke up. “Well, preacher, years ago the exhaust pipe from the old potbelly stove ran across at that point where you bow, so they had to bow down to get under the pipe. And when they upgraded the heating system, it just felt right to keep on bowing.” They recognized that the bow had come to mean something deep and important.

Rituals, you see, become a source of comfort as they teach certain deep truths. The Pledge of Allegiance teaches a loyalty to the country, the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner teaches that American persevere through difficult times, the “hug, kiss, and a prayer” tells our children that they are loved and God is there. Our repeated words during Communion teach us what Communion is all about.

Yet we have also seen people who get hung up on the liturgy, on the ritual, to the point where they cannot function outside the ritual, like the person who cannot sleep if they have not brushed their teeth, had a drink of water, and checked every door in the house to see if they’re locked.

The history of liturgy and ritual in the church goes back even before the church. Our first reading from Leviticus contained a detailed command from God about exactly what to do when a particular sin happened. Did you notice the detail?

13 “Now if the whole community of Israel errs, and the matter escapes the notice of the assembly, so that they violate any of the Lord’s commands and incur guilt by doing what is prohibited, 14 then the assembly must present a young bull as a sin offering. When the sin they have committed in regard to the command becomes known, they are to bring it before the tent of meeting. 15 The elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull’s head before the Lord and it is to be slaughtered before the Lord. 16 The anointed priest will bring some of the bull’s blood into the tent of meeting. 17 The priest is to dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle it seven times before the Lord in front of the veil. 18 He is to apply some of the blood to the horns of the altar that is before the Lord in the tent of meeting. He must pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar of burnt offering that is at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 19 He is to remove all the fat from it and burn it on the altar. 20 He is to offer this bull just as he did with the bull in the sin offering; he will offer it the same way. So the priest will make atonement on their behalf, and they will be forgiven. 21 Then he will bring the bull outside the camp and burn it just as he burned the first bull. It is the sin offering for the assembly.

God gave Moses the first rituals. And in the New Testament, Jesus gave the disciples the basis for our most important ritual, Holy Communion. Listen to what Jesus said:

26 As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take and eat it; this is My body.” 27 Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them and said, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 But I tell you, from this moment I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it in a new way in My Father’s kingdom with you.” 30 After singing psalms, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

We have the single loaf of bread, broken and passed around. We have a single cup from which we are commanded to drink. We have the singing of psalms, particularly Psalm 118 before they left the supper.

And then, Paul reinforces this command,

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 gave thanks, broke it, and said, “This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.”

25 In the same way, after supper He also took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant established by My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

The liturgy, the words, which we use for Communion are standardized in the United Methodist Church, but once again, we have the liberty to vary from the script for special occasions. Have you ever wondered why we have, in our hymnal, detailed patterns for worship, for Communion, for baptism, for weddings, for funerals? I have an entire other book called the United Methodist Book of Worship that has special services in more or less detail for other times of the year. 

In all of this, you’ll see we strive for a sense of balance between total liturgical ritual – and totally free form. Let’s look at one issue: Prayers.

When all the prayers are free-form, we learn that some people can pray and others cannot. If we have the guts, we learn how to pray free-form to God.

But if some of the prayers are written and said by the entire congregation, there is power in that all the people are praying that same prayer together. We learn that it is okay to write out a prayer ahead of time if we get tongue-tied. And some prayers, like the one we repeat together each week before the Scripture – those prayers we memorize, which helps us move into a position where we are ready to listen to the Word and the Spirit, where we are ready to be changed by God.

In another way, baptism is a ritual which we are commanded by Christ through His example. There are many ways we could join a church. We could sign a piece of paper, we could have a pin stuck onto our chest, we could run up a particular hill, climbing to the top, we could learn to recite a particular tongue twister. But Christ chose baptism. Additionally, through the ages, people thought it important that certain vows were exchanged between the person being baptized and the congregation and God. It seemed to help make the event a bit more special.

And so, when you see that we are using a piece of liturgy, a reading, an extra piece of scripture, a special ceremony in our worship, understand that your pastor included this because there is more to our worship than just a sermon or a song. Over the thousands of years since God first spoke to Adam, we have come up with thousands, if not tens of thousands of ways to turn back to God and remember what God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit have done for us. Some will be familiar to you as we sing a song that you’ve sung for years. Others may be new and different and may make you feel a bit uncomfortable simply because they are new, or because they take you back in time to another church where you weren’t comfortable.

Around the world, people worship with gold and silver, carrying huge crosses down the aisles. Around the world, other people worship to the sound of Southern Gospel music. In a village in Switzerland, people worship to the sound of guitars and chants. And in Korea, eastern music fills the ceremony as 800,000 people come together in the largest church in the world.

I have participated in services with organ music, with bluegrass music, with hymns from the 1500’s, with orchestra and choir, - and without any musical instruments, just with a liturgy paper, trading reading and response as we focus our minds on what the Son of God did so many years ago, when He voluntarily went to the cross and died there instead of us so we could live with Him forevermore.

Understand this – our goal is to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in all we do as we try to understand this great mystery of God. Sometimes, the Spirit says, “repeat after me.” Sometimes the Spirit says, “Look at what another servant developed two hundred years ago. Use it.” And sometimes the Spirit says, “Dance like David did!”

Give thanks for the many ways we thank God for God’s love today. Step up and pray a prayer of forgiveness for someone who has hurt you. Walk up and sing a hymn by yourself. Tell your neighbor about what God has done for you this week, this month. Take an opportunity to pray for yourself and for a friend, neighbor, or family member. Come forward to speak through the Spirit to the Father that sent His Son to die just for you…and me.