(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 15, 2019, Proper 19)
The Problem with Ritual
Many a resolution to read the
Bible from front to cover has foundered on the rocky, ritualistic banks of
Leviticus.
Leviticus is full of ritual. Whether it’s talking about sacrifice,
diet, childbirth, or death, Leviticus consistently prescribes particular,
precise, repeated actions. Today’s
scripture in particular reads a little bit like a cookbook. Addressing the cereal offering, it
specifies the ingredients: the finest of your flour, along with some oil and
frankincense. The text describes
the different methods of preparation and the equipment. You can prepare it uncooked, bake it in
an oven, cook it on a griddle, or fry it in a pan. And the text repeats itself. When you do this, the priest will do this, and all of this
will be “an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord” (vv. 2, 9; cf. v.
12). Again and again in the
opening chapters of Leviticus, we hear that the sacrifice is a “pleasing odor
to the Lord.”
Throughout history, Christians
have had a tendency to dismiss all this ritual as what is mistaken or misguided
in Judaism. Doesn’t this obsession
with detail and repetition just drain life of its spirit? Isn’t that what Paul’s talking about
when he says that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6)?
In fact, the problem for Paul is
not law or ritual. The problem is
when people forget its meaning—the Spirit behind it. The problem is empty law and empty ritual. When Jesus said he came not to abolish
the law but to fulfill it, he likely meant that he came to show us the Spirit
behind the law, what the law was all about in the first place.
The Spirit of Ritual;
Or, Constitutive Law
So what is the spirit behind the
sacrifices we have read about so far?
To begin to answer that question,
it is helpful to make a distinction between two kinds of law. First, there is regulatory law, which
regulates the world as it already is.
Laws about trade, theft, and murder are regulatory laws, because trade,
theft, and murder are things that already happen in our world. They need to be regulated. But there is also constitutive
law. Constitutive law does not
address the world as it is.
Instead, it creates—it constitutes—a
new reality.
The laws of any sport or game are
constitutive law. They create a
new reality. Before people created
law about goals and sidelines and fouls and free kicks, there was no such thing
as soccer. But because of these
rules, soccer now exists.
Of course, reading the rulebook
to a game would be boring, which explains why reading Leviticus can be quite
boring. We’re basically reading a
rulebook. But to play the game is
an altogether different proposition.
When you really get into a game, you’re not thinking about a bunch of
rules. A good game will almost
possess you, filling you with its spirit.
A good game draws you into the world it has created. When I play soccer, I often forget this
world—for the simple fact that I’m living in a new one.
Sports and games are not the only
constitutive laws of our lives.
You might also consider certain rituals that make up a beloved
holiday. Cooking a turkey and
gathering around a table with family and watching football and taking a walk in
the park. These are all rituals
that are meant to fill us with a spirit of gratitude and fellowship and
rest. Perhaps just as I forget the
world on the soccer field, you find yourself forgetting the world while you
cook in the kitchen or play a game with your grandchildren. Rituals are constitutive laws. They create a new world.
Ritual as Recovery
If you’ll remember from last
week, the ritual of sacrifice has at its foundation a very simple meaning:
everyone can draw near to God. For
a people who had lived their whole lives trapped in a world of hopelessness and
helplessness and humiliation, the ritual of sacrifice created a new world, one
where the God who liberated them wanted to be near them and to dwell with
them. The ritual of sacrifice
created a new world where they were precious and beloved, not debased and
demeaned, a world open to new possibility, not closed in a circle of misery.
In more than one sense, ritual
was the road of recovery. It gave
new meaning and order to a life that had previously been ordered in a very
hurtful way. Imagine if a friend
of yours were recovering from a bad relationship or a toxic workplace
environment or a debilitating addiction.
You might indulge them for a little while in their “woe is me”
wallowing. You might down a tub of
ice cream with them and rewatch a few old favorites on television. But you wouldn’t stop there. The last thing a friend in recovery
needs is empty space or unstructured time. What your friend needs is a plan. They need boundaries and rules and tasks and projects. They need to relearn how to live,
starting with waking up on time and brushing their teeth and making their meals
and planning to meet people and do new activities that they enjoy. In a word, they need good rituals,
rituals that tell them a different story than their past disorder. Seemingly insignificant things like
washing your face or preparing a wholesome meal or committing to a daily
practice—these things actually create a new world, one where you care about
your health, where you enjoy the gifts of life, where you are growing and have
a purpose.
The Grain Offering:
What Matters Is Not What It Does, But That It’s
Done
The ritual of grain offering that
we read about today, was a small but significant part of Israel’s
recovery. What was the purpose of
this ritual? There’s no mention of
sin or forgiveness or atonement.
There’s no prescribed reason to do this. While other sacrifices have a very specific purpose, this
one has none. I wonder if this
sacrifice is not unlike the new hobby that a person undertakes who is
recovering from addiction or a bad relationship or a toxic workplace. What matters for that person is not the
precise hobby. She chooses
ceramics or gardening or hiking not because ceramics is an essential part of
recovery, or gardening has innate qualities of restoring your soul. She chooses one simply because she
needs a hobby; she needs something to do.
What matters is not so much what
she’s doing as that she’s doing something.
The grain offering in today’s
scripture has a distinctly daily, run-of-the-mill character. For one thing, these grain cakes
resemble the people’s common meal.
(It is not coincidence that one Israelite named Jesus would pray for his
“daily bread.”) The grain offering
also was part of the tabernacle’s daily regimen, apart from whatever else
individual worshipers would bring.
Every sunrise and every twilight, a grain offering would be made by the
tabernacle priests.
It’s almost as though what
matters most about the grain offering is not what it does but rather that it’s
done regularly. What the grain
offering accomplishes is not an instantaneous result but rather a sustained
growth. Its effect is
cumulative. Day after day, week
after week, the people draw near to God and offer what looks like a common
meal—as though to say, as often as I eat this bread, I do it in remembrance of
the God who delivered us. Indeed,
in our translation there is mention of the “token portion” which is burned on
the altar, but in the Hebrew the root from which this word comes is zkr, “to remember.” The salt that is an essential
ingredient builds on this idea of remembrance, reminding the worshiper that
what God did, God does still. In
the ancient world, salt was thought to be nearly indestructible. It could withstand fire and time and
the elements. Thus it was a symbol
of covenant and continuity. The
salt declares that God will never forsake the worshiper, even as it calls the
worshiper never to forsake God.
The specific ingredients of the
grain offering suggest one thing more about its character. As the writer of Proverbs would say,
“Oil and perfume make the heart glad” (Prov 27:9). The oil and the frankincense that regularly accompany the
grain offering suggest, then, that this is a happy, hopeful sacrifice. Remembering God’s goodness in the past,
gives the worshiper hope for the future.
Our Rituals Today
Every day grain offerings went up
in smoke at the tent of meeting.
Regularly people like you and me prepared what looked like lunch, and
then took it to the altar. What
did this sacrifice do? In the
moment, perhaps nothing at all.
But over time, it was a ritual that created a new and good world, a
world where people daily drew near to God, a new world where the past had a
meaning and the future held new possibilities, a new world full of gifts and
growth and life.
Last week in Sunday School, the
question was raised: what rituals have replaced the sacrifices of old in
2019? Traditionally Christians
have answered this question with the ritual-averse response that Jesus is our
sacrifice and we need no more rituals.
While this answer contains within it a kernel of truth—Jesus has indeed
shown us that sacrifices themselves do not accomplish what a living sacrifice
of love does—I fear that it throws the baby out with the bathwater. Ritual is not a bad thing. Performed in the right spirit, it is a
creative, constructive thing. It
is how God recreates our world.
So what rituals do we perform
today? In our gospel text, Jesus
gives us a hint. The kingdom of
God, he says, is not found in the spectacular or in grand gestures. It’s not the kind of thing that people point
to and say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For in fact, it’s already here among us (Luke
17:20-21). It’s already here in
the daily and the run-of-the-mill.
The rituals of the kingdom are the little way. They’re the little things we do repeatedly, regularly, the
little things that remind us and others of what we tend to forget—that, in
fact, Christ is with us in all things, that the past has been redeemed, that
the future holds great promise, that this world is full of God’s grace and glory
and growth and life.
I’d like to propose that Gayton
Road already practices three such rituals, three little things that constitute
or create a new world. The first
ritual is the simple celebration of tables. Not just the table here in the sanctuary, but tables
everywhere—at diners and Mexican restaurants and cafes. Tables serve as a reminder that Christ
is always with us where we gather in his spirit of sharing and selflessness. The second ritual is the gathering in
small groups and the appreciation that Christ needs no special ceremony to be
present, only honest and sharing hearts.
The third ritual is the outreach to the needful and the comprehension
that Christ is with us in a special way when our eyes meet theirs and our hands
touch theirs.
Perhaps the kingdom of God is not
so much a new world out there that will one day overtake this world here but is
rather a new way of living in and seeing this world here. Perhaps the kingdom of God is the same new
world that God began to create with the Israelites in the wilderness. Perhaps it is created or constituted by
little deeds that tell a new, different story—that God draws near to us, that
Christ is always with us, that love no matter how weak or foolish it seems is
stronger than any force in the world.
Oil and frankincense and
salt. Tables and small groups and
the needful. Both are rituals
that, when done in the right spirit, draw us into the goodness and life of God’s
new and well-ordered world.
Prayer
Dear Christ,
May tables,
Small gatherings,
And encounters with the least and last
Be for us
Rituals of recovery.
Like the grain offering
Regularly offered at the tabernacle,
May these little things we daily do
Where we encounter you
Constitute a new and good world.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done.
Amen.
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