Rethinking Rituals

Tim Davis

Let’s talk about “rituals”. 

But before we do, think about your visceral response to the word; do you long for more rituals in your life or does the term cause you to recoil? If your response is negative (and it’s ok if it is!), hold on to that feeling as you continue reading this article. Who’s knows, maybe you’ll have a change of heart.

But let’s begin by defining our terms.

At its most basic level, a ritual is an activity that religious communities participate in on a regular basis—they’re repeated. So for example, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are great examples of rituals. And they’re staple activities of every church. 

Now that we have a working definition, let’s dig a little deeper. 

RETHINKING WORSHIP

How would you define worship? Think about it like this…

When you hear the word worship, do you think firstly about something you do or something God initiates?

I wouldn’t be surprised if this question feels a bit awkward to consider. But I assure you, where I’m going with this is deeply biblical and anchored in our Protestant heritage. 

As Nicholas Wolterstorff says, “The governing idea of the Reformed liturgy is… the conviction that to participate in the liturgy is to enter the sphere of God’s acting, not just of God’s presence.”[1]

The dual ideas of worship and God’s presence go together in my mind like peanut butter and jelly. But God acting in our worship… how do we make sense of this?

How does “God act” in worship?

To answer this question, we need to get a glimpse of how “worship” fits into the Bible’s story.  

A BRIEF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF WORSHIP

In the garden, heaven and earth overlapped—God’s space was married to humanity’s space. But when sin entered the world, God exiled humanity east of Eden. 

God’s space and humanity’s space no longer overlapped.

But God didn’t give up on his commitment to dwell with his people. The rest of the Bible’s story is about God making a way for humans to dwell in his presence. 

One of the first examples of this was the tabernacle. After God entered a covenant with the people of Israel, he instructed them to build a tent where he would dwell among them. Alas, God made a way for humanity to dwell in his presence. 

In other words, God made worship possible.

But as great as the tabernacle was, it was merely a shadow of greater things to come. Jesus tabernacled among us (John 1:14). Then following his resurrection, his body—the church—became the very dwelling place of God (Eph. 2:22). 

So to answer the question from the previous section, God acted by making it possible for you and I to come into his presence—he did this through Christ’s death and resurrection. But he continues to act by continually inviting us to meet with him. 

To illustrate the point, if someone asked you, “Why do you go to church?”, it would be fitting to respond with, “Because God invites me.”

In fact, many liturgies begin with a “call to worship” for this very reason. Scripture is read at the outset of the service to remind God’s people that they’re gathered together at God’s behest. You could say...  

The church’s theology directs the church’s liturgy.

But there’s one more point to make…

WORSHIP: FORMATIVE OR PERFORMATIVE?

If we think about worship firstly in terms of what we do, then “ritual”, or repeated religious activity, will likely feel inauthentic.

And as James K.A. Smith says, “This creates an interesting challenge because sincerity and authenticity tend to generate a penchant for novelty… I might start to feel hypocritical if I just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.”[2] 

But if we see worship as a “top-down” activity—where God acts first by inviting us to worship him—then we’ll see rituals as activities that form us.

To quote Smith again, “Worship… is where God does something to us. Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts.”[3]

KNOW WHAT YOU DO AND WHY YOU DO IT

Let’s bring it all together. Rituals aren’t rote and emotionless acts of a bygone era. They can become that, but they’re designed for so much more—namely, to mold God’s people into a virtuous people prepared for mission. 

As a surgeon trains his hands for surgery through vigorous repetition, so too, the body of Christ has their affections trained toward heavenly things through thoughtful repetition. 

So how can we make our rituals more meaningful? I suggest, as a starting point, to know what we do and why we do it.  

So for example, what is a call to worship and why do we do it? What about a benediction? What about reciting creeds or confessions?  And what of singing and preaching? Why baptize and come to the Lord’s supper? Each of these activities deserves their own treatment so we’ll address them elsewhere. But to conclude, I return to the beginning…

What’s your visceral response (now!) toward rituals?