Daily Reading 10/21

Today's Gospel lesson, Matthew 12:1-14, is about the Sabbath. The Pharisees see that the disciples were picking heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath, a day when it was law for no work to be done. Then, in an effort to trick Jesus, they ask him if it was lawful to heal someone on the Sabbath; this was a trick because on the one hand the healing would be work, but on the other hand it would be a good deed. To prove his answer, Jesus pointed out that anyone would save a lamb that had fallen in a hole--if that was OK, then it was most definitely OK to help someone who needed healing. He healed a man's withered hand to drive the point home.

The crux of this passage is Jesus's condemnation of the Pharisees' concern for ritual for it's own sake, without understanding what was behind it. The Sabbath provided a talking point for this discussion. Jesus ultimately appeals to his own authority as the Son of Man, stating that he is in charge on the Sabbath, not the ritual.

Coming from the Anglican tradition, many of us know what ritual is like. Our Sunday Services are steeped in ritual-we wear different clothes, have different colors at different times of year, do things in a certain way and order. All of this is a kind of ritual that orders our Sabbath. Is it wrong? Are we stifling the movement of the Spirit with this ritual? This has been an argument made against the Book of Common Prayer since it was written--that having a pre-written prayers and a pre-ordered service keeps the Spirit from moving within us. Others, however, find great comfort in the order of the Prayer Book services. If you're familiar with it, you know there aren't going to be any major surprises from week to week, and you can settle into a more meditative state as the service goes on, not having to focus on finding the "right words" because words have already been provided-words that are prayed by yourself and by the community as a whole.

So where do we strike a balance? How do we keep our own Sabbath rituals from becoming Lord instead of Jesus? I'm sure many of us have had moments in the liturgy (the technical term for the church service itself) when we feel that the language is outdated, or we don't get the point of why the cross goes before the torches, or we feel that moving a hymn to a certain place would make the service better. When we stick to the rules for the sake of sticking to the rules, that's when we can run into problems. The Pharisees were sticking to the rules not because this would help them "be holy as God is holy," not because it provided rest for people who worked all the time, but because the rules were the rules and had to be followed. When we fail to look deeper into our own rituals and try to understand why we do them, we fail to discern how God is working through them. We focus on the building instead of the foundation, but it's the foundation that allows the building to exist in the first place (I'm not sure that metaphor makes the most sense, but it's the first one that came to mind).

For example, if we say the cross goes before the torches just because that's how it's supposed to be and that is how the service is ordered, we miss the point of the message that is conveyed when the cross comes first-we forget that the redemption wrought for us by Jesus on the cross is first and foremost in our lives as Christians. And while there is a certain amount of "following the set rules" about this, if we understand what is behind those rituals they take on a deeper meaning. They allow God to rule our worship, and not ourselves.

So feel free to ask questions about the liturgy. Ask myself, or any of the ministers on staff and we'd be happy to talk with you about it. If you don't go to Grace, leave a comment here and I'll do my best to answer it. We have to seek to understand-that's what the Pharisees failed to do. They stopped at the door (the ritual) and didn't look to see what was on the other side.