Today is Palm Sunday, kicking off a week filled with a Passover Seder with our small group tomorrow night, Maundy Thursday & Good Friday services, and of course a Sunday filled with church, and then good friends and food. And who could forget the Easter treats? The malted milk "eggs" from Trader Joe's are getting the best of me this evening...yum yum.
Like any holiday, Easter is steeped with tradition and ritual, inherently causing me to reflect on the traditions of the past and the meaning of such practices. Thus, I especially loved today's sermon, wherein my friend Tim talked about the ritual of the Passover Seder, and it's meaning not only contextually 2000 years ago, but also it's implications for today.
I know I've talked about ritual before, but I really can't emphasize enough the role that rituals play in shaping our every minute and day, let alone our whole schema of how the world operates. I love ritual, and I always have. I feel grounded by it - from anything as mundane as my daily shower routine (shampoo, conditioner, let conditioner set while washing face and body, shaving, rinsing - in case you were curious) to the religious rituals that have molded my understanding of the world from an early age.
I remember getting to college and feeling so lost and overwhelmed with all of the newness that I was seeking the opportunity for routine in any setting that I could. I would go to church at the ELCA church on campus and cry at minimum once during every service, for at the least my whole first year of college. I wish I could say that I was crying because the words of the service were so meaningful and carried such a poignant impact, but that would not be true. I was crying because the services represented something that I knew, words that were etched into my memory, all signs of something familiar and beloved that I longed for in a new and foreign setting.
I also remember talking to peers that freshman year, peers who had grown up in an undoubtedly similar in many fashions ELCA church setting, who hadn't step foot into a liturgical setting since arriving on campus. They had become immediately involved with large, nondenominational campus organizations and churches, and had no desire to be a part of the liturgical church rituals they had grown up with. So clearly I can recreate one of the conversations in my mind - where a friend told me how empty, hollow and meaningless the service liturgy felt to him, and how he never once had missed it or wished to go back to it. I was literally dumbfounded in that moment, drastically bothered by this statement - like someone had ripped an essential organ out of my own body, claiming that it really did not provide a viable role in maintaining my physical health. Thus, I understand that this particular ritual carries much more meaning for me than it might for someone else - and I get this. (Sort of.)
But I also know, that rituals don't mean a thing until we attach meaning to them. Once significant to us personally, the whole act is transformed. For me, the liturgy of the ELCA church service isn't just about words on a page in a green or red hymnal - the ritualistic words imply not only how I understand the world, but how this formation of understanding occurred: sitting in the back pew week after week with my siblings, reciting the service word for word out of rote memory until I was old enough to care and think about what the ingrained words really meant; watching my father energetically teach my too cool for school confirmation class about the original meaning of the Passover Meal; waking up on a dew-filled morning at camp to feel a chill in the air but also to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit in miraculous nature; or pestering my father to talk more about why things mean the things they do in the church all the way to Minneapolis and back during my early years of college. And it makes sense to me that the rituals of the church thus weigh so heavily on me, because of the layers upon layers of significance they carry with them.
Thus, to come full circle - why I loved today's sermon. Faith doesn't make sense to me more days than it does make sense, but today was an example of when I just know it all works. It somehow just makes sense. And usually, when I can tangibly attach ritual actions to their original intent or meaning, this sense-making unfolds around me. I loved the historical context given to explain not only the significance of the Passover Seder meal, but moreover, how what we now know as Jesus' last supper, and thus the sacrament of communion, was born out of the ritual. Thus, adding more layers of meaning to what it means to participate in the holy sacrament. All things I have heard before, but none of which I don't love hearing again and again (I guess that sort of defines loving ritual, eh?).
Happy Holy Week (and thus, happy one more week until it's back to Facebook!).
2 comments:
No fair! I wanna do a Seder Meal! When did you do it?
see you on fb in (less than) a week.
Thanks for getting me thinking!
I really love it when you write about your dad (even though the mention in this post was brief). It is so clear that your relationship was so special.
Hope all is well!
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