Us Baptists say we don't go in for ritual. A living faith doesn't need a script, a performance, a ritual. And as for liturgy, a whole service by the book, is too near to a scripting of the Spirit, that too is a no, no! Or so we like to think.
But I've had to listen to countless extempore prayers which lack the deep down freshness of words that are both original enough to fly below our complacency and familiar enough to pull our hearts back to the One who calls us here, and in whose name we eat this bread and drink this wine. And I know of no Baptist Church communion service where certain prescribed actions are not performed; reading of Scripture to ground the 'institution of the Lord's Supper; prayers of thanksgiving for bread and wine; the giving out of bread, now nearly always eaten as taken; the distribution of wine, in little glass, or worse, plastic glasses, as if it was a free sample at a local produce market. Singing a song or two, before or after. With minor variations that is the Baptist communion ritual.
I personally think ritual is important, and good Liturgy is one of the Church's ancient and modern treasures. The question is whether the ritual is more than mere ritual; the issue is how much emotional, intellectual, spiritual and personal investment is poured into the words, the actions and thoughts expressed in this regularly rehearsed and performed ritual. There's a place for beauty, symbol, gensture, colour, music and sound tuned to worship, words carefully crafted into devotion, so that what is done doesn't just happen – it is, and is intended to be, an event.
Frederick Buechner as so often, sees through the self-righteousness of those who are too spiritual for their own good, and shows up the ignorance and poverty of Christian imagination.
"A ritual is the perfromance of an intuition, the rehearsal of a dream, the playing of a game. A sacrament is the breaking through of the sacred into the profance; a ritual is the ceremonial acting out of the profane in order to show forth its sacredness.
A sacrament is God offering his holiness to men and women; a ritual is a man or woman raising up the holiness of their humanity to God."
Ritual is essential in human life. Courtesy is dependent on ritual, the handshake, deference and good manners at the table, introducing a stranger by name and offering the names of others; hospitality is at its best as a ritual of welcome, a well practiced enactment of pleasure at the presence of an other.
Rightly performed, and invested with emotional integrity, ritual provides important structures to our hopes, cares, fears and delights. So yes, when I come to worship I am looking for ritual, not mere ritual, but that rehearsal of important words, significant actions, shared symbols, and the regular recalling of the why and what of our faith. So even if it's diced bread and small plastic wine receptacles, the breaking and pouring, the sharing and drinking, the remembering together and speaking Gospel words together, these rituals of a Body enacting the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, are of great importance. Ritual only becomes empty ritual, not when it is empty, but when the hearts that perform it lack the passionate love and faithful obedience of to Jesus. Such passionate love and faithful obedience seeks to turn every ritual into worship, to convert every radical action into service, tries to ensure every imaginative thought is made captive to Christ, and asks God to transfigure every routine tedium into the silver and gold of a Kingdom in which faith, hope and love are the default settings of Christian existence.
The cake in the picture was part of our family ritual for Sheila's birthday – baked by Andrew (our son). It was consumed with well rehearsed alacrity, and I have to confess, without too much deferring to one another.
