Ritual (Easter - Day 26)

(Based on Colossians 2:8-23)

Standing on the stage, staring out at the hundred smiling, proud faces, I accepted the ring. As I looked into the eyes of my parents', and listened to the pastor explain what I was doing, I took the oath. The ring was slipped on my finger and I made the outer commitment of the inner desire to never have sex before marriage. The people clapped and took pictures, and proudly accepted another committed soul into the realm of sexual abstinence.

Walking up the aisle, emotionally convinced that I needed to get to "third base" in a relationship with Christ, I approached the youth pastor with several other kids. Moving to a secluded hallway, the Bible opened in hand, I repeated the prayers that would essentially enter me into a relationship with God and would wipe away all my sins as a rebellious, fussy kid. The pastor smiled and congratulated me on entering into a relationship with Christ.

White robe covering me, I stepped down into the warm water. The pastor grabbed me by the hand, leading me down. He placed one hand over my face while propping me up with his other hand. Falling backwards into the water, my body and face submerged as my "old life passed away, and new life began." Rising back up, the people clapped and took pictures and accepted another kid into the long line of "the saved."

If you're anything like me, you've taken some oaths in your life. Whether it was religion-based or promising to yourself that you would finish college in four years and no more, the pill was swallowed. The "new life" began. 

Never mind the facts that I would lose that promise ring, or that I would have sex hundreds of time before marriage. Never mind the fact that my sexual history would begin shortly after taking a solemn vow to not have sex before marriage. Never mind the fact that I would eventually trade the baptism of water with the baptism of alcohol. Never mind the fact that I would replace the secret mystery of Christ's acceptance of me just as I was, with a litany of rules that would make me acceptable to Christ. As long as the oaths were taken, I would be okay. As long as the pills were swallowed, things would be alright.

All around us, especially as young ones learning our ways around in the world, are narratives screaming and drawing us in, and pleading with us to take pledges, oaths, and vows when it comes to God, Jesus, and everything spiritual. Just follow me in this prayer . . . Just give twenty dollars . . . Just accept Jesus into your heart . . . Just ask for forgiveness . . . Just repent . . . Just find a church . . . Just come to small group . . . Just pray . . . and the list goes on and on and on. It's no wonder that the voices of the atheist and agnostic have begun to rise up and be heard. They may be in on something that those of us who have taken these solemn oaths have missed: They are seeking truth and not ritual.

Paul proposes a concept that is completely counter to what I grew up listening to as a child, and what I've believed most of my life. He says, "you're already in - insiders - not through some secretive initiation rite but rater through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin . . . All sins are forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ's cross."  

He continues to say not to tolerate people who try to run our lives, ordering us how to bow and pray and insist that we join their obsession with angels and that we seek out visions. He asks, "If with Christ you've put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? Do you think that things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention?"

Paul proposes that the reality of what Christ has done is being replaced by the rituals of what we do. From the oaths of accepting Christ, to the rules of what we can't touch, what we can't taste, and what we can't go near, the finished work of a compassionate and once-and-for-all forgiving God is being replaced by a God who just didn't do enough on the cross. The messages are all around us. We, the religious folks are hearing it. Those lucky enough to escape before the pills were distributed aren't hearing the narratives any longer. They are finding their own, and they may be finding that the narrative outside of religious ritual is drawing them to the source of power that we religious folks were trying to connect with the whole time.

Although I come off as crass and unforgiving, I believe religion is a very important avenue in which to connect with a God I can't understand. I believe it provides a way to flesh out the spiritual in a way that makes sense. However, when it starts to replace the very Christ who took all of our sins and put them away for good with the idol of cheap phrases and to-do lists, religion becomes "a dazzling array of big words and intellectual double-talk." The religious elite "want to drag us off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings." 

Paul is proposing here in Colossians that the message of Christ was, and is, never about our doing something in order to get something. The message of salvation and new life and forgiveness was never and is never about doing something to get something. We are already insiders, living testimonies of a God who loves us unconditionally and sees us as his beautiful children. The work that was completed doesn't need our phrases and oaths and pleas for forgiveness. We can open our eyes to the Christ already come, to the salvation already present, to the freedom already set forth, to the restoration already unleashed. 

The author claims that we have been saved, forgiven, and set free from our old, sin-dead lives. Our sins have been forgiven, our slates wiped clean, our old arrest warrants canceled and nailed to Christ's cross. The message is much simpler than than most of us want it to be. There's nothing we can do to cancel out what was already done, and there's nothing we need to do to add to it. 

Today's Action: Find the "common, spiritual ground" that we share with our coworkers today, and see what kind of dialogue occurs.