Ashes to Ashes — Reflections on Ritual

I’m sitting in a coffee shop with a smudged cross on my forehead. It is, as most Christians know, Ash Wednesday. My wife and I went to a service a couple of hours ago, at 7:30 in the morning. Why did I do this (delaying my coffee and newspaper)? Why did I participate in this ritual?

For an answer, I quote myself (with whatever apology that requires). Following is an excerpt from a book of mine – The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist. It is specifically addressing the relationship between ritual and the feeling that God is distant, but I hope it is useful, on Ash Wednesday, even if that is not your own situation.

(An added note: I am picking up my mother’s ashes today. It seems to fit today’s ritual words: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” And it fits my mother’s and my hope for resurrection.)

THE EXCERPT (an edited version of a longer chapter):

One of the most effective responses to your nagging Inner Atheist is ritual – the small, recurring acts of faith performed with regularity over time.

I never thought I’d say it. Having spent my most formative years in Southern Baptist churches in small towns on the plains of Texas, I was taught that the word “ritual” was always preceded by the word “empty” (making it effectively one word, “emptyritual”) and that it was what the high-church liberals and Catholics did. We worshipped God; they had empty ritual. We prayed as the Spirit moved (Or was it just off the cuff?); they read their prayers because they didn’t have the Spirit. (But of course you didn’t want too much of the Spirit, like those Pentecostals. Plainness, we were sure, was pleasing to God.)

Actually, I don’t want to mix up these reflections on ritual with high church/low church battles. All human beings are creatures of ritual in the same way that they are creatures of habit, and any expression of religious faith at all will involve ritual. If you take Communion, sing songs before the sermon and one after, take an offering, end a service with a closing prayer or blessing, have a quiet time for Bible reading, celebrate Christmas and Easter, or wear different clothes to church than you do to a ball game (admittedly a dying practice), you engage in religious ritual.

“All human beings are creatures of ritual in the same way that they are creatures of habit, and any expression of religious faith at all will involve ritual. ”

Religious ritual is whatever you do repeatedly for the purpose of positioning yourself before God. Ritual becomes empty when it is done only for the purpose of performing the ritual, with no thought or concern for positioning yourself before God.

So why is ritual helpful when God seems distant? Because its regular performance keeps you within hailing distance. It is not, of course, that God is not always near and always able to meet you, while washing the dishes as much as when taking Communion. It’s that performing the rituals, the acts of faith, helps keep you from becoming deaf to the still, small voice of God. God does not stop speaking, but we are able to stop listening. Performing the ritual creates a space in which God can engage you, even when you don’t feel like being engaged.

But don’t you have to feel it? If you aren’t feeling it when you perform the acts of faiths, aren’t you being—here’s that word again—a hypocrite? Your Inner Atheist says exactly that. “Hey, why are you going to church? You hate church. What, are you becoming a Republican?”

Performing a ritual when you feel nothing is no more hypocritical than dancing with your wife or husband when you are too tired to dance. The wedding went on too long, the reception is even longer, and you want to go home. Your spouse asks you to dance one dance. It’s the last thing you want to do. But, given your commitment to this story called marriage (and your sense of what’s good for you), you reluctantly agree to dance.

And, lo and behold, in the dancing you discover pleasure—the pleasure of pleasing your spouse, but also just the pleasure of moving to the music with someone you love. You are performing the music, giving physical form to disembodied rhythms. You are, in fact, enjoying dancing and feeling closer to your spouse.

Or maybe you aren’t. Maybe you still wish you could go home rather than finish this dance. Maybe you find it irritating that your spouse insisted on this one dance. It doesn’t matter. You are doing the wise thing. You are putting yourself in a place where something good at least has the potential of happening. If it doesn’t happen this time, you should still take the next opportunity to dance. This is how it is with rituals—we perform them regularly, apart from our feelings, as a realistic expression of hope.

What, exactly, are the acts of faith? What counts as a ritual? As I said before, rituals are anything you do repeatedly for the purpose of positioning yourself before God. Traditionally, these things include prayer, Bible reading, worship, confession, and tithing. Even the most tentative believers should perform these acts to place and ready themselves for the work of the Spirit in their lives.

But there are many other acts of faith that can have the feel of ritual. These include regular acts of charity and compassion (think serving at the soup kitchen or visiting the aged); dispensing blessings, nurture, and encouragement (perhaps while caring for children); offering to God the work of your imagination and craft (an artist sitting prayerfully before the canvas or the musical instrument or the blank piece of paper); and any worker doing any work as unto the Lord (as the Reformers taught).

Some rituals are physical gestures—the raising or folding of hands, the sign of the cross, the bending of knees, the bowing of heads, the wearing of sacred objects. These can be rote, or they can be redeeming, filling the passing moments with small reminders of an awareness of transcendence.

Rituals fit a sacramental view of the spiritual—that Spirit becomes visible in the world in material form—something even this former Texas Baptist can understand. God has shown himself willing to become flesh and dwell among us. He dwells among us still, no matter how close or distant we feel him.

When he feels distant, maybe not even there at all, perform the spiritual. Do the acts of faith. Keep alive the ritual of belief.

Then keep your eyes and ears open.