The Point of Ritual and Symbol in Worship and Prayer

Don: Our worship symbols and rituals are bound by time, place, culture, and tradition. The Sabbath is an example. Turning off the TV, unplugging the phone, not starting the car, and buying a Sabbath stove are bound only to our time and circumstances, not to those of the past nor necessarily to those of future. But entering into a Sabbath rest, setting aside business as usual, focusing on family and friends, doing good to others, and making the worship of God a priority are not bound to any particular time, place, culture, or tradition. These timeless rituals put us in subjection to God, allow us to recognize and acknowledge God’s grace, and enable us to celebrate the Sabbath as a weekly downpayment of that grace.

So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:9-16)

How easily we fall into the trap of turning the Sabbath—a symbol of God’s grace—into an object of veneration in its own right. How quickly we put ourselves and what we do (or what we abstain from) into the center of the Sabbath, making it about us rather than about God. We turn the Sabbath from a symbol of God’s grace into a celebration of our own behavior.

Symbols and ritual define us. Adventists are defined by their observance of the Sabbath, their immersive baptism, and so on. But symbol and ritual can also refine us. How can we be refined without being defined out of our relationship with God?

Is prayer a ritual or a symbol, a ritual or a reality? What about Islam’s five, highly choreographed, daily prayers, all recited in the same way positionally, day after day, month after month, year after year? How about the Lord’s Prayer? Are they ritual or reality or symbol? Do they refine, or do they define?

The parable of the publican and the Pharisee describes both ritual and real prayer:

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

Does the parable show the value of ritual and symbol in worship? Is there a highlight in the contrast between the ritual and the real? Is there a key to understanding the validity or the dangers of ritual vs. reality?

The prayer of the Pharisee is heard frequently in church. I myself have been guilty many times of praying this way in public. “Lord, thank you for this beautiful day. Thank you for the wonderful people who are gathered here. Thank you for this beautiful church to worship in. Thank you for food and warmth, and for keeping us from the homelessness and destitution and loss suffered by others, and for making us the recipients of your many blessings.” These are common themes in public prayer.

Like most of us, I fear, the Pharisee in the parable puts himself, his station in life, and his personal blessings at the center of his prayer, venerating himself rather than God. The tax collector, on the other hand, puts himself and his standing aside in order, essentially, to ask God to let him enter into a Sabbath rest. His cry for mercy is an acceptance of God’s grace. It is to enter into a Sabbath rest. It is to share a ritual that embraces a reality—the promise made by Jesus when he said:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

What should the end product of our prayers and our worship be? What do we want it to be? What is that will help us to understand the importance of the rituals and symbols? Will we know valid, quality worship when we see it?

David: The Lord’s Prayer itself seems self-centered where it says: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.” One version of the Lord’s Prayer ends with the humble acknowledgment that “the kingdom, the power and the glory” is God’s. I wonder why the other version omits it?

Don: Luke omits the power and glory, Matthew includes it. The Catholics use Luke; Protestant churches tend to use Matthew.

Dion: In family worship at home, after saying the Lord’s Prayer we would recite Psalm 103, blessing the Lord. It was a ritual we did without question. In preparing to give a devotion recently, I started to question it. I tried to figure out what it could mean for us to bless the Lord, as opposed to his blessing us. It is easy, it requires no thought, to follow ritual; it is hard, but it is rewarding, to question.

Donald: Our customs and traditions are ingrained in us as children through ritual and symbols. We don’t understand them then, but begin to “unpack” them as we grow into adulthood.

I wonder too about the matter of sound in worship. Religions strive to determine what sounds are appropriate to them.

Michael: The Pharisee was engaged in ritual prayer, but the publican was in a different state of mind. It was that state of mind that justified his prayer. It wasn’t that his prayer was judged and found to be justified—it was automatically justified by its very nature.

David: By definition, prayer is both an act and a symbol of humility. To pray genuinely, validly, is to ask; and to ask is to debase oneself, to humble oneself, to admit one’s lack of something. By definition, it seems to me, valid prayer is an act of humility. Any expression of one’s own achievements in a prayer simply invalidates it, by definition. We might call it prayer, but it is not.

Donald: To me, personal prayer is not just a symbol but also a remembrance of my allegiance to God. Whether or not I feel like praying is not what matters. What matters is that I remember and recognize God as my master.

Anonymous: In Arabic, the word for prayer is “salah”. The related word “silah” (possibly from the same root) means a relationship between two people. So salah—of any sort, it doesn’t matter—is essentially about our silah with God.

Dion: The sacrificial system was given to the Israelites at a time when they did not know how to worship. The significance of the sacrificial lamb is that it was raised like a family pet, so killing it really felt like a sacrifice and caused the worshiper to think about his or her fallen nature and need for God and his salvation. It was an act of humility and a recognition of God as savior. The act of prayer is an everyday act of recognition and renewal of that relationship.

Jay: Prayer seems to be a natural part of worship. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to pray and to worship. Finding the right way is what we are striving for. Dion may have found the answer in pointing to humility as the right approach. As we grow, we seem to be led (willingly enough) to believe that, if we pray long and hard enough, God will listen and give us what we ask for. Scripture seems to support that: “Ask, and you shall receive.” The problem I always have with this is: Suppose my brother prays just as long and hard as me for the very opposite thing that I pray for, and both of us have absolute faith that God will do what we ask. How is God to choose? We tie the outcome/effect of the blessings of God to the cause of our prayer and worship.

Don: People tend to find no value in a God who doesn’t benefit them, doesn’t answer their prayers, doesn’t respond to their worship. What is the outcome we want? Is it God’s blessing, as Jason suggests?

Jay: Blessings are what we want, but we are wrong to expect them. A key component of the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps of worship as a whole, is: “Thy will be done.” We are not capable of knowing God’s will, and when we approach prayer and worship in humility, we implicitly acknowledge our ignorance of God’s will yet accept its supremacy over our will. We worship so we can (we think) be blessed, so that we can align God to our will. But we ought to worship to align ourselves with God’s will.

Donald: Do we choose our faith groups on the basis that we think they know the right way to worship? God seems to value the multiple ways we have found to worship him. As for humility: I don’t see how one could approach God in any other way.

Jay: I maintain that most of us are not in a state of humility when we come to church to worship. To abandon our will to God’s, to put our lives in God’s hands, is the chief component of true humility, but it is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, it’s impossible for us, and that’s why we need God’s grace. Only Jesus achieved it. It’s easy to humbly recognize and accept God as the Creator, omnipotent and loving, etc., but that is a far cry from the total humility that would put us in true and full communion with God.

Michael: Sometimes we think we achieve humility. It seems to me the publican in the parable was more miserable than humble.

Jay: Misery induces humility.

Dion: Do we only listen when we are humble?

Jay: It’s not a matter of listening. It’s not a matter of anything we are capable of doing. It’s a matter of being in a position to receive God’s grace.

Anonymous: Is worship an attitude, rather than an act? God can tell the sincerity of our worship from our hearts, never mind what our words say. Merely mouthing humility won’t cut it. Jesus saw the humility in the publican’s heart, no matter what he said, and recognized it as true worship.

Don: There seems to be a need and a value, at certain times in our faith journey, for ritual, such as when we are children. The Lord’s Prayer (given to us by Jesus), Islamic daily prayers, and so on, are ritualized. So there must be value in them. The issue is how to prevent the ritual object from becoming worshiped in its own right.

Dion: The Herron scale in science education* begins with highly choreographed—“ritualized” as it were—lessons, but as students progress, the amount of ritual is reduced. Eventually, the student is capable of recognizing and investigating problems in a situation without any need for ritual. So too with issues of faith.

Michael: There is some comfort in ritual. I am a Palestinian Christian but I have prayed in the Al Aqsa mosque with a Moslem friend and found spiritual comfort in the ritual there.

Dion: Sometimes comfort is all we need. Prayer can provide it, even without a response from God.

Donald: Symbols and rituals define and divide our sects, but as Michael’s testimony shows, they don’t have to. We can worship together.

Chris: When worship and prayer become ritual for the sake of ritual, as it was for the Pharisee, the relationship with God suffers. To me, worship and prayer are personal. They are means to establishing a personal relationship with God. We are in trouble when the ritual becomes more important than the relationship. Ritual is indeed comforting, in providing structure and predictability, but in the end it is not as important as we might think. It grows less important as we grow and mature. The most powerful prayers are intensely personal. They involve the baring of one’s heart to God and a resultant feeling of connection to him.

Donald: Funerals are very ritualistic, and intended to provide comfort in a time of grief. The ritual is valid and beneficial. The issue is where to draw the line between what is valid ritual and what is not. It differs between individuals, as well as between religions and denominations.

David: My take on the parable of the publican and the Pharisee is that God has no interest in intervening in the affairs of this world, so asking him to do so is a waste of time except, perhaps, for whatever psychological comfort it might bring the worshiper. The publican was “exalted” not when he went home to his wife, but when he went home to God.

Don: We shun the idea of a God we cannot control and cajole blessings from. The notion that we can, permeates our religions. We mislead others and ourselves in not recognizing that God’s will is all that matters. When we understand the valid outcome of worship, then we might have a better understanding of how to worship.

David: The end product is not of this world. It is in God’s kingdom. The publican was not exalted in his home, by his wife and neighbors and the taxpayers he oppressed. He must have continued beating his breast in misery—else he must have turned into a self-righteous Pharisee! He was exalted not in this world, but in the spiritual house of God.

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* HERRON’S CONTINUUM OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

(Thanks to Dion for providing this.)

Level 0 – Problem area, methods of solution and “correct” interpretations are given or are immediately obvious from either statements or questions in the students’ laboratory manual or textbook. Includes activities in which students simply observe or “experience some unfamiliar phenomena or learn to master a particular laboratory technique.
Level 1 – Laboratory manual proposes problems and describes ways and means by which the student can discover relationships he/she does not already know from manuals and texts.
Level 2 – Problems are provided, but methods as well as solutions are left open.
Level 3 – Problems, as well as solutions and methods, are left open. The student is confronted with the “raw” phenomenon.

Examples:

Level 0: Laboratory Activity “A”

The students are provided with live Daphnia, thermometers, depression slides, and compound microscopes. Water baths maintained at 5, 20, and 35 degrees Celsius have been provided at five lab stations around the room. The students are instructed to expose a sample of their Daphnia to one of the water baths for two minutes and then count the heartbeats of one Daphnia for one minute. This procedure is to be repeated for each of the three temperatures (the students have already been shown how to count the heartbeats of a Daphnia). After the collection of data, the students are asked to plot the number of heartbeats per minute versus temperature on a sheet of graph paper and state a conclusion about the relationship between these two variables.

Level 1: Laboratory Activity “B”

The students are provided with live Daphnia, thermometers, depression slides, and compound microscopes. They are asked to determine the number of heartbeats per minute for one of the Daphnia. The students are then asked to find out if different temperatures influence the heart rate of Daphnia and to explain how other variables could account for the differences observed.

Level 2: Laboratory Activity “C”

The teacher explains to the students that temperature has a general effect on the heart rate of invertebrates. Higher temperatures tend to increase the heart rate while lower temperatures decrease the heart rate. One rule states that the heart rate doubles for every 10 degrees increase in temperature. A cold-blooded animal like the Daphnia is directly influenced by the environmental temperature. With this information, the students are instructed to “break up” into their laboratory groups and verify the stated relationship between heart rate and temperature for the specific temperatures of 25, 35, and 45 degrees Celsius. These students already know how to set up water baths and determine Daphnia heart rates. \

Level 3: Laboratory Activity “D”

Live Daphnia, hot plates, nicotine solution, 5% alcohol solution, light sources, rulers, thermometers, depression slides, pH paper, balances, graph paper, microscopes, stirring rods, beakers, and ice cubes are placed on the demonstration table at the front of the room. The students are asked to use any (or all) of these materials to investigate the influence of environmental changes on the heart rate of Daphnia and to search for quantitative relationships among the variables investigated