The Things We Do and Say
The Things We Do and Say
Luke 2:21-40
The first thing that I want to talk to you about this morning is the role of rituals in our lives. I want to start in a really concrete place. I want you to think about your own daily routines. You have a way of waking up—an ordering of things: Do you wake to an alarm or do you not need one? Are you the first out of bed? Do you get dressed right away or do you hang out in your pajamas? Do you exercise early? At what point do you caffeinate yourself? How grumpy are you if the coffee isn’t ready?
It’s not that we can’t be flexible about things but if we are left to our own devices we gravitate toward our own default routines. Think about how disruptive it would be if you were ready to go to bed and your spouse was on “your side.” What happens if dinner is ready but “this is not when we eat?” What if you came home and your partner was parked on your side of the garage? It’s not that there’s anything that makes this side more yours than that side. This is just how we’ve always done things and if you can’t give me a good reason to do them differently, we’re not changing.
Even with the simplest routines in our lives, if someone rides roughshod over those routines, we feel out of sorts, discombobulated, even a little irritated. We look at the people involved and say, “What’s wrong with you?” Then, we look at ourselves and think, “Why does this matter so much? What’s wrong with me?”
Beyond the rituals that are our daily routines, we have rituals that are available to us to turn to in extraordinary times— good times and bad times, alike. Think about what happens when someone dies— a whole set of rituals kick in. There are papers to be signed and a service to be planned. There are details to be dealt with. If you’ve been through loss, you know that having the next thing to do can be comforting and reassuring. We’re doing what needs to be done. We’re on the right path. We must be okay. After the overwhelmingly out of control experience of having someone that I love die, we get to make choices. We get to feel a bit empowered again. And there will be rituals for me to do with my friends, too: some friends come with me to the funeral home; some friends help me put together the reception; a whole group of friends start organizing meals. These rituals help people feel like they can know what to do and feel good about doing it.
As a pastor, we learn the rituals that are specific to the community we are serving. Around here, there’s almost never a visitation. Where I grew up, there was always one. In my first church I served, the casket was taken to the cemetery on a horse drawn wagon, with the funeral director driving the team of horses and me, bouncing along, on the buckboard next to him. At that church, the cherished ritual was eating open faced cheese wiz sandwiches with smashed up potato chips on top. It turns out cheese whiz can be a great comfort!
Of course, our lives aren’t just changed by hard moments. Think about a wedding. There is so much planning that takes place and so much energy invested in those moments. This is not a superficial phenomena. This is people recognizing that what is going to happen matters—a lot—and how we do this matters, a lot, too. We care so we make careful choices—about flowers and dresses and d.j.s and bridesmaids and groomsmen and on and on.
Here’s the epiphany—the insight—that I’ve gained from officiating at a lot of weddings: all of the stuff that we plan, all the rituals that we go through, are the structure that ends up creating space for what matters most. The most memorable things that happen are almost never planned. The flower girls and their flowers were carefully selected. Who knew, though, that the one flower girl would bring the house down with laughter as she dragged out her part dropping one flower petal at a time for what seems like 10 minutes? We plan for the father of the bride to walk her down the aisle but what she’ll remember forever is what her Dad whispered into her ear. We plan the reception but the shock is actually having so many people who matter to us gathered in the same place at the same time. (Not to mention the fact that my friend from this corner of my life and my friend from this other chapter seem to be “hitting it off” in ways no one would never have imagined.
Rituals provide a container that we get to fill with our own particular meaning. Sitting down to dinner as a family keeps us connected—if we choose to connect. Gathering for a memorial service give us a chance to begin to share memories—if we are willing to tell the stories. A wedding day is a once-in-a lifetime treasure trove of connections—if we let go of expecting plans to go perfectly and if we don’t drink like prohibition is restarting tomorrow. In each case, ritual provides the opportunity. It makes room for meaning. Yet, it’s always up to us to live the moment.
Joseph and Mary, in our text, our adhering to the rituals provided for people in their day to give structure to being brand new parents. At eight days, all Jewish parents went to the temple and named their child. Think about this… After we have a child, all of us hunker down. We “nest” in the nest that we had been creating for months by painting walls and putting together a crib and having enough diapers on hand to last us for weeks. The rituals before the birth provide the space to lean into the time after our child is born, to soak in those wonderful days of staring at that little miracle of a person and start praying that one day they will sleep.
At some point, though, we need to go out into the world again. For our ancestors in faith, the obligation to go to the temple and officially name your child brought new parents and their child back out into the world. It also brought them into contact with their faith community. We are all well practiced at what happens then, right? We “coo” and “ooh” and “ah” as we stare with those parents. If we’re feeling bold, we might even ask if we can hold the child, at which point we melt on the spot. The parents are reassured that other people are here for us and adore this child, too. And we are assured that there is new life among us. In this spirit, Joseph and Mary, eight days after Jesus’ birth, have a wonderfully uncomplicated visit to the temple and fulfill their obligation.
The second time to visit the temple was for the ritual of offering their firstborn son to God. Again, this was something that everyone did 21 days after their first son was born. This visit fulfilled two functions. It was done to remember Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son, Isaac, during which God had him substitute the life of a ram for his son’s life. So, rich new parents still sacrificed a ram (which was to be purchased as a considerable cost from the temple). Poor parents were allowed to sacrifice a pair of doves (which were also to be purchased at the temple but were much less expensive.) Mary and Joseph sacrificed the birds (which I bet carried a certain “stigma” in people’s eyes.) Nevertheless, they showed up and dedicated their son to God.
The second function was a purification rite for the mothers. Now, this reminds us not all rituals are pure. In my life, when I see a woman who has recently given birth, I have never thought, “Oh…she’s unclean.” Remember, though, our ancestors were steeped in a certain misogyny that went all the way back to blaming Eve in the story of the garden and paradise lost. Whether we like it or not, Mary shows up and goes through the ritual so she can be “clean” again. (Yikes…just yikes but it’s not like we love every part of the rituals around a wedding or a death, either, though, too.)
Now, if this was all Luke reported to us about Mary and Joseph and these early days, we could still draw some worthwhile conclusions. Jospeh and Mary, it turns out, are observant Jewish people. The temple matters. The rituals matter. The community matters. When we wonder about Jesus’ early years, it seems really important to remember this. To anti-Semitic Christians who want to say that Jesus wasn’t really “Jewish,” we need to quietly ask them to please think again. And when Jesus gets into so much trouble with the Jewish authorities as an adult, we need to realize that this may have rested in part in how seriously he took his faith. I think it’s entirely possible that Jesus thought he was restoring the faith that he had loved as a child rather than starting a new religion.
Here’s the most important thing, though. Like all rituals, these faith rituals got Joseph and Mary and the baby to the temple where it turned out they were in the right place at the right time. We don’t go to church because we’re worried about what would happen if we don’t. We show up because you never now what’s going to happen when you do. Someone might need you. God might need a total piece of work like you to show up and listen to a total piece of work like that person in the other pew. Or, maybe, just maybe, there might be someone waiting for you.
There were two people who were waiting to see the baby—Simeon and Anna—the kind of people whom everyone would have overlooked and ignored because, well…they were old and because maybe they just took this whole faith thing a little too seriously.
Simeon and Anna fill the moment with incredible meaning. Simeon sees the child, asks if he can hold him and then declares to God that he can now die a happy man. Simeon had never doubted that God would let him see the one who would restore Israel. He just never imagined that God would let him hold that person in his own arms. Anna, a prophetess—of whom there are almost none in the Bible—declares that she, too, is looking straight into the face of God.
The thing is that when rituals work best, they are never all joy or all sorrow. There’s that moment at the funeral when we hear just the right story and everyone laughs together…and then lots of people wonder if it’s okay to laugh at all. There’s that moment during the wedding when we remember how much that one person we are missing with all our hearts would have loved to be here for this and we cry…even though or maybe precisely because it is such a moment of joy. The authentic experiences in this life are “all of the above,” where you feel things that you never would have imagined you could feel simultaneously.
Simeon looks Mary in the eye and with real compassion says to her, “This child…the one who will redeem Israel, the one who has brought you such joy, the one who made my heart beat faster than I imagined possible…this child will break your heart.” Somehow, I think he wanted her to know, way ahead of time, that when that day came, it would be her lot to suffer with him but it would not be her fault. In fact, this would be her son’s calling.