Ritual versus the reality is a common snare for the Christian. Ritual and reality should be an integrated whole, not separate functions. When the ritual started it was to perpetuate the reality. The sacraments were institutionalized to keep us in touch with the reality; for example, "as often as you do this in remembrance of me". However, human nature being what it is, we have a tendency to maintain the ritual and let the reality slip away. We practice the ritual and without noticing the reality starts to decrease until eventually we have an empty ritual with no reality. I'm not suggesting stopping the ritual at all but rather to restore the reality to the ritual.
When I was chairman of the national Youth for Christ it was my first opportunity to be associated with many of the bright young people in the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies. It was my first acquaintance with long hair, jewelry, and strange clothing. I was asked to come to the organization for it needed some business expertise, not because I was a youth leader, having had no experience with young people. It was quite a shock. However, I came to admire these teenagers more than I can say. In a conversation with one of them I asked him, "Why are you trying to destroy the traditions of the church?" He quickly replied, "We are not trying to destroy the traditions of the church but we are not willing to perpetuate them without the experience which started them." I wish I could think so clearly.
Often on Sunday morning when we are going through rituals with so little reality in them, I think of Kierkegaard's statement, "the problem with Sunday morning is that nobody stands and laughs." Whenever a large group of wealthy Christians are singing "all to Jesus I surrender" and we're having trouble keeping the church going, somebody should stand and laugh.
Once, on business in Rome, I spent a weekend in Rome viewing the sacred places of the Catholics. We were shown through the catacombs by a wonderful, gentle-spirited English priest with his white hair and beatific smile. He took such joy in telling us of the catacombs and the experiences of the early Christians. When we got outside I felt that I should shock him by telling him that I was a southern Baptist. His eyes brightened, he slapped his hands together two or three times, and said, "Pep me up, brother, pep me up!" He had heard about us. Then I said to him, "As we came through the catacombs I realized that those early Christians couldn't afford the luxury of denominational life, they were so happy to be with each other, and I wondered if persecution wouldn't reunite the body of Christ." He came over to me, took my shoulders in his hands and said, "My brother, it is not the form that separates us but the blessed hope of the resurrection which unites us." In that moment we worshipped together. There was reality in the ritual.
