Ritual Chains

Ritual Chains Colossians 2:16-23 Never let rules and ritual replace relationship. College Bed-Time Stories Illustration of book, “As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.” We have a ritual, we have a tradition of reading the kids books every night. But that ritual must change over time as the relationship I have with my kids grows and matures. New things will take its place. New rituals and new traditions, new rules. What happens when a ritual outlives its relational purpose? It becomes ridiculous, creepy and suffocating. And yet, right now, most of the time, I love our bed-time traditions. I know I will look back one day and be so glad for every minute we invested in it. And even though it is time for it to end, I will miss it. We are a people with Rituals and Traditions We are a people with rituals and traditions. We have rules that govern those rituals and traditions. We, human beings in general, are great at forming rules and rituals. Our brain does this even without our conscious knowledge. Ever start driving on auto-pilot and end up at work? Meant to go to the grocery store! Our brain is fantastic at building patterns and hard-wiring them so we don’t have to think through them every time… so we can be thinking great thoughts instead of “how do I drive again?” Because of this, we are great at forming rules, traditions and rituals. This is true individually. This is true corporately, organizationally. And conversely, we are not great at stopping our traditions and rituals. They become habit and can outlive the good or great purpose for which they were started. Ritual outlives relationship. This happens in the church. The church is a group of religiously minded people who engage in daily and weekly rituals to get right with God? This sounds like a church, but this is shadows and shackles. That sounds like church… but that isn’t church. That is what a church becomes when it calcifies, when it hardens, when it becomes nothing but ritual and tradition, when it is all habit and no heart. And the story of church history is this happening over and over again. Why are there so many denominations? Some of it is theological difference… but so often a movement starts fresh chasing after Jesus, and then gets locked in with ritual and tradition, like arthritis, and reform within fails, and so a new movement or a new church springs out in order to escape the chains. Escape the shadows and shackles. The church is not supposed to be a group of religiously minded people who engage in daily and weekly rituals to get right with God The church is a people called out by God, united by their faith in Christ, following Him together, becoming like Him together. This is light and freedom. Colossians 2:16-23 The church in Colossi is in the Crossroads. The gospel is spreading like wild-fire, people are hearing about Jesus and what he did. And the gospel is spreading to Gentiles who have no knowledge about the cultural and religious background that formed the context that made sense of everything that he did. WE don’t have a description anywhere of what the Colossians were going through. Instead we infer from what Paul teaches them in his letter what it was they were struggling with. And there was an ongoing challenge in the early church, probably connected here, called the Judaizers. Well, to the rescue come some people we call the Judaizers. These are Jewish believers in Jesus who know and practice all the rituals and traditions of Judaism. They keep the dietary laws. They keep the festivals. They kept certain fasts, they kept additional Sabbath days, bonus Sabbath days connected with festivals. They were visibly holy in so many ways. This is further mixed with a philosophy of Jesus that is more in line with the Greek philosophy of the day. This probably went something like “If Jesus was holy and pure, he probably could not have been a physical being, instead he was a projection of some kind, like a God-illusion.” And they sought to teach, to impose even, all of this ritual and tradition, rooted in Old Testament law much of it stretching all the way back to Exodus we have been studying, they sought to impose this on the believers in Colossi. And Paul responds with a big old NOOOOOOO! We saw these first verse last week, where our focus was on the true gospel, the true story of Jesus. This week, we see what the alternate story was and it is one that crops up, especially in the church, again and again. Colossians 2:8 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. and he continues to lay out the radical truth of Jesus as our salvation, in every way. Rescuing us, purchasing us, dying for us, instead of us, to forgive us, and to humiliate all opposing spiritual forces. Jesus wins. End of story. Colossians 2:16-18 16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. A Shadow of Things to Come The substance belongs to Christ, and last week I went on and on about the substance. Christ is Ultimate Reality, he is the Great Storyteller, and the story is all about him. So whatever these “other things” are, they are a shadow of Christ. I love this metaphor. You can make out all sorts of details about someone or something as their shadow comes around the corner. You can take a guess at their size and shape. You can see how they move. You can see how it approaches, how close it is getting. And then, when someone walks around the corner, you can see how it was that they cast that shadow… but you don’t study the shadow anymore! That is silly. You see the person. You say “Hi.” Or, since you are the kind of person hanging around corners at night studying people’s shadows, you probably mug them. Sabbath is a Shadow? So what are the shadows? And I will dive in on one, and we can apply that to all. Because one of these may stand out to you in particular. Given that it is Sabbath today, I see the word Sabbath there and I have to ask “is he talking about me?” You will note most translations say “a Sabbath” or something like that to distinguish this from the weekly Sabbath. The word is plural and used in a different form than that usually describing the Lord’s Sabbath as commanded by God in the 10 commandments and practiced by Jesus and the early church. This is likely referring to the additional Sabbaths celebrated in connection with feasts. For example, the first and last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover) was a “Sabbath” regardless of what day it fell on. This verse likely refers to those kinds of Sabbath. So, as Sabbath keepers, you can breathe a big sigh of relief. HOWEVER! We have to be very cautious here. Any time we interpret Scripture such that it lets us off the hook of conviction, we should be very, very, very careful. Very careful. Very skeptical. Should we let anyone judge us by any of these things, including our observation of the Sabbath? No, of course not. I heard a line that I love: “why is it legalism when I keep the Sabbath and not legalism when I am faithful to wife?” Can’t both be an act of love in Christian freedom? Should we then judge others on their Sabbath day. EVEN if they are confused about the day? I’m going to just let that question simmer. Other Shadows We can take that same tension to the other shadows. Specific rituals of festivals, this new moon thing, questions of food and drink. Is it possible for these to be good things? Yes. Paul includes gentle guidance at other times about food and drink. Drink wine for an upset stomach to Timothy, not eating food sacrificed to idols where it might cause a brother to struggle. Things that you do out of love… but never things that disqualify you. There is a sign of someone living in shadow, and I love the description because I have seen this exact story play out, I have been this guy. Someone who is: insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind Puffed up, with arrogance, this is like a theological arrogance. Going on and on about little known subjects and throwing weird things in there. Asceticism is what we think of as monk behavior, dramatic fasting, dramatic simplicity, scourging the body, punishing the flesh in some way as if that’s what makes you spiritual. And adding in theological flights of imagination. This is how cults start, when the person is also charming or persuasive. But this person is showing signs of having been cut off from the Head… they are disconnected from Christ. They are no longer knit together and growing with people of God. And that sounds bad, and it gets worse. They Simply Have No Value Colossians 2:20-22 20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. These shadows, these regulations, these rules, by extension the rituals mentioned above… all of these can be shadows and shackles. An appearance of wisdom… so they are deceptively attractive in our self-made religions. “but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” How does this interact with sin and righteousness? What does the freedom we have in Christ, what does it free us to? How does all that we said about Righteousness in the Ten Commandments play into this? More about all of that next week as we move through Chapter Three. Rituals or Relationship This week, you have a very difficult question to wrestle with. Because you as individuals are great at forming rules, starting rituals and traditions. You have a bunch of these rules and rituals. And they were probably all started for really good reasons, to help accomplish good purposes. So you have to ask, about every rule, about every ritual: Are your rituals feeding your relationship? Are you doing what you do just to do, or does it feel new? (to Jesus and you) Are your rituals feeding your relationship? We know what the substance is. We know who the head is. We know who ultimate reality is. And we want to do the things that help us grow in our relationship with him, and by extension in our relationship with others. In our last sermon in Colossians, we can see how radically our Christian walk pervades the rest of our life. So this can apply to our work life, our family life, our marriages, our kids, our parents, our friends, our neighbors. Are our rituals feeding our relationships? But most especially, what is our connection to the Head, to the Purpose. As we consider the shadows, what is our relationship to the light? Our Rituals Now Paul isn’t even speaking to the individual level, though we can connect on that level. He is writing to the church… and there may be no other place where well-meaning rules and rituals can take on such shackling power. We have rituals. Are our rituals feeding our relationship? What we do here, we call church. This isn’t church. Are we a group of religious-minded people going through a weekly ritual to get right with God? No We are a body, attached to the Head and depending on it for direction. “Nourished and knit together… growing with a growth that is from God.” And the best of our rituals nourish us, knit us together. But we need to constantly submit our rituals to the Head of our church, to Christ Jesus, and ask “is this drawing us near to you?” Is the way that we sing together on Sabbath mornings at 11am nourishing us and knitting us together? How about the way that we worship you with our offerings? In our prayer together? We have a strong tradition of not confessing our sins together, is that nourishing us and knitting us together? Is our ritual of a 20-ish minute sermon drawing us near to Jesus? How about the ministries that have become our traditions over the last 8 years here in Thornton. Our booth at ThorntonFest, Group one80, oneWay Youth, our Pathways ministry… all the other things that we do week after week, year after year. Are our rituals feeding our relationship? Our relationship with God, with Jesus, with one another, with our community. Are they life-giving? Now, I am not assuming the answer is “Yes”. But we need to regularly ask the question for every ritual and tradition that we have. Because there will come a time when the answer is Yes. When we realize we are just doing what we do just to do… and it isn’t new, and it doesn’t help you, and it doesn’t help me too. All of the rules, all of the traditions, all of the rituals have this danger. They are shadows. They help us see, they help us understand, they help us walk with Jesus. They can become shackles. The Heart of Worship Are your rituals feeding your relationship, are our rituals feeding our relationship with Jesus? What will this mean for us as individuals? Let’s try some things and find out. What will this mean for us as a church? Let’s try some things and find out. Let’s examine carefully, let’s try some things and find out. Matt Redman wrote a song and we are going to sing it here. His church was wrestling with this question regarding worship. Having lost their way, lost their heart for worship, they just stopped. For a season, they took away the band and the sound system. They took out the elements of ritual. And they sat, often in silence, and reconsidered their offering to God, their acts of worship. They brought prayer. There was some spontaneous singing here and there. And after that season, they ultimately came back to the same ritual. With the band, with the sound system, probably a lot of the same songs. But simply because they had asked the question, because they had explored the alternatives, they knew this wasn’t empty ritual. These weren’t human rules and regulations. Their worship was the sincere gift of a free and grateful heart to a freeing and gracious God. That is church, that is the best of what we do. Matt Redman wrote this song out of that experience. Let’s chase the Heart of Worship. Let’s be sure that everything we do, every act, every habit, every temporary rule, every ritual, every moment of our lives is engaged in living Life, in pursuing the Way, the Truth and the Life.