Why Does The Orthodox Church Have So Many Rituals?
Do we
really need church rituals, given that Jesus did not celebrate Liturgy and did
not make the sign of the cross? Sergey Khudiev explains where all these
traditions come from and why we should follow them today.
Lately, I stumbled upon a popular, or, as they say
nowadays, a viral text:
“Neither Jesus nor His disciples ever:
- Celebrated Liturgy in a church
- Made the sign of the cross
- Kissed icons
- Venerated relics of deceased “saints”
- Lit candles in a church
- Taught that you must venerate certain “sacred”
objects.”
And the list goes on, it’s quite long and I don’t quote
it in full. You get the idea, right? The diversity of Orthodox rituals is
allegedly empty and unnecessary, even contradictory to the original idea and
intent of Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples.
Therefore, performing those rituals is a waste of
time, right?
Naturally, the Lord and his disciples hardly practiced
the Orthodox spirituality as we know it. They belonged to the 1st-century
Jewish culture, so the pious customs that they followed were rooted in the Old
Testament and in the Jewish cultural heritage.
However, this spirituality was no less ritualistic,
traditional, and community-centered than the Orthodox one.
We find detailed descriptions of rituals, i.e.
“stereotypical actions characterized by their symbolic meaning” in the Bible.
For instance, the celebration of Passover is central to the Old Testament
faith. Passover is celebrated as a way to remember the Exodus of the Jewish
people from Egypt, and as such, it implies performing a strict sequence of
symbolic actions, each of which carries a message of its own.
Exodus, chapter 12, describes in great detail what
clothes people must wear, what food they must eat, and what actions they must
perform during the celebration:
And the
Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of
months: it shall be the first
month of the year to you.
Speak ye
unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to
them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house: and if the household be too
little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the
souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your
lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the
goats: and ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and
the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And
they shall take of the blood, and strike it
on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they
shall eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and
unleavened bread; and with
bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs,
and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until
the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn
with fire.
And thus
shall ye eat it; with your
loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye
shall eat it in haste: it is
the Lord’s passover. (Exodus 12:1-11)
People used to perform (and Orthodox Jews continue to
perform even today) an elaborate ritual that reminded and explained the events
of the Sacred History to the future generations. Nevertheless, this ritual was
not only didactic: it functioned as a mystical time machine of some kind, which
was (and is) making people participate in the Exodus. It was not just some
other people very long ago, in a foreign land, who experienced the Exodus from
Egypt; it was something that happened to us and constitutes a huge part of our
own personal experience. We
were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a
mighty hand (Deuteronomy 6:21).
This is why a person who voluntarily refused to
participate in the Seder, ceased to be a part of the Jewish nation. It was more
than just a refusal to remember a key event in the history of the nation: it
was a refusal to participate in the event.
Lord Jesus Christ does not refuse to perform that
ritual, either. On the contrary, his Last Supper where He establishes the
Sacrament of Eucharist takes place during a Passover Seder.
His disciples celebrate Eucharist according to his own
commandments, “…and when he had given thanks, he
brake it, and said, Take, eat:
this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After
the same manner also he took
the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood:
this do ye, as oft as ye drink it,
in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11: 24, 25).
Various Christian traditions may have various ways of
performing this ritual but it is this ritual that we will find wherever we
look: a traditional sequence of actions
characterized by their symbolic meaning.
A ritual-less Christianity is impossible simply
because it is a ritual — the ritual of Eucharist — that is in the centre of the
Christian community as founded by Jesus.
However, there are other reasons why it is impossible.
First, to be pious you need to put effort into praying
regularly. The author of Psalms sings praises to God not because he is in the
mood to do so right now but because God deserves praise and worship. The
obligation to set apart the Sabbath for God’s sake implies prayer discipline:
it is a moral obligation of a human being to sing praises to her Creator and
Redeemer, which requires disciplined and organized effort.
You can — and should — pray in your own words. With
that said, when you are tired, annoyed or in a bad mood, you pray using the
words that have already become a part of the biblical tradition. The Psalter
was a prayer book for early Christians — and it is
mentioned in several verses: James 5:13, Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16.
Secondly, public prayer inevitably calls for order of
some kind, and when this order emerges, it becomes stable — why would anyone
want to re-create it over and over again? Rituals, i.e. established formulas for
public prayer, are simply unavoidable.
Rituals are impossible to avoid even in congregations,
which attempt to get rid of rituals. One could write a similar critique against
them, too:
Neither Jesus Christ nor his disciples EVER:
- Rented cinemas
- Wore suits and ties
- Made altar calls
- Used songbooks, let alone Hillsong worship hymns
- Played the guitars or used sound amplifiers.
Even if among Christians there are strict
reconstructionists who re-produce 1st-century customs as
meticulously as possible, there are very few of them. First of all, it’s
incredibly painstaking. Secondly, no one knows why it matters. Lastly, no
matter how hard you try, you won’t achieve the result you aspire to: a 21st-century
man who wears a costume of a 1st-century man is nothing but a 21st-century
man in a masquerade costume.
Religious life invariably requires rituals. These
rituals cannot copy 1st-century samples to a tee. Notwithstanding
this fact, it is preferable that they preserve continuity with those samples —
that they shoot out of the 1st century like a living organism. This
is why the Lord established his Church, “I will
build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew
16:18), described by Apostle Paul as a
living Body filled with the Holy Spirit: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized
into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond
or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13).
The rituals of the Church stem out of its practice of
prayer and communion with God. They aren’t random or meaningless. When we
perform them, we enter the very space of faith and prayer where Apostles dwelt.
Yes, spiritual life can become a mere formality;
meticulous adherence to rituals can hide inner emptiness and infidelity to God
— and that is something even prophets of the Old Testament warned against. But
in order to face the danger of formalization of your spiritual life, you need
to have a spiritual life first.
A Russian poet said,
If you don’t have a house,
It won’t be destroyed by fire.
And if you don’t have a spouse,
There’s no other guy she’ll desire.
If you do have a spiritual life, it will definitely
manifest itself through rituals — and you shouldn’t be afraid of it.
Source: http://www.pravmir.ru/zachem-tserkvi-stolko-obryadov/