Dear Trekker,
We are well into another Lenten season as I write, and today I want to enter the Easter commemoration through the side door! Easter, the benchmark of all history, can be an enigma if we are not perceptive in understanding “what happened.”
Recently a fellow trekker and I were conversing. My young colleague, a committed follower of Jesus, was lamenting what he chose to call “ceremonialism” within the church. He discovered it in his church as a youth, denied it then and continues to reject manifestations of it today. He alleged how disheartening it is. When he finished speaking, I smiled and avowed, “I agree with everything you’ve said. Ceremonialism in any day is the flipside of legalism” … and obviously legalism in any form is a dead-end street compared to the vibrancy of a grace inspired life.
Now let’s be clear…“ceremonialism” as we discussed it is simply raising the traditions and rites of men to a level detrimental and even destructive of the purpose for which the ceremony was instituted in the first place. It is honoring ritual or form, not substance. It is also elevating man’s experience of reality, man’s creations, to God-like status. Any fondness for pomp and ceremony will always fall short of the soul boost we all need to survive and triumph. Man is a great human being, the greatest of all species, but he is a lousy God, not to be worshipped.
Scripture passages popped into my mind. The first… Matthew recounts perhaps the greatest miracle of Jesus’ life, when he was transformed into His eternal likeness and spoke in His eternal glory with Moses and Elijah. (Matthew 17:1-8 … read it now.) Peter’s reaction was to build monuments to each man to memorialize the moment! Ah, ceremonialism at its best. God’s voice brought Peter back to reality… “This is my son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” The purpose of the experience for the three disciples was to open up the endless possibilities in life when we listen to the Life Giver and worship Him alone… who He is, not who we want or hope Him to be. Oh Trekker, when we see the lowly carpenter as God the Transcendent One, the first and last, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords… we will listen to Him, we will worship Him alone, and we’ll accept no counterfeits men offer. And we won’t mix up the baby Jesus with the bath water of cultural ceremony and tradition.
The second passage of Scripture which came to mind was the “korban” discussion of Mark 7. (Trekker, a companion Old Testament reading is Isaiah 29. Please read both Isaiah 29 and Mark 7 before continuing.) To set the stage, the “washing of hands” as originally a cleanliness issue had devolved into pure ritual; “ceremonial” cleanness was at stake. Great moral principles in the Pentateuch had devolved into the tradition of the elders, embodied by legal experts, the Scribes. (Pharisees were/are simply the practitioners.) So Jesus was accused of eating with unclean hands. The ritual had become so sacrosanct, not to follow it was to be “unclean” in the eyes of God. (Note: Trekker, you will really be blessed if you can read the entire account in William Barclay’s “Daily Study Bible”. I commend it to you.) Jesus was “in your face” with their accusation, rightfully identifying them as hypocrites, (a descriptive Greek word which means simply “acting out” without any genuine belief or commitment) substituting man’s traditions for the law and truth of God. “Korban” (“gift for God” in the Greek of the day) had become so twisted it was a lame excuse for not honoring one’s parents. Trekker, worship must have a practical component or it is not true worship. Like, one cannot love and worship God and ignore his neighbor in need.
And then it hit me… Easter, the greatest occurrence of all time, can be mere ceremonialism if we do not understand the significance of the cross and resurrection of the Savior. The sacrament of communion likewise…it is always “in remembrance of Me.” And herein lays the irony of Easter! Oh, it’s far more than Easter rites and cultural traditions; it’s Jesus!
God’s sovereignty and the free will of man come together at Easter like no other time on life’s spectrum. Sinful men hung Jesus on the cross because he did not fulfill their expectation of a Messiah! Jews and Romans were the means (as the will of man always is) whereby the crucifixion took place, even as the crucifixion was the foreordained, Divinely planned event of Sovereign Grace. Man was “bought back” by a righteous, loving God.
Easter Sunday on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) continues the irony! “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened”…“we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” Jesus had just redeemed Israel and all humanity, and they were so captive to their own expectations and traditions of what a Messiah would and should do, they had missed the significance of history’s greatest day.
Trekker, it we are not careful, today’s expectations of form and ritual can leave Jesus outside, knocking at the door. And we can be deaf and clueless because of the loud cacophony of lifeless, human effort. It need not be the blind leading the blind of New Age, Wicca, or any religious fad. Any religious practice which blurs our focus on Jesus alone, must be suspect.
Easter says the future with Jesus is an unlimited, unbounded forever. What possibilities? Trust Jesus only, and allow him to be the unpredictable lion of Judah which we can’t tame. We need only know He is good! He will accomplish His purposes which can never be fully known “on this side.” Trekker, we need to hang on to His mane and enjoy the ride. Easter will be Happy if we do.
Enjoying the irony of it all,
Jim Meredith