Sermon, 2/2/2025: The Value of Rituals

The Presentation of our Lord

Psalm 84; Malachi 3:1–4; Hebrews 2:14–18; Luke 2:22–40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses.  Luke 2:22a

I want to introduce someone special to you this morning.  She is Miss Johnson.  Miss Johnson was a pivotal person in my life.  Although I am certain that she had a first name, I never knew it.  I met Miss Johnson when I was four and a half years old, and that was in a century before children were allowed to address adults by their first names.  You see, I had learned to read already by the time I was four, and so my parents decided, because of where in the academic year my birthday fell, on my behalf as well as to give themselves a temporary break from my constant one-word question WHY, to apply for early admission to kindergarten.  By luck of the draw, I was assigned to Miss Johnson’s class.  Miss Johnson was a grandmotherly type, both in her physical stature and in how she maintained discipline, but without being a disciplinarian.

For example, a cardinal rule in her class was, we could chew gum in class, but we had to bring enough to share with everyone else.  That meant bringing enough gum for some 18 or so girls and boys.  Now I ask you: what five-year-old has enough money and generosity to supply an entire class with Bazooka Bubble Gum, and I was only four?  Miss Johnson had other rules: ‘Wash your hands before you eat.’  So, at snack time, we all lined up in order to wash our hands at the classroom sink.  But her rules did not end there.  Said she: Hold your partner’s hand when we cross the street.  Look both ways before crossing.  Stay in line and don’t jump in front of the person before you if you do not want him to jump in front of you.  Save your outside voice for outside because I am not hard of hearing.’  And I was only four, and a skinny, shy four-year-old at that.  I did not have the courage at four and a half to carry a protest sign outside her classroom, or to defy her rules.  I not only respected Miss Johnson, but I adored her.  And, yes, now, many decades and other teachers later, I can still envisage Miss Johnson, who was probably a Mrs. Johnson, but I never asked about her marital status.

Now, I want you to fast-forward with me, if you will, to my middle and teenage years, sitting in church, where I heard the following prayer.  The prayer can be found on page 51 of our 1942 Book of Common Prayer, the Prayer Book or Missal in use, with which I grew up:

O Almighty God, we give thee humble thanks for that thou hast been graciously pleased to preserve, through the great pain and peril of child-birth, this woman, who desireth now to offer her praises and thanksgiving unto thee.  Grant, we beseech thee, most merciful Father, that she, through thy help, may faithfully live according to thy will in this life, and also may be partaker of everlasting glory in the life to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

This prayer in the 1942 Prayer Book bore the title “The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-birth.”  Colloquially, this ritual was called “the churching of women.”   As a teenager, I understood the nature and mechanics of giving birth.  What I did not know or understand, however, was why, given scientific development during my youth, giving birth should be perilous.  Why would an act of nature—check out the Book of Genesis where this route of bringing children into the world is declared normative—denigrate a woman’s status as an equal partner in creation. Now, it is clear in 2025 that, then as now, politics play an integral role in this area of human development, a role that I decry fervently.

Should you now wonder where, if at all, there is the connection between Miss Johnson, my kindergarten teacher, and a prayer from the 1942 Book of Common Prayer, let me remind you of the opening sentence of today’s gospel from St. Luke.  There I read: “When the time came for their purification…”  I draw your attention to the word “their,” as well as to the ritual of “purification.”  Not only was the baby of the Bethlehem crib fame being presented in a ritual in an act of recognition of his special status, Mary, his virgin mother underwent also a ritual that all women of her era underwent.  However, there has occurred a transition, both in our theological thinking as well as in our observance, a transition that produced both positive and negative outcomes.

Since the Age of Enlightenment of the 17^th and 18^th centuries—actually, I am so bold to journey back to the invention of the Press 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg—in our rituals we have been a forward march to the year 2025, where rituals have taken on an everyday costume, where rituals are no longer important, because we take for granted the superiority of our own intellect.  Thanks to Gutenberg, we gained, but not without an ongoing struggle, a freedom to read and to discern for ourselves what is truth and not rely solely on what an all-male clergy declared as appropriate and meet and right so to do.  Clerics were not alone in wanting to hold this power of discernment unto themselves.  History in these United States recorded example after example of slave owners who punished severely those slaves who learned to read.  With reading came and comes knowledge and independence.

As a person of faith, as a person who steadfastly believes that, if our creator God endowed us with a brain, with an intellect, with a curiosity to explore, I am equally convinced that those talents and capabilities are not to be hoarded for selfish ambition.  Miss Johnson said, you may chew gum but bring enough to share.  She did not say so then, but I have learned over the decades that by following her dictum, we can diminish, not only in who gets to chew gum in class, but in a broader, far-reaching way diminish the feelings of envy, or being left out, of being slighted.  The strength of a person, as well as the strength of a nation, lies not in “going it alone,” but in the recognition that their strength derived from solving and resolving a troublesome problem together and sharing with others.  Rituals aid in relationships.

What the prophet Malachi proclaims, is captured in the poetic beauty of the psalm:
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving;
He covers the heavens with cloud;
             he prepares rain for the earth,
                he makes grass grow upon the hills.
He gives to the beasts their food,
His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
                nor his pleasure in the legs of a man;
But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
                In those who hope in his steadfast love.   Ps. 147:7f.

The words, “Stop! Look! Listen!” grounded a ritual of another era.  They came not directly from Malachi, St. Paul, St. Luke and, most assuredly, not from my Miss Johnson.  But they were words of import on which was grounded a ritual that save thousands of lives.  You recognize that catchy phrase from the railroad industry.  That is what, so it seems to me, that the God, in whom we live and have our beings, requires of us.  Joseph and Mary and the young boy-child fulfilled a ritual which cries out for our attention, understanding and implementation, even in 2025.  The Good News of the Gospel of Christ requires the same of us.  Stop! Look! Listen!  for in so doing, we come to know The Other, for whom “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom,” for he was the Messiah of God and whose gospel we are charged to share with others.   Amen.