Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Genesis 18:22-33
June 13, 2004
A few Fridays back, Jeff Nelson graduated from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, one of our thirteen United Methodist schools of theology, where it is neatly nestled on the Lake Michigan lakeshore, cradled in the northernmost bosom of Northwestern University.
Northwestern, itself, stands as a witness to how seriously we Methodist types considered education to be in those early days when we were trying to shape both our denomination and our country. In terms of higher education, there was Northwestern and Boston….American in Washington….Duke, Drew, DePauw and Dickinson….Vanderbilt in the near South….Emory in the far South….SMU in Big D….a slew of schools with Wesleyan as their second name….not to overlook Albion and Adrian locally (if you are willing to grant a hundred-mile radius to the word “locally”).
We believe in education. We support education. We will not put a preacher in front of you who lacks education. But Jeff almost didn’t go to graduation. He had to think about it….pray about it….get himself talked into it….not to mention psyched up for it.
“No big deal,” he thought, given that it was far from his first graduation….given that it was a mere stepping stone to a bigger deal called ordination….given that most of his coursework was done locally rather than at the seminary….given that his only year in Evanston was three years previous….and given that we keep him so busy here that he really doesn’t have the time, the energy, and maybe the money.
All of which led Jeff to ask: “What are they going to do to me if I don’t go? And what is it going to mean to me if I do?” But he went. Partly for Bridget. Partly for his dad. Partly because we told him he should. Partly for himself. And partly because he was asked to speak at a pre-graduation dinner for alumni. Today, he’ll tell you he wouldn’t have missed it….that he’s still processing it….and that he was moved, affirmed and energized by it. As was the case, a few days later, when he was commissioned as a deacon in the Detroit Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.
I have noticed in some quarters an increasing tendency to downplay the significance of ceremony….to flatten what some might call “life’s higher moments” until they are leveled into the proverbial pancake. Even those who go through them, often pooh-pooh them, saying that they are merely going along with plans made by others (to whom the moment means more than it means to them). What am I talking about? I am talking about everything from confirmations to graduations….birthdays to anniversaries….and (yes) weddings to funerals. Even more to the point, I am talking to every one of you who, in response to any of the above, has been overheard to say: “Don’t make a fuss. One day is pretty much like any other. It’s no big deal.”
Well, that’s not true. Some things are big deals. And if not, they ought to be. I worry about people who stop counting birthdays….who forget anniversaries….who decide not to hold a funeral or a memorial service because of how few are left to come or how far they’d have to come. I am also talking about people who minimalize a wedding so that they can have a bigger down payment on a house, or who use words like “bother” and “trouble” when describing the effort to elevate the word “ceremony” above the word “ordinary.”
When I talk to couples about to be married, I walk them through an exercise that helps them get in touch with the marital scripts that were written for them by their parents. I give them a series of questions to answer (later, to each other….not out loud to me) about how those married people they lived with handled issues like conflict, money and sex. But since those are complex issues, I start simple with a discussion of what I call “calendar.” By this I mean the marital and family rituals that occurred in an average year in their household of origin.
I tell them to start with New Year’s Day and work backwards.
When they were growing up, I ask them what their parents did on New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve? On Christmas Day or Christmas Eve? Many young couples have their first big fight at Christmas. They can’t put all of the rituals together. They don’t know how to buy a tree. Should it be tall or short….artificial or real….long needled or short needled? Should there be a star on top or an angel on top?
I ask them how their families opened presents. I ask them what their families ate for Christmas. Was there turkey or ham? If there was turkey, was the dressing wet or dry? Were there giblets in the gravy or did someone always strain the gravy?
I ask them about their Thanksgiving memories. Then we go on to birthdays. If they can figure out how their families handled birthdays, they can understand a great deal about life in their family. Then we go to anniversaries….a gold mine of information if ever there was one, given that anniversaries are purely marital. Concerning anniversaries, did their parents remember or forget? Did they go out or stay home? Did they go out with five other couples or just with each other? Did they go to a place with white tablecloths and violins in the woodwork or to a place with checkered tablecloths and bowling balls in the next room? Did they go to Hawaii for their 25th or Hamtramck? And what kind of anniversary gifts did they give each other? Were they practical or personal….functional or intimate? Did dad always get a weed whacker as an anniversary gift or a cashmere sports coat? Did mother get a blender or something in a box labeled Victoria’s Secret?
Then I ask them about family rituals related to Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and the annual family reunion. Which leads to follow-up questions about extended families. Did they have relatives? Did they like their relatives? What kind of attention was paid to relatives? Did they attend baptisms of their cousins? Or did they even know whether their cousins were baptized? And what of vacations? Did their family take them or avoid them? Did their family go up north or overseas? Did their family camp, or did mother say she wasn’t going to sleep any place where they didn’t put a mint on the pillow?
And what of family ceremonies? Were there weddings and funerals? Who came to them? What kind of “deal” was made of them? What kind of memories were created by them?
I was raised in a family that, for many years, tended to screw up big occasions. Most of them turned out poorly. Somebody got angry. Or moody. Or surly. They became moments to downplay….occasionally, even moments to dread. So when I got married, as much as I wanted to move beyond that, it took me a while to work through that. Which I have. And which we have. So that in recalling the rituals of her childhood, when my daughter starts a sentence with the words “remember when we”….or “in our family we always”….her face lights up. But in far too many families, those same phrases are accompanied by faces that cloud up.
In a world where there are clocks for telling time, rituals are ways of marking time. The preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a season for everything (and a time for every purpose under heaven). There are seasons for mourning and crying. There are seasons for laughing and dancing. A season of building up is followed by a season of tearing down. I suppose there are even seasons for settling in or moving on. The writer suggests we should not shortchange any of the seasons. This includes the season of mourning (which some would bypass for fear of its sadness) and the season of dancing (which others would bypass for fear of its frivolousness).
In our Old Testament text from II Samuel, David dances in public, only to get an earful of complaint from his wife in private. As this story unfolds, it is early in David’s kingly career. He and his army have emerged victorious over the Philistines. His people….all kings have “people”….are moving the Ark of the Covenant from the rather obscure northern region of Kirjath-Jearim (Escanaba) to Jerusalem (Detroit). In effect, this makes Jerusalem the epicenter of the monarchy. As for the Ark, call it the physical symbol of the covenantal promises of God. But if you want to call it “the box that houses the holy,” that’s all right, too.
At any rate, the people cheered….the horns sounded….David sacrificed (an ox and a fatling)….and then he danced.
With all his might, he danced.
Stripped to the bare essentials, he danced.
In full view of commoners (servant girls), he danced.
With his wife watching from an upstairs window, he danced.
Defending himself to his spouse, he said: “God is incredibly great. And this day is incredibly good. Meaning that a celebration that might not be fitting and appropriate every day is more than fitting and appropriate this day. So deal with it, darling.” Which, if not a perfect translation of II Samuel 6:21-22 is, colloquially, right on the money.
There is a time to dance. There is also a time to mourn. And it is not lost on me that the Bible (especially the Old Testament) is full of weddings and funerals. To his critics, Jesus said something akin to this: “I can’t win with you guys. When wedding music is played, you want me to look like I’m at a funeral. And when funeral music is played, you want me to look like I’m at a wedding.”
One recalls the day his critics asked Jesus: “So why don’t your friends fast?” To which Jesus answered: “Because I am with them now. I won’t be with them forever. Having me around, it’s like a wedding. I’m the groom. And nobody fasts when the groom is in the house.”
Another time, a lady breaks into an all-male dinner party, opens a bottle of Giorgio….or was it My Sin?….and after pouring it all over the feet of Jesus, sloshes it around with her hair. “Scandalous,” some cry. “Wasteful,” another cries. To which Jesus says: “Cut her some slack, guys. What she has done is appropriate to a burial. And I am dying. If not in here….out there.”
There are certain things we do….and certain times we do them….because certain occasions call for them.
In the last four days (which will conclude along about 2:00 this afternoon), I have had dinner with 49 Confirmands….enjoyed a separate dinner with my faith friend from the confirmation class….shared in a brunch with another member of the confirmation class….performed one wedding….met with couples about two other weddings….handed out gifts to a chancel full of graduates….gone to a funeral….touched down at a 50th anniversary party….and helped a member of the choir eat his 65th birthday cake. This is a season filled with “big deals.” If liturgical rituals (breaking bread, saying the Lord’s Prayer, singing the Gloria, bowing heads in some traditions, uplifting hands in other traditions, bending the knee or making the sign of the cross in yet another tradition) are ways we acknowledge God’s presence in church, then other rituals (blowing out candles, toasting brides, moving tassels from one side of the cap to the other, or breaking bread with the family of the bereaved) are ways we acknowledge the presence of God in events related to family….and, occasionally, even country.
We Americans have been given a great gift over the last few days. I am talking about the week-long, coast-to-coast observance of the death of President Reagan. It was the poet Carl Sandburg who once calledPresident Lincoln’s 12-day, 1700-mile funeral cortege, “garish, vulgar, bewildering and chaotic,” before adding that it was also “simple, final, majestic and august.” I don’t know what adjectives the poet (were he alive) would use to describe what we have witnessed more recently, but I loved Gail Chaddock’s line in Friday’s Christian Science Monitor: “The Reagan ceremonies are a reminder of the power of presidential rituals to bind a nation together, at least for a little while.” To which she then added:
This week of nonstop focus had much to do with the fortieth president himself. But the nationwide remembrance also says much about where America is today. The nation wants a timeout, and Ronald Reagan’s death gives us a timeout to rediscover in this week what holds us together instead of what pulls us apart.
America’s response goes beyond nostalgia for an era before “orange alerts,” an era of more civility at home and fewer body bags returning from abroad. It also reflects a nation that appears increasingly inclined toward public mourning…. whether by bringing jelly beans and flowers to makeshift shrines or by gathering in living rooms around the “electronic hearth.” At a time when shared cultural experiences are often on the lighter side….voting for an “American Idol” or viewing a ball game come immediately to mind….this was a chance for the nation to share a deeper moment.
Deeper moments are what rituals provide for families as well as nations. At yesterday’s fiftieth anniversary party for Paul and Char Finney, their son Dave said a word….then I said a word (well, several words)….and then Paul (on behalf of the anniversary couple) said: “I told my kids that their mother and I didn’t expect anything….didn’t need anything….and didn’t want them going to any fuss and bother. But I’m glad they didn’t listen.”
Or as Sharon Given said to me following the fiftieth anniversary bash for herself and Jerry: “Bill, it was the most incredible party. I didn’t know what it was going to be. But once it got going, I didn’t want it to end. There, in one room….at one time….were all of the people who mean the most to me in the world. I didn’t want anybody to go home.” Take a closer look at of her phrases (“didn’t want it to end….didn’t want anybody to go home”). Sometimes these events are nothing less than harbingers of the Kingdom.
Do we occasionally go overboard? Sure we do. But go back and read the story of the perfume lady and Jesus if you think there can never be such a thing as “blessed excess.”
Early on, Fred Craddock served a little country church in Tennessee where his people were as poor as Job’s turkey. Most of them lived off a little pension from Southern Railroad and Fred would fuss at them, even from the pulpit, for spending too much of their “too little” on things that looked less like potatoes and more like petunias. Until the day old Mrs. Glover got tired of it and said: “Reverend, even the poor have a right to their pretties.”
By now, all of you know that, come October, we Ritters are going to throw a wedding. And if you heard it’s going to be big, you heard right. And if you heard it’s going to be grand, you heard right. Not only because we love the bride and have gotten pretty darn keen (pretty darn quick) on the groom, but because we, as a family, have been to the mountain and we’ve been to the valley….way down in the valley….and there is no end to the people who have cried with us and climbed with us. October 9 is going to be our moment to say thanks to them….yes to Julie and Jared….and praise to God for some very human reminders that, while love may not conquer everything, it can still bind old wounds in the process of building fresh bridges.
“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”
A time for potatoes,
A time for petunias,
All God’s children got a right to their pretties.
And on the way out, tell Jeff Nelson that he made
