Jeremiah 7:1-4 -
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house and proclaim there this word and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah, who enter by these gates to worship the Lord!’” Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’
Time: The son of a priest from the small town of Anathoth in Judah, the prophet Jeremiah dictated prophecies from the Lord to his secretary, Baruch. He spoke to a people, though, that would not listen and his words have much emotion to them. Jeremiah’s ministry began when he was 20 years old, in 627 BC and ended sometime around 582 BC. Jeremiah prophesied in the final years of Judah before God’s people were exiled to Babylon.
What the Lord is Saying:
Ritualism by definition is the regular observance or practice of ritual, especially when excessive or without regard to its function and spiritually it is going through the motions without an inner disposition to worship the Lord. I was looking at this word and realizing that in our jobs we can be ritualistic, going through the motions, not thinking so much about why we are here and what our purpose here is in our work. We get caught up in personal feelings and expectations and needs, which we all have.
Yet, rituals are not bad. It is important to practice things in a regular manner, even in my work, but here we are talking about our spiritual lives and church lives. I have rituals of brushing my teeth each time after a meal; i have a ritual of going to church each Sunday, singing songs, hearing a message, and being in Christian fellowship. In the Bible we are told to practice the Lord's Supper regularly, to tithe regularly. We do this out of obedience, helping ourselves, and also being good stewards.
And yet, in these recurring activities there can be a temptation I think to simply go through the motions and very easily getting caught up in an idea that it is the performance of these which is important. I was speaking to a person the other day that remarked leaving church partly over the feeling that her not attending church was met with scrutiny by those attending, that somehow their was guilt because church attendance didn't seem mandatory in a person's life. Even in our churches we get too focused on works and obedience and not enough on grace.
Regarding the arts, I admit that artistic drawings or paintings have not been present in most of the churches I've attended. The one exception was attendance at Hope Church and partly it was I think an artist, Fernando Ortega, who was there leading worship and he brought the importance of art into worship. The art was there I think to paint a picture of what it might have looked like and thereby that picture could assist us.
But it is interesting to read about the history. At the time of the Reformation in which Luther helped people see that God has saved us by His grace and not by our works, there was this feeling at times to cleanse ourselves from everything that was near and dear to the church before and one of the things this included was art. Why? Idolatry. The 2nd commandments warns us against practicing any sort of idolatry, replacing God for an image. It is a temptation that has been present throughout history. We focus on what we can see, not what we can't and God can't be seen. By the late middle ages (AD 1300 - 1500) religious people had a tendency to worship sculptures and praying specifically to saints. And the line between the person and the God we worship blurred. So for some, like John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, they wanted to purge all forms of sculptures, saints, and artwork, while Martin Luther believed it was fine to retain the art as long as it helped us focus more on God and what He had done. In some places these artistic pieces were removed and in others they were destroyed. The word that is used to describe this is Iconoclasm -- the religiously motivated destruction of works of art, especially figurative images.
This history fascinates me because its practice continues today. And I am not sure we realize that we are the way we are today because of something that happened over 500 years ago.
And this same thing has occurred with liturgies. Liturgy is a pattern used in worship. Liturgy to me, growing up in church, referred to repeated sayings or repeating prayers like can be found in the Book of Common Prayer. Again, at Hope we jointly would do this, respond together with a prayer written so that we are unified in agreeing to this prayer. Yet, the Puritans worked reform some of these practices to distance themselves possibly from practices of another religion. The Anglican church split from the Catholic church in 1534 and the Episcopal Church is affiliated with this. And then later the Puritans of the 1600s sought to distance themselves from practices that still were Catholic and this to them included the Anglican church. So in our effort to be different, there is a tendency to remove all practices.
I think this lives on today. Jesus did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it and yet even the Christian church at times struggles to retain the history and practices found in the Old Testament. I think people get scared and they don't know how to combine the two, so they simply get rid of the one and uphold the other.
For today's passage I took a moment to read all of Jeremiah 7 a couple of times. Verse 1 tells us that this is a word that come to Jeremiah from the Lord and the entire passage then is the Word of the Lord. My summary of this words from the Lord is crying out to a people that needs to amend their ways and deeds and instead simply obeying God's voice. This is a cry out to people that have been listening to deceptive words. They have not been kind to neighbors or aliens (people outside their fold). They are living dual lives - looking like a follower of God and probably practicing temple worship but not living like they are a follower of God. Therefore, God's anger and wrath will follow.
So what is highlighted today is a statement of ritual. Every Jew was required to visit the temple thrice (three times) a year and therefore some have thought this was the reason for the three fold utterance in verse 4: Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. In Isaiah 6:3 we read, "And one called out to another and said, 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.;" And in Jeremiah 22:9 says, "O land, land, land, Hear the word of the Lord." Thus, this three times repeated words or phrases possibly mirrored the 3 time expectation of visiting the temple. But this is a side note. What is possibly being meant here is the danger of the Jews feeling like it was only the temple that embodied the Lord and their practice therefore of visiting the temple is all that was needed. Thus, ritualism.
Summary: The problem is not with rituals themselves but with ritualism, which happens when we go through the motions without an inner disposition to worship the Lord.
Promise: Ritualism is a danger for all of us, so we should ask God to keep us devoted to Him, and we should seek to engage our entire being in worship every time we gather with God's people to praise our Creator.
Prayer: Lord, I thank you so much for this lesson today and the opportunity to revisit history and see how we are today in our church practices is based upon circumstances that happened 500 years ago. Lord, help me to guard myself against rituals that move into a habit that I start to not really see the heart of the reason for the ritual. Lord, we are in danger of this all of the time. I am in danger of this. Thank you for the truth of your word and I am sorry for being a part of misinterpreting it and making people feel they are aliens. Help me Lord to be a person that truly is about You and praising You. Thank you for art and people who want to capture you in order to help us get closer to understanding You and who You are. Help us to keep doing these things for your glory.
