understanding ritual

Today I get to co-officiate my first inter-denominational wedding.

Well, that may not be completely true.  There have been plenty of folks from different protestant and even different Christian backgrounds who have married under my authority.  But each couple chose to go with the Methodist order and flow and style… their traditions weren’t so important, or different, that it made a difference.

But today’s wedding will be in a Catholic church, with a Catholic priest and I doing the ceremony.  I’m preaching and reading and praying, and he’s generally presiding and taking care of the vows.

I have to admit that going into this wedding I wasn’t sure what to think.  I have my own authority and traditions and ways of being that are being set aside for this particular ritual.  In my church we don’t normally hold the gospel in such high respect and honor.  In my church we don’t typically bow before the altar and the cross.  It’s not better, or worse, it’s just different.

As someone who is outside of these traditions, they feel a little unfamiliar as I do them, but I am also hyper-conscious of why we are doing them.  I understand the respect and honor and submission involved in these ritualistic acts.  And that makes them beautiful to me. Yet I also understand that just as ritual acts in my own tradition become rote and familiar that we sometimes take them for granted and go through the motions without any remembrance of why we are doing them.

“Let us stand together as we hear the gospel to honor the words of Jesus.”

A few words make a world of difference.  And they might be enough to jar us out of complacency and to truly worship.