Frenzy of Ceremonies

Everything is a celebration today, even injustice. The crowd is so obsessed with celebrations that they do not bother if the celebrations are worth celebrating or what in fact is actually to be celebrated. The frenzy of celebration is what matters to them. Church is no way different. In our churches, Ceremonies are the fecund ground of celebrations. Ceremonies are nothing but a ghetto of conventions; the extrapolation of monotonous normalcy. Look at the verbiage the Church employs to describe most retreats – ‘Convention’. I am sick with the conventions of these ‘Conventions’. I seriously look forward for few ‘Unconventional Conventions’. Jesus was an Unconventional Person in all walks of life. His whimsical attitude annoyed everyone which was also a factor for him to be crucified. Cross is the strongest visible symbol portraying the inability of humans to accept unconventionalism.

Churches are becoming ghettos of conventionalisms. There is no sign of creativity and innovativeness. I often wonder how the body of an Unconventional Christ could exist as an enterprise of Conventionalisms. Hans Kung, the Swiss Catholic theologian and priest opines “The Church today is institutionally sheltered and ideologically immobilized.” Church should not turn out to be an archival enterprise preserving the stagnancy of ceremonies rather it should foster the dynamics of rituals.

At this juncture I find it imperative that we know the difference between a ritual and a ceremony. Victor Turner, a British cultural anthropologist who has made substantial contributions towards symbolic anthropology defines ritual and ceremony as follows. He writes, “I consider the term ‘ritual’ to be more fittingly applied to forms of religious behavior associated with social transitions, while the term ‘ceremony’ has a closer bearing on religious behavior associated with religious states.” To be precise he suggests that Ritual is transformative while ceremony is confirmatory.

Today I would intend to mention one such ‘ritual’ of our Church which has been demeaned as a ‘ceremony’ – Baptism. Why did John the Baptist initiate Baptism? Let us try to understand this ‘ritual’ from a Mediterranean vantage point. Dr. Marianne Sawicki who has done pioneering studies in the social fabric of Greco-Roman Galilee, opines that the baptism initiated by John the Baptist was to oppose the Italianization of Israel by Herod Antipas. John did not want the waters of Jordan - the resource of the commons of Israel – to be colonized by tourists and foreigner business travelers. He used the waters to signal ‘repentance’. Hebrew word for repentance is ‘Shoob’ which literally means ‘to turn back’. The Baptism by John was indeed of ‘repentance’ as he warned the colonizers to return and not to colonize the water bodies of the commons. Later Jesus asking John to baptize him shows the disengagement of Jesus with the colonial industrial complex and powers. Thus baptism of John the Baptist was against the colonization of the resources of the commons. It was a transformative ‘ritual’ rather than a confirmatory ‘ceremony’.

India is a land where water bodies are being colonized and privatized. Water is the resource of the commons and it should not be allowed to be succumbed to the greed of the corporates. Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is one such movement under the aegis of Medha Patkar, which has been fighting since 1987 against the neoliberal policies of development.   It is a fight against the privatization and colonization of water bodies. It has been more than 30 years and still the fight continues with undeterred perseverance.

If the Churches are tired engaging in the futile debates over infant baptism and adult baptism let us reclaim the essence and the original intention of Baptism i.e. safeguarding the resources of the commons from being colonized and privatized.

Lent is a time to reclaim the ritualistic dimension of our ceremonies. It is a time to blow away the ashes of confirmation and rekindle the fire of transformation. Let us break the conventionalism of ceremonies and propagate the unconventionalism of rituals so as to become the unconventional body of the unconventional Christ.

Let us pray

Non-confirming God, sojourn with us as we tread from confirmation to transformation. Redeem us from the frenzy of ceremonies and enthuse us with the ecstasy of rituals. For Christ’s sake we pray. Amen

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul