Mark Scandrette

A week ago Saturday we celebrated Hailey’s good friend’s Bat Mitzvah. It was quite a moving experience for me. Bat Mitzvah literally means “daughter of the commands” and Hailey’s 13 year old friend led the entire two hour Shabbat service, including singing the liturgy, reading Torah and giving a sermon. She had studied since she was nine for this day, that culminated in a lox and bagels lunch followed by an extravagant feast with wine, cake and dancing in the evening.

I was moved by the reverence this tradition has for the revelation of scripture, the seriousnessness of the shema, and how it plays itself out in family life through daily and weekly rituals, meals and prayers. It is quite something to participate in a tradition that is so ancient. I was also struck by the similarity between the shabbat service and the Christian liturgical tradition. I want to do some research into this, but my assumption is that in the first century the disciples of Jesus simply incorporated new meaning into the common rituals and gathering rites of the synogogue. At the shabbat service there was even a breaking of bread and sharing of wine (Kiddush) that resembles Eucharist.

I later talked with some Jewish friends about how moved Lisa and I were by the Shabbat service– and their reaction was interesting. For them the rituals seemed tired and rather empty of true integrative spirituality– more a tradition preserved rather than a living faith. I’ve begun wondering if all religious traditions are akin to museums of spiritual experience. We go to these museums to remember or learn about the history of how people have sought to live life with God and one another. The best use of a museum, in my mind, is a place that inspires you to make your own art or your own history– and it seems that as people seeking to live life with God and in community with one another, we recognize those who have taken this journey before us and then improvise to create a way of life together to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

I’m not much of an institutional ritualist, but with this analogy to the museum I’m trying to recognize the connection between creating community and local culture and appreciating the historical traditions that also shape our journey with God and one another. I’ve wondered, for example, if it would be helpful to tap into the historical movements that have shaped the landscape for my own spiritual journey (Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Weslyan) and share the best of these traditions with my children– even though we primarily see our task as negotiating how to live in reverence today with the people that make up the tapestry of our lives.