Vineyard Church | Weekly Update January 31, 2024

Our Defiance series this past Sunday saw Jesus recast the legal paradigm of a relationship with God. Using the sabbath as the vehicle for His defiance allowed Jesus to present two possible outcomes to interacting with scripture and the unfolding plan of God…ritual and service. 

Ritual observance of scripture is a danger that permeates the journey of faith and demonstrates the need for Jesus. The religious leaders of His time were guardians of a centuries' old legacy that demonstrates what happens when the experience of God as a tangible power of love is replaced by repetitive behavior. The historical legacy of God’s intervention in the lives of His creation makes it difficult to understand how a people rescued time and again through the miraculous works of the Father would ever get to the place of rote ritual-keeping, but the truth is that this is just as possible for us in the age of the church as it was for the religious Jews alive during the ministry of Jesus.

First, ritual isn’t necessarily bad. Rituals can form a setting for worship and create the foundations for how we celebrate holidays that memorialize the unfolding plan of God. Ritual demonstrates the death of faith and relationship only when the reason we engage in ritual loses the meaning that flows from how that unfolding plan of God intersected our lives and offered liberating salvation.

Consider this coming Sunday, the first Sunday of the month, a day we set apart for meals shared as the Vineyard family, the Vineyard Body of Christ. In our sermon last week, I mentioned that the best way to use sacred things like bread offered to God and the sabbath day that is to remain set apart is to use these sacred things for compassionate rescue of people rather than as motivations of behavior.

For this to be activated, we have to examine what the word “holy” means, why a term defined as “to be set apart” could be used as a mechanism to demonstrate God’s rescue. The why is simple…. Holiness is God’s love; it is his love that sets us apart and his love through us that becomes compassionate rescue for those not aware of the invitation to be set apart. When we engage in worship rituals for this purpose, it is for service rather than repetition.

So back to this coming Sunday and all the first Sundays of each month. How can communion and Sammich Sunday be more than ritual, more than repetition, more than going through the motions of the month? For communion, we hold the meaning of the event we memorialize by understanding the gravity of the sacrifice Jesus made for us and the significance of the call to sacrifice for others in the same way. Ritual allows for standing in line, dipping the bread, eating it, and moving back to our seat without engaging with the introspection that evaluates if we truly are reflective of the ministry of reconciliation that Jesus commissioned us for. Service demands that evaluation while celebrating the sacrifice that makes this ministry available to us.

Likewise, when we celebrate Sammich Sunday together, is this ritual or service? Am I there for an easy meal after a sermon that maybe went a bit too long, or am I there to share life with those that God chose to put me into relationship with? Is our time together on the first Sunday of the month a reflection of what Jesus meant when he said that the world would know that we are His because of the way we love each other? These sacred days on the BVC calendar can be used for service as we grow together as reflections of a loving Father. 

Adam Greenwell
Pastor  |  Billings Vineyard Church
www.BillingsVineyard.org