Rituals
Wednesday April 27, 2005
God’s doorknobs
Some years ago, we had a very large and very stupid black-and-white cat named—of course—Sylvester.
One night Joan was home alone when she heard the back door rattle.
She wondered if somebody might be trying to deliver something. But the doorbell hadn’t rung.
Just the doorknob, rattling by itself.
With images from Alfred Hitchcock’s horror movies racing through her mind, she peeked out, half expecting to see someone from “Psycho” standing there. There was no one. No one at all.
But as she stood there, the doorknob rattled again.
Finally, she got enough courage to stick her face right up against the window in the door. And there, standing on his hind feet and swatting the doorknob with a front paw, was Sylvester.
Limited intelligence
I suspect that Sylvester’s intelligence compared to ours in roughly the same proportion as our intelligence to God’s. Even if I had taken that mechanism apart and carefully explained exactly how all the different parts mesh to release the catch and open the door, Sylvester could never have understood.
In the same way, even if God could slow down the universe, could show us how all those stars and planets and atoms and molecules, those plants and animals and people, all mesh together into a coherent pattern of life and death and new life, we could never grasp it. Like Job, awestruck before God, we would have to admit that these were “things I do not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”
Yet somehow, Sylvester understood that the door handle had something to do with opening the door. Swatting the doorknob became a kind of ritual—and lo and behold, sometimes the door would open for him to enter.
Cause and effect
In much the same way, we humans have discovered that there are special times when doors seem to open into God’s presence. We sense that presence powerfully when we welcome new members into our household—in the birth of a child, or in marriage. We feel that God is somehow among us when we gather in harmony around the table. We recognize God’s comforting embrace in the agony of grief.
Not every time. But often enough to know that it’s possible.
And because we long for those moments, we create rituals to encourage them to happen again. So we come together to celebrate baptism, communion, marriage…
In a sense, we rattle God’s doorknobs.
And lo and behold, sometimes the door opens.
I’m sure that Sylvester thought—as much as he could think—that when he rattled the doorknob, his efforts caused the door to open. They didn’t. I still had to turn the knob to open the door for him.
The danger for us lies in assuming that we open the door—to grace, to love, to community, or to healing—through our rituals. We don’t. Like Sylvester, we only rattle the doorknob. God opens the door.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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