Last week I attended my college graduation ceremony. Although I finished school in December, I wanted to return to campus and walk across the stage to receive my diploma from the college president. I wanted that sense of closure marking that one chapter was officially ending and a new one beginning. As I sat in the expansive auditorium with about three hundred fellow graduates and a host of our friends and family, I was impressed with the robes, hats, and banners that characterized the processional. We all stood for an eloquent prayer. The symphonic choir sang a majestic special. Then the president, donning a robe and hat, approached the podium to announce the conferring of the degrees. It hasn’t been very often that I’ve been a part of such decorum, pomp, and circumstance. I wondered, why? Why all the decorum? What was the reason for the funny robes, odd hats, and white robed figures carrying banners for each department of study?
While the pomp and circumstance struck me as odd initially, it also marked that evening as distinct. It signaled to everyone in that auditorium that we were gathered for something special, something out of the ordinary. It signaled significance.
It seems that our culture has lost its ability to signal significance. Whether we are going to the grocery store, a birthday party, a steak house, or the church house, we often dress and behave the same way for almost every occasion. We bristle at rules, like “no food or drink in the auditorium.” We feel put out if we can’t bring our water bottle into the church service, our snack into the sanctuary, or our pet inside the building. We feel inconvenienced if we have to wear a dress and heels or a suit and tie. We mock the observance of certain traditions and rituals as “old fashioned” or “stuck up and stuffy.” We value casualness to the point of shunning significance.
Yet God places value on our making space for tradition and ritual. God gave the children of Israel very specific traditions and rituals to follow and holy days to observe in their culture. For example, in Leviticus 23:3, God said, “Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.” Why did God forbid work on the sabbath? Was it because work was evil? Of course not! The reason God instructed them not to work on the sabbath was to signal significance. It was to help them remember that God had created the world in six days, and on the seventh day, He had rested (Genesis 2:2). They were also to rest on the seventh day in remembrance of this significant event. It signaled to them that this day was distinct from all the others and that the LORD of the sabbath was worthy of their notice, worship, and service.
The book of Leviticus is filled with rules and rituals that may seem extremely peculiar to us. Yet these rules and rituals were never arbitrary. They were not just about tradition and rule-keeping. The rituals and rules were a means to a greater end. And that greater end was for Israel to signal significance to the world around them. God wanted to signal the significance of Israel as a nation chosen and separated out by God for a particular purpose—the coming Messiah. God wanted to signal the significance of His singularity and absolute holiness to His people and the world through the elaborate rituals that constituted tabernacle worship. The holy days, like the Passover, were meant to show the significance of God’s miraculous working in their lives. For each of these occasions, the children of Israel dressed differently and behaved differently than they did in their ordinary everyday lives.
While we may not be required to observe the sabbath anymore or to keep the Old Testament law, we are still required to signal significance. We are to make room for traditions and rituals—not for the sake of tradition alone—but for the sake of signaling significance. The principle of signaling significance is a Bible principle. For example, in Romans 13:7, we are told to “Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.” While this is speaking of showing the significance of people in certain positions, this can also be applied to certain occasions or events. The way we dress and or behave for a given event, like a graduation, evidences our esteem of that event. We should render to graduation services, to church services, to holidays (holy days) the honor that is due them. We should make Christmas and Easter feel distinct from every other day as well as distinct from other holidays. Why? Because they represent different aspects of God’s story and His involvement in our lives. We should make a graduation feel different from going out with friends on Friday night. Why? Because we are there to render honor to whom honor is due—namely the graduates, their teachers, administrators, and parents. We should make weddings feel special. Why? Because we are rendering honor to the bride and groom and the God before Whom they are making their vows. We should make Sunday feel sanctified from the rest of the week. Why? Because it is the day that our Lord was risen from the grave—an event upon which our entire faith hinges! It is something extraordinarily special and our distinct dress and behavior on that day should signal its significance.
From the spiritual (like Sundays) to the secular (like graduations), God intends for us to render to each event the honor that is appropriate. We should think through the purpose of the event we are attending and adjust our dress and behavior accordingly. God didn’t intend for us to live bland lives where everything is the same. If He did, why would He have given us Sundays or holidays? We should not treat a church service the same way that we would treat a ball game on Friday night. We should not treat a graduation ceremony the same way we would treat a birthday party on Saturday night. They are not the same thing. How boring our lives are when we treat everything as if it were the same thing! There is a place for casualness, and it is totally fine to enjoy our T-shirt and flip flops at a birthday party or fast food restaurant. But there is also a place for tradition, ritual, and honor. Our dress and behavior for any given event evidences our esteem of that event. It signals the significance of that event.
As a whole, our culture has lost the mindset of giving significance and of signaling significance. It has succumbed to an epidemic of casualness. As Christians, we should live a distinctly different way. Next time we are preparing to attend a graduation or a Sunday service, let’s consider what those respective events mean. Then let’s consider whether our dress and behavior signal that significance. If nothing else, it will make us more thoughtful people. And, perhaps, it can even make our lives feel more interesting, enjoyable, and significant.