This is a translation of the homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (year III) in Holmedal Church in Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 6th April, 2025. As always, because the Church of Norway has to be “special,” we designate this as the 4th Sunday of Lent, even though it is the 5th, because we always celebrate the Annunciation on a Sunday (and decide that it is not in Lent). Anyway, the readings are as follows: Deuteronomy 8:2-3; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; and John 6:24-36. When quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version (RSV), unless otherwise noted.
Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):
Let us Pray:
God of Love, you gave your Son as atonement for our sins. We pray: Turn our eyes to Him when we are tested, and help us when we are weak, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one true God, world without end. Amen.
When I was a student in Durham in northeast England before I returned to Kvinnherad, I came across a book titled Ritualized Faith by Terence Cuneo. I borrowed the book, as it seems to be relevant for my project, and the book was decent. But already before I got to read it, I started discussing the title with myself. It is always fun to discuss with yourself, as your interlocutor is always in agreement.
I was critical, and I remain critical, of the title; “ritualised faith.” For what is “faith”? And what is “ritual”? It seemed to me that to speak of a “ritualised faith” introduces a distinction between faith and ritual and that faith somehow comes before ritual and is separate from it. It seems to treat faith as a series of propositions that we then celebrate, explain, and display through rituals. For example, we might say that we believe that God is triune and that we therefore pray to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But that is not how it has worked in theology and in church history. Theological positions have developed from practice and liturgy, not the other way around. The church developed its doctrine of the triune God and of Christ because it first prayed to Jesus as God. The system is not the centre. No, the centre is the life that we are given by God, and which can be expressed through prayer, praise, or the works that God has prepared for us.
But could this not be what is meant by the expression “ritualised faith”? Well, maybe, but if so, it is unfortunate. Because in our time we tend to think in very intellectual terms. We often think that ideas are central, while practices are just an external expression of these ideas. But what if faith is actually in some way a ritual? Because what is a ritual, in Christian thinking? What is liturgy? What is the Divine Service? Well, it is first and foremost God’s gifts to us, but also our worship of God in which we show who we trust, in whom we have faith. That is why Martin Luther said that idolatry is not just worshiping someone other than God, publicly and visibly, but trusting in something or someone other than God. In his Large Catechism, he makes this point, commenting on the first commandment, that we shall have no other God than the one true God. He writes:
A “god” is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. As I have often said, it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.1
When you have faith, you have trust, and it is this trust that is your worship of God. Our public rituals as Christians – our Divine Services – are faith, plain and simple. Here we believe together, through what we do, say and sing. And the reasons for that are simple. First, we are called to community, communion, not to be separate individuals, so-called individualists. And furthermore, we are neither angels nor spirits. t worship God in material ways. We can therefore speak of a “ritualised faith,” but I think that would still be wrong, because there is no such thing as “non-ritualised faith.” Your inner prayer life is also a ritual. If we have faith, we trust God, and that is worship. And thus we are involved in a ritual, whether it is internal or external. Take, for example, the Eucharist, which we will celebrate later in the Divine Service. It is a ritual, but it is given to us by Jesus Himself. And when we share the cup, which we bless, and when we break the bread, we become partakers of Christ, as St. Paul has said in our second reading today, from 1 Corinthians 11: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” Because we get to share in something concrete, given to us by Jesus, who is God, we get to share in Him. And we must therefore grasp this in faith. For faith, however it is expressed, is having trust – confidence – in God. But this is not something we have created ourselves. Faith is a gift from God. It is God Himself who works in us. And this is one of the central points in today’s Gospel reading, from John 6.
The people have just seen Jesus feed five thousand with five loaves, two fish, and one miracle. And they follow Jesus to learn more about this. In v.27, Jesus says: “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.” And the people then ask, v.28: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” In the translation we use in the Church of Norway it says that Jesus answered this (translated into English by yours truly): “This is the work God wants you to do: Believe in Him whom God has sent.” But I am not too fond of this translation, as it makes it seem like faith is our work. But that is not what is written in the original Greek text. If we go to the English translation I use (RSV), we see that Jesus undermines the question and turns it upside down by shifting the focus from what we should do, to what God does for us and in us. He says: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (emphasis added). That we believe in Jesus is God’s work, not ours. Faith is God’s work. Rituals, liturgy, praise, prayer, and worship are God’s work in us. Yes, in the Divine Service, Jesus is actually the celebrant. God is the subject. Jesus is the subject.
We must not make faith a work that God demands of us, as if we were still under the law. No, in Christ and by grace we receive faith and trust in God as a gift. We are, so to speak, “activated” or “realised” by God to a life of worship, not by compulsion, but in freedom, completely by God’s grace. We are all sinners, we are all idolaters who need the faith that saves us. For we do not live fully and completely in trust in God. In fact, there is only one man who fully and completely lived up to this: Jesus Christ. He, who was perfect, came to us, lived like us, was tempted and tried like us, but without sinning like us. He took on our human and fallen nature to lift it up as a perfect sacrifice. As we will sing in the hymn after the sermon and the creed (terribly translated by yours truly):
You are the Son of God, the mighty! You triumph over everything. / You were tempted like others. You stood where all fell. / You kept the first commandment. / You did not worship the power nor the honour nor the splendour. / You loved only God.2
Jesus kept the first commandment. He showed complete trust. And in Jesus we can find salvation by looking to Him, by focusing on Him. Faith is about who we look to, who we trust, who we worship. When Jesus died for us, He did this so that through His life, death, and resurrection we would be saved from death, eternal death, to a new and eternal life where we can look to the one true God. The author of Hebrews puts it this way, that we should be “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus is the living Saviour who went through everything for us, so that we – by keeping our eyes fixed on Him, by having faith in Him – may share in eternal life.
Today we can be allowed to have a very concrete foretaste of this, in the Eucharost. There, we partake of the body and blood that Jesus sacrificed for our sake. There we receive, so to speak, the “blood transfusion” we need to live the new life. There we gain strength to believe in Jesus. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” Later in the same chapter, He explains this more explicitly, in John 6:53-58:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.
At the very center of our faith we find a ritual, then, where we become partakers in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. As St. Paul says in today’s second reading, from 1 Corinthians: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” Through the Eucharist we share in Jesus. He gives us His holy body and His precious blood, which He gave as atonement for all our sins. Through this He can strengthen us and keep us in true faith for eternal life.
This is first and foremost a gift given to us, but this gift creates praise and thanksgiving in us. Perhaps “ritualised faith” could be a good expression for this. But remember: in that case, it is like gilding the lily, as faith is always ritualised. There is no such thing as a “non-ritualised faith.” It is just an expression that can make us remember that rituals and Divine Services are absolutely central parts of the Christian life. But remember this too: faith, and its ritualised form, is not your work, it is God’s work and God’s gift, in which you are allowed to participate.
We all need the grace that can only come from the one true God, so that we can put our trust in Him, so that we can thank, praise, and glorify Him. Or in other words: so that we may believe in Him, not only in words, but also in works, in the work of God.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
Luther, Large Catechism, I, 2-3 (p. 386 in the translation). For the translation of the Lutheran confessions, see The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000). For a critical edition of the Latin and German texts, see Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vollständige Neuedition, ed. Irene Dingel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).
“Du er Guds Sønn, den sterke” by Eyvind Skeie (1977), melody by Joachim à Burg (1575) / Kassel (1601) / Thomas Laub (1890), in Norsk Salmebok 2013 (Stavanger: Eide forlag, 2013), no. 120. Original (v.1):
Du er Guds Sønn, den sterke! Du seirer over alt. / Du ble som andre fristet. Du stod der alle falt. / Du holdt det første bud. / Du dyrket ikke makten og æren eller prakten. / Du elsket bare Gud.