A couple of months ago I started taking aikido lessons. If you aren’t familiar with aikido, it’s a Japanese martial art that’s almost exclusively focused on defense. You learn how to escape attacks and incapacitate your opponent, only doing as much injury as you choose to do. Back in my younger days, I studied Shotokan karate for about eight years. It’s more like what you probably think of when you hear the word “karate”. It’s also a Japanese martial art, but it has all of the punches and kicks and such that you probably expect.
The instructors for both have very similar philosophies how they teach and what they feel is important. It’s important to be in control of yourself so you don’t hurt the people you’re training with. It’s important not to misuse the skills you are learning. It’s important to respect the people you training with and especially your instructor. Your instructor and your fellow students all want you to succeed. As you get better at the various skills of the art, you can better participate in what others are doing. As you grow in your skills, you can help them grow more in their own. In that sense, everyone wins when you’re doing better.
Though aikido and karate are pretty different in terms of the types of skills and techniques you’re generally learning, there’s still a fair bit of crossover. There are some things you’re going to learn in just about any martial art that are going to be applicable no matter what you’re doing. That’s even more true when studying arts with the same cultural origins. In just about any martial art from another country, you’re probably going to pick up a certain amount of vocabulary from that language. Japanese people call all of the techniques Japanese names. So you’re probably going to learn at least a little bit of Japanese studying aikido, just as you would a little Chinese studying kung fu, or Korean studying tae kwon do.
I can’t speak from personal experience regarding martial arts from other countries and cultures, but I suspect the way things are done in a Japanese art are true in others, if in slightly different ways. For an outsider, you might be surprised at how much ritual goes into what a standard class. You bow before you step on the mat. You bow when you leave the mat. At the beginning of class you line up in a kneeling position from the highest rank to the lowest rank. Your line is centered at a particular point. Everyone bows to the front of the school when the highest ranking student directs you to. Everyone bows to the head instructor when directed. During class you’ll bow to your partner at various times. When the instructor gives some instruction, you’ll acknowledge that you heard and understood. You’ll line up again in a kneeling position at the end of class and bow to the front and bow to the instructor again. Then you’ll thank everyone who trained with you. There’s more I could go into there as well, but you get the idea. All of these elements were present in my karate days and are more or less unchanged in my aikido training.
You might get the sense that this is all carries religious intent. After all, we’re doing a lot of bowing. Yet, that isn’t it at all. My aikido instructor, a Christian himself, made explicit that Jesus would never be the object of any of the bowing that went on in the school because that would confuse what we are doing with religious ritual and create misunderstandings. But, if not religion, then what? Knowing that karate and aikido come from a Japanese culture provides some insights. Japanese culture has certain social rules for how one shows respect to others. You respect the students that are further along than you because they’ve put in more time and effort and they have more training and experience than you. You respect the place where you train because it’s designed for that purpose. You most especially respect the head instructor. He has taken you into his school and there is an implicit contract there. He will share his many years of experience with you and help you to master those same skills. As a new student, it’s very unlikely you’ll have much to teach him. So, he is taking his time and effort to help you because he chooses to. For that, he is due respect. In fact, respecting the place and respecting the students all amounts to respecting the instructor. It is his school. They are his students. Everything that goes on there is his responsibility and operates by his rules. Even if you didn’t do things in a Japanese way, whatever rules are laid down by the instructor become the ways in which you show him respect for what he is doing.
When talking about all of this ritual, it should lead us to think of all of the rituals that surround the worship service. Even though martial arts training isn’t necessarily religious, there are still similarities to what is going on in each. In both cases, the rituals are there to teach you something. In each, you end up learning things just by going through the motions. By bowing before you walk on the mat and when you leave, you start to intuitively have the sense that when you’re on the mat, you’re training. When you leave the mat, training is done. It helps to orient where your attention should be while you’re on the mat. The same could be said of the invocation and benediction in worship. From the invocation to the benediction, we are on God’s time. We are there at His behest. We are there to enjoy that time together, but also because He has many things to teach us. Whatever may be going on in our lives should be left behind as we enter the worship service. It will all be waiting for you when the service is over.
Though you gain something just by doing it, you gain even more when you understand why you do it. There’s a reason we Lutherans have held on to the liturgy. It is a powerful teaching tool. The content and structure of the liturgy all has something to teach you and all of it is training you for different tasks. You learn to be a disciple and sit and learn from your Lord, much like an aikido student sits and watches a demonstration from his instructor. You learn how to pray. You learn how to share the Gospel. You learn the content of your faith and what promises God has made and what He has already fulfilled. You learn how to be a steward of the world God has given you.
You might still look at the rituals of a martial arts school and say they don’t belong there. Rituals belong in church. While we’re used to thinking of rituals as religious, that’s not necessarily true. Rituals are a part of everyday life. Rituals are everywhere. There are big and momentous rituals, such as wearing your cap and gown to walk across the stage and receive your diploma or degree. There are rituals surrounding weddings, funerals, and holidays, whether religious or otherwise. So many of our rituals are simple and ordinary. Checklists to follow before using something dangerous. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner the way grandma always made it. Routines you follow when you get ready for work in the morning.
Rituals of all sorts are about training and building character and habits. Your morning ritual getting ready in the morning may not be teaching you a whole lot after you’ve been doing it for years, but it helps you maintain the sort of person you want to be. The things that make it into your morning say something about what sort of person you are. If you’re someone who showers, dresses, eats and is put together, you project a different image from someone who rolls out of bed, sniffs around for the least dirty shirt and heads out the door.
The rituals at a martial arts school like this one are there to help you learn respect for the instructor and for each other. Eventually those rituals will become automatic habits, but not at first. Like everything else in life, no one does good things without first learning how. Thus, the rituals are necessary. Being told to be respectful is meaningless if you aren’t told what that looks like. The rituals give a way to form both attitude and action and make them consistent with each other.
The liturgy has many rituals, all of them forming you in different ways. You show respect for God by vowing as well. We learn to be disciples by listening to Him and talking to Him in prayers, praise, and song. We learn to give thanks by responding with thanks after we hear about the blessings He has given us.
Whether church or school, martial arts or daily life at home or the office, all of these things utilize rituals because rituals are one of the ways we are wired to learn. So much of life in ancient Israel was governed by ritual and a lot of it had nothing to do with the temple directly. This is why Lutherans have not dispensed with the rituals of worship. They resonate with us and form us even when we don’t quite understand them. However, when the nuances of the liturgy are taught, the liturgy becomes a powerful tool indeed. Understanding the how’s and why’s of the liturgy will help you immensely in your own life as a Christian. They are not something to be avoided, but rather to be immersed in. As you study the liturgy, you’ll see a little of the kind of person God is trying to make you. You’ll never get it perfect, but the rituals of the liturgy are always there to get you back on track and get moving forward again.
Sacramental Streams 