Eugene Peterson has an excellent quote from his book, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places:

“A ritual is a way of preserving continuity of action and integrity of language across time and among peoples of various habits and understandings, predispositions and inclinations. We commonly develop rituals to maintain fundamental human transactions. Rituals range from something as simple as shaking hands, to the solemnities of weddings for marriage and funerals at death, to the elaborate rites of royal coronations with their great processions and finery.

The usefulness of a ritual is that it takes a human action that is understood as essential to our ordinary lives and removes it from our immediate “say-so,” protects it from our tinkering and revisions and editing, sets it apart from our moods and dispositions. There is more going on than I am aware of or can be responsible for. Reality is larger than me. A ritual puts me into the larger reality without requiring that I understand it or even “feel” it at the moment. The handshake and “hello,” for instance, put me in a friendly place of encounter without requiring me to invent a greeting or comment each time appropriate to the circumstances. Or even think about it. It saves a lot of time, but it also maintains an appropriate connection to reality. “Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in,” says Anne Lamott. But there is another useful dimension to ritual. It keeps us in touch with and preserves mystery. For reality is not only larger than me and my immediate circumstances, it is also beyond my understanding. Rituals preserve the mystery, protect certain essential aspects of reality from being reduced to the dimensions of my interest or intelligence or awareness. So the handshake keeps the mystery of a human man or woman represented in even the most casual human greeting from being reduced to my shifting emotions; marriage protects the mystery of sex and family from exploitation; funeral rites give the mystery of death dignity and witness to something far more than death; the royal coronation sets human rule under the transcendent sovereign mystery of God or gods.”

– Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places, page 205

To clarify this for our Theology and Doctrine… God has given His Church two rituals that need to always remain rituals: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

If we ever depart from the idea of ritual when practicing these sacraments, then their God-centered and Christ-exalting elements will be lost. Baptism must always be seen as the act of God to set us apart for His glory and grace, setting Jesus’ name upon us. And the Lord’s Supper must always be seen as Christ body and blood given for our forgiveness and reconciliation, through which Jesus is present and His Spirit is renewing all who partake in faith and love.

In both of these rituals, the Church is united to one another and united to God and Jesus Christ through the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Without these rituals the Church is not the Church and God’s people would never be separate from the World and the World would never be able to see God’s glorious salvation through water, bread, and wine.

In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,