Mark
7:1-8
Jesus
criticized his own generation for getting so caught up in the externals of
religious practice that they forgot the aspects that touch the spirit. It’s a little convoluted as Mark describes
it, because there were practices that were part of the Law, written in
scripture, that the Pharisees refer to as “the tradition of the elders”. Jesus doesn’t stand against them, and he
doesn’t exactly defend his disciples when the Pharisees criticize the disciples
for non-observance of those rules. Frankly,
I’d be a lot like them about some of this.
I want my vegetables washed before I eat them. I want people to wash their hands before they
sit down at the table. Maybe a farm hand
or a fisherman cannot do that, but if it’s possible, washing your hands and
doing the dishes would be on my list of best practices.
Jesus does, however, seem
to say that it isn’t really respect for God or even concern for health that
motivates the Pharisees as much as it is a sense that there is a proper way to
do things, and if you don’t do it that way there must be something wrong with
you.
“So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him,
‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders,
but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly
about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’”
“This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’”
Long
ago I was looking over the traditional Christmas Eve service of lessons and
carols. (Mind you, “traditional” here
means that the practice is about a hundred years old, which isn’t really very
long in terms of church history.) It
occurred to me that the logical placement for “Silent Night” is right in the
middle, after reading about Jesus’ birth.
(You can hear what’s coming, can’t you?)
We did the whole “Silent Night” and candle moment, but <gasp!> not
at the end. I got a note the next week
from someone telling me I had “spoiled” her whole Christmas. I was doing a more thorough job than the
Grinch when he took everything away from Cindy Lou Hoo, who was only just
two. Really? Is that what Christmas is about? The familiarity of one, ritualized, non-essential
element?
Tradition
and usage must be at the service of God, or it can become idolatrous, and can
do harm. A friend of mine, a pastor in
the United Church of Christ who lives and serves in the Lehigh Valley, is
thinking about buying about a half-a-dozen new dress shirts. Like a lot of U.C.C. clergy in that part of
the state, for years he has worn a clergy collar every day. After last week’s release of the report on child
abuse by Roman Catholic priests across Pennsylvania, and the identification of
a large number of predators in the Lehigh Valley specifically, the sense of
trust that a collar carried in that area is gone and, in fact, it has become a
source of suspicion. So for the sake of
the Church’s witness, he may have to change his wardrobe. If you knew him, you’d know that’s a big step
in his eyes.
Do
our practices in worship and our practices in daily life draw us and others
closer to the heart of God? That is
really the question and the measure of success.
American culture has a tradition
of breaking with tradition. The
nineteenth-century poet James Russell Lowell wrote:
“New occasions teach new duties; Time
makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep
abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! We ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our
Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the
Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.”
Maybe the tradition of breaking with tradition is a
tradition that needs to be broken, when it becomes an end in itself, or when
something is being broken down without something else being put into its place.
Last
Sunday afternoon I was talking with Doug Hagler, the pastor at First
Presbyterian. He had been talking with
Paul Davis, who’s the pastor of the Grace Valley Fellowship that meets at the
Middle School on Sunday mornings and has its office down on Bridge St. Grace Valley are not the hipsters; that would
be the Iron Bridge Church that meets at Franklin Commons. They are the with-it, “contemporary”
(although that word is going out of use) bunch that emphasizes their cultural
relevance and pride themselves on how relaxed they are, with a sort of
latte-and-praise-band vibe going on.
Anyway, Paul was telling Doug how he has recently heard several of his
members independently lamenting that they don’t ever hear organ music and
aren’t set up for that. Meanwhile, Doug
has been trying to find a drummer. So it
is possible that on World Communion Sunday in October, the Grace Valley folks
will pay a visit en-masse so that they can hear a traditional prelude,
offertory, and postlude.
What’s
going on? This is a very strange and
unsettled time for the Church in North America.
Every time it seems that everyone is safely ensconced in his or her
proper niche, the Holy Spirit seems to poke somebody and make them squirm just
enough to throw the rest off-balance, too.
But that is a good thing.
Tradition
itself has to live and grow like a plant, where one branch gives way to another
and then comes back another season. T.S.
Eliot, who pondered a lot about what tradition means to literature, said,
“…if
the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of
the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its
successes, ‘tradition’ should positively be discouraged. ... Tradition is a
matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it
you must obtain it by great labour.”[1]
The same is true of what we experience as people of
faith. There are practices that come
into being and do great good, but when they either grow stale or take on a
greater importance than the purpose they serve, of pointing to God’s love in
Christ, then they need to be set aside.
Perhaps they will be taken up again at a later time, perhaps not.
Perhaps
when they reappear they will be changed and reinvigorated. In the Middle Ages, there were people who
spent years in some cases going on pilgrimage from place to place, from France
to Jerusalem or from Scotland to Spain, and in their travels they reminded
others that life itself is a journey toward God. But when it became a sort of holy tourism,
then it was time to stop the practice. Among
Protestants, the practice went away for five centuries. Yet in our own day there are people who
travel to other places as short-term missionaries and carry with them the
message that no part of the Body of Christ is forgotten by the rest, and that
has become a gift of grace. The danger
of it sliding into tourism, though, remains and needs to be monitored, which we
know exactly because we’ve been through it before. Human tradition can be good, but put God’s
ways first.
Since
I started this sermon talking about organ music, I’ll finish on the same note. Johann Sebastian Bach, when he wrote whatever
he had in mind for that Sunday’s masterpiece, would begin by writing three
letters at the top of the page: “SDG”.
That stood for “Soli Deo Gloria”,
“Glory to God Alone”. Maybe it was his
intention, the prayer of his soul, going into his work that has given it the
staying power that it has.
As
Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
“According
to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a
foundation, and someone else is building on it.
Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than
the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.” [I
Corinthians 3:10-11]
No comments:
Post a Comment