“Tradition Can Be a Two-Edged Sword”

 

My mom couldn’t get over it. Jake Johnson, our next door neighbor, mowed his lawn on Sunday afternoons.  

 

In Sunday school class I learned that it really was not proper to place another book, or anything else for that matter, on top of the Bible.

 

The school cafeteria served fish as one of the choices on Fridays when I young. I detested the smell of fish, but there were Catholic kids in my public school, and their religious tradition required them to eat fish on Friday. I didn’t understand why. It just was.

 

Sometimes when we arrived at the First Methodist Church in Vincennes, the church my family attended when I was growing up, I received a bulletin and discovered that the entire service was readings and prayers and songs. No sermon. The ushers let people out in rows to go forth to kneel at the altar and receive communion from the pastor.

 

Some people would remain kneeling for awhile. When everyone in a row had returned to their seats, the next row would be released to go forward. This continued throughout the hour. We were usually among the last to go forward, since mom always sat in the balcony with us. (She could enter less conspicuously that way with four young children in tow, as we usually arrived as the service was beginning.)

 

Traditions…The examples I just gave all had to do with religious tradition, but we have tradition in all areas of life. We have family traditions, around what we do at Christmas, for example. (And when we get married, this can become a source of conflict.) We have traditions in sports. The flip of the coin at midfield to determine who is on offense and who is on defense begin a football game…the seventh inning stretch in a baseball game, when everyone rises to sing “take me out to the ball game”…

 

Certainly the Judaism of Jesus’ day had traditions. Over the centuries, in fact, Judaism had become increasingly encumbered with rules and traditions that took on lives of their own. They no longer served as ways to help the community experience God and understand their faith, but had been co-opted to become instruments of control for maintenance of the status quo.

 

One set of these traditions had to do with food. There were purity customs about washing the food, washing oneself, washing the kettles and pots used to prepare food and the dishes used in eating and drinking.

 

We must remember this reading in its context. Table manners and fellowship…the washing of food and hands and utensils, the company with whom one ate, what was allowable to eat and how it had to be prepared…were of sacred importance in Jesus’ time and culture. For the Pharisees, these external rites served to make the common holy.

 

So when we enter the gospel story today in the midst of a dispute about washing hands before eating, we can better understand the reason the Pharisees were upset. It was not merely a matter of personal hygiene. If that were the case, we would probably be critical of the disciples for eating with dirty hands too. The Pharisees were upset because Jesus’ disciples did not observe the purity traditions of their religion, and in so doing, demonstrated either a lack of understanding or a lack of respect for these traditions.

 

The Pharisees ask Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Jesus responds to the Pharisees first by calling them hypocrites, and then by quoting from the Hebrew Bible where Isaiah, speaking for God, says that the Hebrew people do not worship God, but instead mistake human traditions for Godly commandments.

 

I love the distinction made here between human traditions and God’s commandments, because just as this was an issue in Jewish religiosity in Jesus’ time, it is in Christian religiosity today.

 

We are quick to be critical of the Pharisees when we read how they condemned Jesus because his disciples did what was not lawful on the Sabbath (when they plucked heads of grain to eat); or because his disciples didn’t wash up before lunch; or because Jesus was often in the company of known sinners; or because he called a tax collector down out of a tree and went to his home for lunch...We think the Pharisees are being petty with their complaints.

 

But we have developed our own sets of rules and traditions, and over time our sets have taken on sacred status. And when we piously interpret our human traditions as sacred laws that are inviolable, we can be hurtful to those who are not “insiders” or part of the religious power structure.

 

In one of my previous churches, I once had an older woman come to me who was extremely upset because her adult son told her she had never been baptized. This woman was 80, and in poor health. Her son was deeply involved in the life of an independent Christian church that required anyone wanting to claim membership in the faith to be baptized by immersion.

 

His mother had been “sprinkled” as an infant in a country Methodist church in 1909. The son was insisting that his mom be baptized again, by immersion during worship in his church. She complied. She was re-baptized, and made a confession of faith.

 

When she came to see me she was confused and ashamed. She was confused about whether she had lived her whole life as an un-baptized Christian, and if so, why we had let her. She was ashamed, because she felt she had either lived her life without having been baptized; or if she had been properly baptized in 1909, she was ashamed for having renounced her baptism and in so doing rejected her lifelong love, the Methodist church.

 

This woman was one of the most genuine Christian people I have ever known. She was compassionate and generous. She was devoted to learning and devout in practicing her faith. I admired her in so many ways. So, my first reaction when she told me these things was anger. I was angry with her son. I was angry with the church and the clergy who propagated and practiced such a narrow set of rules.

 

But after some time to cool down, it occurred to me that the woman’s son and his pastor were applying the rules that they thought were the right ones; the ones that would lead to his mom’s salvation. So, the son and his pastor were acting in good conscience, as were the Pharisees in our story today.

 

Jesus found hypocrisy to be rampant among the religious leaders of his day. And the gospels show us that Jesus had little patience with people who were hypocritical. When we condemn others for their spiritual failings, and either cannot see or justify our failings, we are being as hypocritical as the Pharisees.

 

In telling the crowd that evil comes from within, that it arises from the human heart, Jesus is reminding followers of every age that it is not our business to be worried about the cleanliness or holiness of others. That is God’s business. Moreover, we all have enough to do to keep our own houses clean!

 

We should recognize that Jesus did not dismiss tradition. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said:

 

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven…For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:7-18, 20)

 

But as I mentioned earlier, Jesus distinguishes between God’s commandments and human traditions. He reminds the Pharisees that the prophet Isaiah (speaking for God) said: “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,” adding: “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

 

Human tradition is not without sin. Some of Christendom’s great scholars and church leaders in history have been anti-Semitic. Some have said disparaging things about femaleness, even saying that women are not fully created in God’s image. And other traditions we have embraced – family traditions or national traditions to name two – have been equally sinful…traditions of transmitting hatred and violence, traditions of abuse, traditions of slavery, and traditions of segregation…

 

One question that arises from this lesson for us is this: Do we honor God with our lips, but our hearts are far from God’s?

 

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary use words,” St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as having said. A good friend of mine made the same observation in this way: most of us won’t go out and witness to people about our faith, he said, because talking about faith is embarrassing for us. We show our faith by how we treat people, and how we treat the creation. How we live anonymously, day by day, not for recognition, but because it gives expression to our belief in God and our love for God’s creation.

 

Religion is not a matter of words, finally. We all know renowned religious leaders who could say the right words eloquently, even passionately, but whose private lives were contrary to what they preached.

 

What Jesus is saying in the gospel lesson today is that outward forms of religion are not bad just because they are outward displays of what we believe. If not eating meat on Friday makes one feel closer to God, then there is nothing at all wrong with that observance. (Even though this tradition has been relaxed by Catholics in this day.) If it is important to you to observe the spiritual discipline of not cutting grass on the Lord’s Day, that is fine. If it makes you feel that you are giving the Holy Scriptures more respect and reverence by not putting anything on top of the Bible, there is nothing at all wrong with you keeping that tradition alive in your life.

 

What we must not do when we hold on to our human traditions, however, is “abandon the commandment of God.” And above all else, that commandment is to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our might, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

 

I believe the lesson is that these outward forms of religion are helpful if they lead us to a better relationship with God, but we must not mistake them for religious rules that everyone must follow. Because, people who stack books on top of the Bible have grace available to them. (They may even dig into their pile and read the Bible more often than someone whose edition sits on the coffee table as a decoration.) People who work on Sunday still have grace available to them. And people who eat beef on Friday still have grace available to them.

 

As we begin a new church program year, this seems a useful time for us to reflect on our traditions as a congregation. How might our traditions discourage, or even exclude people who are searching for a nurturing faith home as they locate in Bloomington for the school year? Can we stand back and put ourselves in the place of someone who is looking for a church, and try to imagine how we seem to them when they arrive for the first time? Do we have the will to retire traditions that are comfortable for us, in order to be attractive to people outside our fold? Amen.