May 14, 2016
My 2016 Ongoing Journey: Exploring
Matthew to discover what following Jesus and becoming more like him would look
like.
Matthew 15:1-20 ~ The infamous “Seven
Last Words of the Church”. You know them. You may have uttered them: “We never
did it that way before!” I can hear Reb Tevye, in “Fiddler on the Roof,”
singing, “Tradition!”
The
peril behind the words is not simply the clinging to tradition (although that can certainly cause problems). Some traditions
are valuable. They give a sense of balance and stability, and unite people
around common memories and hopes.
The
intermediate peril is in closing the door and allowing no additional traditions
to form. Our God identifies himself[1]
as one who is “always making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). The greatest
danger to excellence is satisfaction.
The
ultimate peril comes when we value traditions more than human needs and
relationships. We humans have a way of creating traditions so we don’t have to
be faithful. We end up trusting in our traditions, rather than in God’s grace,
for our justification. That’s called “idolatry,” and it is one of the two sins
most frequently and severely condemned in both the Old and New Testaments,
including the sayings of Jesus. [The other sin is the neglect of the poor.]
That’s
what the Pharisees were doing in this text. Specifically, Jesus said, “You justify
not helping the poor—even your parents—by saying, ‘I gave at the church’.”
Perhaps that same indictment was behind Jesus’ statement, “The poor will always
be with you” (John 12:8).
I
love traditions, and my favorites are probably those that embrace the Christmas
season. I tend to resist any new Christmas songs, preferring the old
traditional ones. Had I been rigid in that tendency, I probably would never
have discovered “Mary, Did you Know?”, “Breath of Heaven,” and who knows what
other songs that once were “new,” but now are part of the traditions I love.
If
I am to follow Jesus, I will do a thorough inventory of the traditions around
which I have organized my life and my faith. Are any of them standing between me
and God? Am I depending more on the way I “do” Christianity than upon the One
who calls me to “do?”
That's
the way it looks through the flawed glass that is my world view.
Together in the Walk,
Jim
[1] I
wish there were a personal pronoun that was neither gender specific nor
neuter—one that would incorporate the quality of God that transcends gender and
that identifies with and participates in all manifestations of humanity.
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