May the mumbling commence!
Every family has developed traditions over the years – whether that is a biological family, a blended family, or a spiritual family. And these traditions are important to us for the relationships that we have built with one another. But what do we do when our traditions come into conflict with the Law and the commands of God? Which one will have preeminence? Read a passage from Matthew chapter fifteen:
Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"
Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to 'honor his father 'with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" (Verses 1-9)
When we pose this question to ourselves, “What traditions of our elders do we seek to maintain at the cost of breaking the commands of God?” What will we find? Do we dare to look? Or do we simply say, “That’s the way we always have done it”? To change the traditions of our elders is to make ourselves uncomfortable. Will we risk feeling uncomfortable to do the will of God?
Yes, it is a humbling question. Of our many traditions, which ones cause us to break the commands of God? What traditions do we have that destroy divinely created relationships? For example, in a perfect world, the church of Jesus would be one church. The unity of the church of Jesus is a divinely created relationship.
I have had the privilege to worship in many different settings – Mennonite, Church of the Brethren, Beachy Amish, Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, United Methodist, Church of the Nazarene, Church of God, Four Square, Messianic Jewish, and Pentecostal (to name just the ones that come off the top of my head). There is also the Greek Orthodox Church.
Each of these worship settings claims Jesus as the Son of God. Why can’t we worship together? Traditions of each church pull us apart. There are traditional points of emphasis that seem to be dissonant to one another.
There are traditionally different socio-economic backgrounds that are attracted to these points of emphasis of the various denominations. Instead of honoring God-established relationships outside the socially acceptable context of the denominational guidelines we make outside relationships difficult or near impossible.
Why is Sunday morning the most segregated time of the entire week? We need to honor our traditions. Does this honor God? Does this send the message of Christians love for one another? Did not Jesus pray that we be one so that the whole world will know God sent Jesus into the world (John 17)?
And there are smaller things that we do that destroy our relationships with one another. Things that we think are quite insignificant, but these things send unintentional messages to certain groups of people. What about our focus on the family unit? It assumes that all people will become married and have children. What message does that send to people who are called to the single life or to people who would like to be married but are not?
When we set up tables for fellowship, do the tables always have an even number of seats? A number of little things can add up and speak a clear (though unintentional) message to someone. For some young adults (many churches talk about the missing donut hole of the people aged twenty to thirty), this may be a part of the equation for their absence from church life. Particularly those people who have grown up in the church all their lives and have had these unintentional messages sent to them again and again. They do not feel like they fit in - that they belong.
Enough mumbling for now…
Peace Out
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