Tradition!

 

God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. My sermon is entitled Tradition and my focus is our Gospel (Mark 7:1-13). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”  Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

“Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on the roof!” Tradition is the opening number for Fiddler on the Roof. In the song, Tevye explains the roles of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters in their village, and how people like the matchmaker, beggar and rabbi contribute to the village. The song establishes the theme of the villagers trying to continue their traditions and keep their society running as the world around them changes.

We have our own traditions, but before I get into them, let me set the stage. I am speaking about religious traditions with an upper and lower-case T, Biblical traditions and personal traditions.

First, tradition with an upper-case T. The word itself means a statement, belief or practice handed down from generation to generation, especially a belief or practice based on Mosaic law. The Latin word tradere means to deliver or hand over. It is from trans meaning over and dare meaning to give.

In the ancient Church, the Latin word traditio meant the act of handing the oral and written instruction given by one person to another. In course of time, it came to refer to teaching not in Scripture. This is, of course, a point of divergence between Catholics and Protestants, and yet, Martin Luther pushed back against some of the more radical reformers who sought to dispose of the Creeds. Unlike Catholicism, the Lutheran Church does not believe that Tradition is a carrier of the Word of God, or that only the communion of the Bishop of Rome has been entrusted to interpret the Word of God.[1] The Augsburg Confession (XXI) reminds us that in our teaching nothing departs from the Scriptures. The Creeds and Sacraments – Baptism and Eucharist – fall into that teaching.[2]

We retain the oral and written teaching of Jesus when we gather for baptism and Divine Worship. We cannot change the words when baptizing or praying over the bread and wine for they are not ours but His. However, we do have to consider that the oral teachings of Jesus were handed down from Apostles to Paul, Jude and the writers of the Synoptics Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke. And at the end of John’s Gospel, we read these words, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”[3]

That said, we move from the word tradition to tradition in our passage today.[4] As Jesus went about his ministry of healing, Pharisees team up with scribes from Jerusalem to pose an accusatory question. Pharisees were members of a renewal movement that sought to restore God’s favor to Israel by advocating strict observance of the law and total separation from all Gentile defilement. Scribes were professional copyists and scholars of the law, some of whom were also Pharisees. Those from Jerusalem carried the extra weight of authority.

The gist of their accusation was that Jesus’ followers ate with unclean hands. This is not a hygiene problem but one of ritual purity, which Marks explains in verses 3-4. Biblical rules of ritual purity applied only to the priests serving at the altar, but the tradition developed by the Pharisees extended them to govern the behavior of all Jews at all meals. This made every meal a religious act and a symbolic expression of Jewish identity. Contact with any potentially unclean persons or products in the marketplace meant ritual washing before eating. Jesus’ accusers considered this tradition of the elders to be binding on all Jews.

We see that Jesus calls them hypocrites, the original promoters of false news because their rituals were not rooted in an interior conversion of the heart. After quoting and fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy in their presence, Jesus indicted them for neglecting what is truly of God in favor of their own agenda.

Jesus did not reject tradition per se for it was important in the early Church to hand on the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. Rather, he rejected mere human traditions that are not based in God’s word, traditions that negate the intent of God’s word. Paul encouraged believers to “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”[5]

As we apply this passage to our lives today, we sometimes see or may even adopt religious practices that are often superficial and routine especially among those who have not been adequately evangelized and whose faith fails to impact their choices and behavior in any significant way. Jesus spoke of an attitude toward God that he saw in the scribes and Pharisees and that can be found among Christians in every church: the tendency to substitute religiosity for genuine obedience to God and His Word. What is needed – and perhaps what we need – is a personal encounter with Jesus leading to a deep transformation of the heart. When that occurs, religious practices come to life and serve their true purpose.

Finally, your own traditions. Family traditions are often celebrated and sometimes taken for granted. Some grow in popularity and others shrivel away unnoticed. What practices did your parents and grandparents exercise regularly that still or no longer exist?

By now, most of you know my background growing up in Beaver County, and how we were active in church and the Polish club. What was handed over to me through these experiences remain influential in my life, and I share those traditions with family members. Praying with others at meals and bringing our grandchildren to church, listening to polkas and teaching them how to dance, cooking pork and sauerkraut, stuffed cabbage, pierogies, haluski and serving them on New Years are all ways we share some traditions.

I could go on, but enough about me. How about you? I am going to ask you what traditions you share with others – children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, friends, family and neighbors. (At this point members of the congregation are asked to share their traditions.)

 

Those are all fine traditions. Whatever your traditions are, how do they relate to our faith? I ask that after searching the web for family traditions. I found things like Taco Tuesdays, Friday Night Breakfast, Thanksgiving football and endless lists of family activities, but none of them were tied to why we should do these things. Then it dawned on me that the Passover Meal celebrated by Jews today holds a great example for Christians. Why? Because there is a point during the meal when the youngest person asks four questions beginning with, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The questions are designed to pique a child's curiosity about what is happening in order to hold their attention.

So, if a young child would ask why are we displaying a manger scene under the tree or on the mantle, or why are we coloring eggs at Easter, or serving particular foods on certain holidays, our answer should have its root in Christ and what He did for us.

Let me close with a person who was handed a tradition, re-envisioned it and re-presented it to others. His name was Paul, and he was very influential in the early Church. Perhaps you heard of this man.

Recall that I earlier cited John 21:25, and that the oral teachings of Jesus were handed down from Apostles to Paul and the writers of the Synoptics Gospels. Jesus died and rose in 33 AD. Mark and Matthew were written around 70 AD. Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest New Testament piece of literature, written about 50 AD. That means before the gospels were written, people heard the Gospel for nearly 40 years from people like Barnabas and Paul.

After his conversion, Paul spent 15 days with Peter (Gal 1:15), and derived information from the traditions of early churches – Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch – but anything that was handed to him was always transformed by Paul’s personal vision and insight.[6] And while his proclamation of the Gospel is nothing like the Evangelists, Paul explicitly called attention to the fact that he handed on what he received.[7]

We read in 1^st Corinthians, “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. … For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you … I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.”[8]

Paul appealed to the customs of the churches and recommended fidelity to tradition. To the Thessalonians, he wrote, “We thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”[9] To the Philippians, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”[10] And to the Corinthians, “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.”[11] 

Even though Paul gives no evidence of having known Jesus personally in his earthly ministry, what is of great importance is that he emphasized the salvific effects of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, which for him transcend the data of the historical ministry of Jesus. His interest was in these climactic events of Jesus’ career rather than on the details of Jesus’ manner of life, ministry, personality or even his message. …  Paul was interested in the exalted, risen Lord, who became the real agent of the tradition developing in the heart of the apostolic church.[12]

My friends, I tell you this because God’s Church, God’s world needs to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ today more than ever, and that is dependent not only on the written Word of God, but more importantly upon you. As a friend of mine always said, “You may be the only Gospel people hear.” Whatever traditions you incorporate into your family life and share with others, ensure that it includes the Gospel – that Jesus Christ lived, taught and healed, that He embraced violent suffering and death for you, that He handed onto you His Body and Blood, and that after He died on the Cross, descended into hell, rose from the dead and with the Father sent the loving Holy Spirit to you. Ensure that every family tradition is linked to what was handed on to you as it was to Paul. And when you do, may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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[1] See Lutheranism, Wikipedia.

[2] Tradition, LCMS online cyclopedia.

[3] John 21:25.

[4] Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark, 134ff.

[5] 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

[6] JBC, 1387.

[7] JBC, 1386.

[8] 1 Corinthians 11:2, 23; 15:1,3

[9] 1 Thessalonians 2:13.

[10] Philippians 4:9.

[11] 1 Corinthians 11:2.

[12] JBC, 1386f.