Traditions

 Mark 7: 1-8     September 1, 2024

 

So, obviously, Jesus is telling us not to wash our hands

before we eat. Right?

I guess some biblical literalist could read this and get that out of it.

But this is not about washing hands necessarily,

Jesus Preaching to the Multitudes
Jorge Cocco Santangelo

it is about traditions all kinds of traditions.

Including hand washing.

 

We love traditions and rituals.

In our families and in our churches.

Even people who don’t think they’re very

traditional kind of gravitate to traditions.

 

With family and friends we have traditions like

Eating together, having specific foods, certain toasts,

we have traditional jokes and stories we tell,

watching certain TV shows, certain vacation spots, games,

even greetings we use when we see each other, 

all these things bind us together and remind us that we’re part of a group.

 

And we have traditions that we have in church.

Confession, Communion, Baptism, and worshipping itself are

religious traditions -- human practices that bring God into our group,

and remind us that we’re part of a community.

Almost anything we repeat often can become a tradition.

 

Traditions can ground us.

They give us stability and something to return to.

 

Confessions help us remember that we

are all sinful and need forgiveness.

Baptism reminds us that we are children of God.

Communion helps us remember a score of things:

God’s love, presence, sacrifice, abundance, forgiveness …

Traditions say more than words can say.

Traditions and shared practices can be beautiful.

Traditions bind people together. They bind generations together.

They are a wonderful way to worship and remember God.

They help us to touch the sacred.

 

But they are human practices and with everything human,

there can be problems.

 

Sometimes we can do a tradition so often,

that we do them without thinking,

or ever knowing the point behind them.

Sometimes we even forget the meaning behind the tradition,

and then we only remember the tradition

and not what it was supposed to teach us.

 

There’s a story that our liturgy teacher taught us in seminary

called “the guru’s cat:

Whenever this religious community would sit down to meditate,

the guru’s cat would come in and bother everyone.

So every night before worship, the guru made one of the students

tie up the guru’s cat to the tree outside so it wouldn’t bother them.

 

The guru died, and the students continued

to tie the cat up before worship.

Then a few years later, the bothersome cat died.

So the community adopted another cat so they could tie

it up to the tree before they meditated together.

 

Centuries later, PhD papers were being written about 

the community and about the significance of having a cat tied up before worship.

 

This is a parable, but it illustrates a good point.

Sometimes, the tradition itself becomes more important

than what the tradition was trying to help us remember.

So then people just ask “are we doing the traditions right?”

instead of asking “are we living the life that God wants us to live”.

All religions, I think fall into this trap.

The Pharisees did this with the rules of the Torah.

The hand washing, the processes with

food and with cleanliness and all the rest.

 

Now washing before eating is probably a good idea hygienically,

but that wasn’t actually the main idea of it.

It was a ritual. It was an imitation of the priest who would wash his

hands and feet before going into the temple.

 

It was there signify our uncleanliness.

It stressed our humanity and our humility

before the awesome otherness of God.

 

But not everyone who did the human tradition

of washing hands remembered their own humility and uncleanliness.

Ironically, some people thought they were actually better

for doing the ritual the right way.

And they started to look down on others who didn’t do the

tradition the same as them.

 

Eventually, these rules and traditions

overshadowed God’s will.

And to the people, they became God’s will.

Eventually, the religious leaders only took account of

whether these rules and traditions were being followed correctly.

 

Christians can understand that.

Until recently, there was a kind of obsession in the Christian

church about doing traditions the right way.

Do we immerse or not in baptism? Infants or only adults?

Do we serve bread or wafers, or grape juice or wine,

or do we have communion at all? Do we have the right napkins?

Do we light the candles or not light the candle?

Do we pray for the dead or just their families?

Did you bow the right way? Did you say the right words?

A lot of these had become litmus tests of the faith for Christians.

Those who didn’t do the “right things” or do things

the “right way” have been looked down on.

Like Jesus was when he didn’t do the ritual hand washing.

Again, it’s ironic. And it feels like maybe we’re moving past that?

 

The biggest problem with traditions

is that they can be confused with discipleship.

Many people throughout history have done the

Hand washing, praying, fasting, chanting, and worshipping

have felt that they were done with their business of being

Christian for the week.

Sometimes rituals can be substitutions for living

our lives as God wants us to live our lives.

Like doing the traditions is God’s objective and end goal.

 

Lots of people remember the scene from the

first Godfather movie where it shows the

baptism of Michael Corleone’s nephew at the church,

Michael Corleone is the baptismal godfather of the child,

and he is asked if he rejects Satan and the powers of this world,

he says yes and the child is baptized.

And the scene of the baptism are interspersed with scenes

of the murder of four enemies that Michael Corleone has

killed by his people while the baptism is going on.

Complete disconnect.

He’s doing the traditions of the church,

but he’s not following the life that Jesus told us to follow.

An extreme illustration, but effective none the less.

 

Do we really think is God primarily interested in

having more hand-washers, prayers, fasters,

worshippers, and even baptisms? 

Or is God interested in something more from us?

  

Jesus is saying to the crowds and Pharisees and the disciples

that God wants more.

God wants all those traditions and practices and reminders

to change us and make us different, to help us make choices,

to motivate us to do wonderful things in this world.

 

In essence, God wants us to do good works. (gasp)

Now sometimes Lutherans get uncomfortable with “good works”.

And whenever you talk about it with a good-old Lutheran,

you get a cacophony of confusing Luther quotes and

mentions of how he didn’t like the book of James which 

we just heard earlier in worship. But we’re not going to get into that now.

 

But I can assure you that, in the end,

Luther was on the same page as Jesus here.

And he was on the same page as James and Amos

and Isaiah and all of the other prophets.

In the end, God doesn’t just want  more traditions from us

God doesn’t want us to make sure that they’re done

perfectly and correctly and that no one slips up on them.

In the end, God doesn’t want full churches of people

just doing all the right traditions in the right way.

And then living like Michael Corleone in the Godfather.

 

God wants churches full of people living their lives differently.

God wants those traditions to change our actions.

God wants disciples who do not defile this world with

avarice, theft, murder, and adultery.

But who overcome those things in the world with

generosity, giving, bringing life, and honest relationships.

 

God hopes for this, Jesus hopes for it,

and I have to tell you, the world wants it from us too.

Even people who are outside the church

who aren’t Christians or aren’t practicing,

love to see it when Christians are following Jesus call.

Whenever you hear from people about

why they’ve become disillusioned with the church

or why they’ve left the church,

the answer is almost always the same: hypocrisy.

People don’t do as they preach and teach.

Now sometimes we have to remind people that

we’re just human and sin like everyone else.

But you have to admit what it looks like:

we have the traditions, we have the rituals, the doctrine,

and the scripture and the songs, but many times the church

as a whole has not lived a life that has aligned with those things.

 

We see pastors who get millions of dollars from preaching

and their churches not sharing it with anyone in need,

We see words of hate coming from the mouths of people of faith,

We see Christians with no care for the poor,

We see Christian parents withdrawing their love from

their own children because of their sexuality.

We see a lack of forgiveness coming from people to whom

forgiveness is central to their beliefs.

 

Living a life worthy of Christ is difficult.

There are a million draws and temptations

that pull us from God’s way every day.

Society is not formed to help us be generous,

to help us give, to help us to forgive, and love

and be honest in our relationships.

It’s actually easier not to in most cases.

It is hard to live what we believe and teach and desire.

 

The good news is that God has come into this world

in Jesus, to be with us, to struggle with us,

to suffer with us, to hear us, to teach us, and to love us.

And traditions have been handed down that remind us of that love.

 

We love traditions.

We need traditions that speak to us of God’s love.

We need the water of baptism, the grace of forgiveness,

the bread and the wine.

 

We need the prayers, the candles, the music,

We need these moments of God breaking into our regular world

and reminding us that the sacred is here,

God is present with us and we are loved.

 

We need to also keep our eyes on

what God wants for his beloved children,

not empty traditions, followed without thought.

But lives shaped by Jesus example and commands.