Tradition or Traditionalism

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, August 30, 2009. The text for this week's message is Mark 7:1-8, 14-15.

While a crowd always surrounded Jesus, he wasn’t particularly liked by the religious elite of his day. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes all appear at some point as opponents to Jesus in his ministry. In fact, his trial, which led to the cross, took place before the high priest. The people that should have gotten it the most were the ones who opposed Jesus’ ministry the most. I know that for me, personally, this is always a reminder that the Lord can work in unexpected ways, and it is important to be open to the different ways that God can be speaking to us, and the new ways that He can work around and through us. In some sense, today’s Scripture is intensely personal because it specifically calls into question the idea that the way it is is the way it should be.

In college, the chaplain once said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Probably one of my favorite quotes from working in the chaplain’s office for two and a half years. Think about it for a moment though – “tradition is the living faith of the dead, and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” What does that mean? Is anybody else struck by that stark contrast? It blows me away every time I think about it, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off for about 7 years. Where is that line between tradition and traditionalism?

There is a big push in the United Methodist denomination right now to “rethink church.” And I think that this push is somewhat intensified right now in the Indiana Conference. I mean, think about it for a second. This time last year, even though both conferences voted to merge, we were still two separate conferences – North Indiana and South Indiana. We had our first Annual Conference as the Indiana Annual Conference just two months ago (and I haven’t forgotten, Jeff and I will be reporting on Annual Conference in a couple of weeks for those that may be a little curious as to what happened). Right now we are in a perfect time to “rethink church.”

We are in a ministry cluster with Montgomery County churches. What does that mean? I have no idea, but we are figuring it out one meeting at a time. We are rethinking what we do as the church. Right here in Veedersburg/Hillsboro, we are learning and rethinking what it means to be the church. Y’all are experiencing a new pastor for the first time in a while. I’m experiencing what it means to be a pastor. Hopefully we are all being challenged by Scripture, and moving closer to who it is that God would have us be. I don’t have a perfect idea of what it looks like, and neither does an individual sitting here this morning. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time.

We have an opportunity to rethink what we have done and what we could be doing in our community. So the question is – are we going to move forward, or are we going to keep looking back? Are we going to assess who we are and listen for what God is doing in our lives, or are we going to go through the motions and just do what we’ve always been doing? Are we going to honor our Wesleyan tradition and, as John Wesley says, “spread scriptural holiness throughout the land,” or are we going to be comfortable as Sunday-only Christians.

In this section of Mark’s gospel, Jesus is calling into question the old traditions that had become a central concern of the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus and his disciples stopped by Burger King to get some Whoppers and didn’t go to the bathroom first and wash their hands before eating. When the Pharisees and scribes see this, they ask Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples do things like we have always done them? Why are they eating with unwashed hands?”

Now, hear me on this one, washing your hands before you eat is important. Jesus and the disciples have been all over the place ministering to those in need, including some who were sick. The best way to prevent spreading germs is to wash your hands. But, the Pharisees were not concerned with physical cleanliness. They didn’t ask, “Aren’t your hands dirty? Aren’t you going to wash them before going to town on that Whopper?” They were concerned that Jesus’ disciples were not following the traditions of the elders. It wasn’t about physical cleanliness; it was about traditionalism.

It’s like the old sermon illustration about the woman cooking a turkey at Thanksgiving. You’ve probably heard it before, but I’m going to tell it again anyway. This little girl grew up helping her mom prepare the turkey for Thanksgiving every single year. One of the things that her mom did was cut off part of the top of the turkey. When she got older, she got married and moved away. On her first Thanksgiving, she started preparing the turkey just like her mom always used to prepare it, by cutting off part of the top of the turkey. Her husband told her that she just wasted some of the turkey, and they had a little disagreement about it. So, finally, she got upset and called her mom to tell her that her husband was being unreasonable about her turkey preparation. She told her mom that she did everything just like when she was growing up, including cutting off part of the top of the turkey. And her mom said, “Well, honey, I only cut off the top of the turkey so that it would fit in my roasting pan.” Tradition or traditionalism? There’s a difference.

Jesus responds to their questioning by quoting the prophet Isaiah. He says, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” He says that the Pharisees are only paying lip service to God. Ouch. Whoever said, “gentle Jesus meek and mild,” didn’t necessarily read all of the gospels. Jesus cut right to the heart of the matter and called out the Pharisees and their lack of faith. Their faith wasn’t something they lived out; it was part of their ritual. Going through the motions of faith just doesn’t cut it.

Now remember, the Pharisees were the holiest people around. They kept the Mosaic Law to the letter. They were the ones who even kept the laws that were put in place to form a protective hedge around the Mosaic Law, some 600+ commandments. They were the first round pick in the Fantasy Holiness Leagues every fall. They were the superstars. They were the perennial Holiness Oscar nominees. Whatever analogy you want to use, they were legally blameless. There was no doubt whatsoever that, according to the letter of the Mosaic Law, the Pharisees were without fault. But Jesus calls them out. He says that they are only paying lip service to God, just as Isaiah was talking about hundreds of years before. Their hearts were not in the right place.

How does this apply to where we are today? As mentioned before, it is a matter of the heart. Are we doing things simply because it is what we’ve always done, or are we doing them because our heart is in the right place and we are trying to reach out to the community around us? If somebody were to come in here today, somebody that hasn’t been here before, or maybe somebody that hasn’t come in a long time, and they are wearing jeans and a T-shirt, is your first thought going to be, “Oh, I’m so glad he/she is here this morning,” or “I can’t believe he/she is wearing that to church.” One of those thoughts is tradition-driven and one is traditionalism at work. Hospitality to newcomers is a good tradition to maintain. Judging what others are wearing is traditionalism because it is more concerned with how one should come to church instead of focusing on the fact that this person is at worship. So, how do we distinguish between the two? How do we know when we are not celebrating the living faith of the dead, but focusing on the rituals that, quite frankly, don’t really matter?

About three times each year, I am required to be at retreats for fellow clergy who are not full members of the conference yet. At the last retreat in May, we did an exercise where we started off with the question, “What is the purpose of the United Methodist Church?” In other words, why are we here? Well, as good Methodists, we came to agree on the answer that can be found in the Book of Discipline – to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Then the fun started – why?

And that is what this exercise was all about: asking why six times. It was like talking to a four year old. Each time we would come to a conclusion on something, we would have to ask “why?” all over again. The point of the exercise is to get down to the very core of what it is that we are doing. Why are we doing what we are doing? Are we doing it just because that’s “the way it’s supposed to be”? Or is it because that’s the way we’ve always done it? That’s traditionalism. At some point, if we are only doing things because it’s the way we’ve always done them because that’s how we’ve always done it, then we are missing something. We are starting to just pay lip service to God. It’s just like what Solomon and the Israelites did, which we talked about a few weeks ago, “No thanks, Lord. I’ll take it from here!” It didn’t work out all that well for Solomon or for the Israelites, and it didn’t work out too well for the Pharisees; what in the world makes us think it is going to work out for us?

Allow me to let you in on a secret – it won’t. If we aren’t growing in our spiritual lives, it will not help us to keep doing the same things we’ve always done. It just doesn’t work that way. Something has to change. If we aren’t who we think we should be as a church, then something has to change. The world around us is changing and to reach those who are outside of these walls is going to take us doing something different than what we’ve done in the past. We can’t rely on the “traditions of the elders” like the Pharisees did because it took them off course. The one who they were anticipating was in their midst, and instead of following Jesus and learning everything he had to teach, they were asking why the disciples weren’t following their traditions. Something had to be radically different in order for them to be changed; that something was Jesus.

Jesus picked up all their assumptions about what religion was supposed to look like, all their traditions that they had collected and passed down through the years, and all of the rituals that they had put so much stock in, shook them up and scattered them all over the place. He blew up their expectations and tried to turn them back to the most important thing – where is your heart? It is what exists in our hearts that really matters; everything else is just for show. So the question that we have to wrestle with this week is – where are our hearts? Are we more concerned with the show than the reality? Because if that’s the case, then we need to stop and re-evaluate the situation. Jesus tells us that it is not what is on the outside that matters. How we look to those around us isn’t as important as who we are on the inside. Are we going to blindly rely on the traditions that have been handed down, or are we going to celebrate our tradition while being true to who God has called us to be at this point in our history?