Because We've Always Done It That Way!
Text: Mark 7:1-13
In
the name of Jesus. Amen.
Traditions
are everywhere. We have our family
traditions when we gather together for Christmas or Thanksgiving. Certain stories are told, special deserts are
to be had, and special games are to be played.
Year after year, the same routine happens. We also have sports traditions in hockey,
football, basketball, and even golf.
Lucky shirts are worn, beards are grown out, and fun rituals are
performed in order to not jinx the tournament.
We have work traditions too. We
are told the stories of the founding of the business with certain slogans and
work ethics that are to be mimicked and practiced every day. We even have traditions in the church. The church has a calendar, specific church
attire is worn, potlucks are regularly scheduled, certain feasts are
celebrated, and traditional orders of service are practiced.
These
traditions are nothing more than the passing on of customs and beliefs from one
generation to another younger generation.
These traditions though can be good or they can be bad. They can teach and pass on valuable and
worthy aspects of a generational heritage or they can perpetuate sinful habits from
one generation to the next. On the other
hand, there are some traditions that have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, but
are basically done because we’ve always done it that way—it’s tradition!
Now,
with all that said, in our Gospel reading from today it seems as if Jesus is
unleashing negative judgment upon all traditions. We heard Him say to the Pharisees in a very
snarky tone, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order
to keep your tradition!”
Now,
we must especially take note of Jesus’ strong words as a church, for as you
know Zion Lutheran Church is a part of a denomination that has a long heritage
with a number of ancient traditions. In
other words, we are a part of a group of churches—some 6,000 churches in the
United States and many more across the world—that have agreed to follow certain
forms of worship, follow a certain church calendar, and have certain practices
that have been handed down from previous generations. Indeed, many of the elements of our Sunday Divine
Services and things that we do as a church go back literally thousands of
years.
With
that stated, we must ask ourselves, if Jesus is advocating the removal of all
traditions? Do we as LCMS Lutherans need
to be purged of tradition, to have some sort of modern day reformation? Some people would read today’s Gospel reading
and would conclude that this is the case.
They shiver at customs and rituals and would advocate that any and all
traditions in the church should be thrown out, that the slate should be wiped
clean. However, history has shown us
that when certain traditions are eradicated from the church, new traditions have
a way of popping up in their place. In
other words, when ancient traditions are removed from the church, these ancient
traditions are immediately—whether it is intended or not—replaced with
contemporary traditions. This is just
the way that it is. We are people of
tradition.
But
is this what Jesus is so concerned with in our Gospel reading? Is Jesus an anti-traditionalist? Should all tradition be condemned, burned,
and discarded? The answer is no. You see, what Jesus is against in our Gospel
reading is ‘bad’ tradition. Yes, there
is such thing as bad tradition and there is such a thing as good tradition. As we will hear later, good traditions should
be preserved, passed down to younger generations, respected, and revered. However, bad traditions should be resisted,
rejected, and scoffed at, as Jesus did in the Gospel reading from Mark.
You
see, what Jesus is so concerned about is that the Pharisees during the
first-century had a hyper-piety. This
hyper-piety of the Pharisees led the Pharisees to follow certain manmade
traditions that were not even in the Old Testament scriptures. Furthermore, the Pharisees elevated these
manmade traditions to the status of being God’s Law. Somewhere along the way these manmade
traditions were elevated to the status of God’s Word, as if God prescribed them
Himself, when He actually did not. To
put it another way, these traditions were formed on the basis of mankind’s own
voice and spiritual experiments, not by God’s command, which led to these
traditions taking the place of God’s Word.
Mistakably, the Pharisees were enforcing these manmade traditions upon
the people as if they were God’s binding Word, which resulted in people
essentially following the traditions of man rather than the Word of God. They were doubly damned: bound in manmade
traditions with no voice of God.
Dear
friends, any tradition that you or I create—whether old or modern, whether
rustic or contemporary, whether boring or hip—any tradition that is developed
from our own self-centered opinions, our own selfish desires, and our own agendas;
any tradition that we create that opposes Christ and His forgiveness; any
tradition that elevates itself above Jesus and His Word… is evil and must be
rejected. I humbly ask us this: what old
looking or modern looking traditions have you and I established in our life and
in our church that stand in opposition to God’s Word? Furthermore, in what ways have we invented
for ourselves traditions according to our own reasoning that serve us, appease
our sinful nature, excuse our sin, deprive love to our neighbors, and dismiss
God’s Word?
Dear
friends, when our own voices shape our traditions and when we allow our manmade
traditions to guide us, while distancing God’s Word from us, we have then
fallen into that which Christ condemns in our Gospel reading from today. We must repent of our foolishness and
self-deception.
All
this stated, we are beginning to understand that tradition can be bad. However, it can also be good. It can oppose Christ or honor Christ. It can stand in the way of scripture or
elevate scripture. It can point us to
ourselves or it can point us to Christ.
It can bind a conscience or reveal the peace of the Gospel to a
conscience. We can wrongfully hang our
body on a bad tradition or a good tradition can bring us to the body of Christ
hung on a tree.
Ultimately
the traditions of the Pharisees led them and the people away from an honest
view of themselves, as sinners in need of grace. Furthermore, their traditions created a layer
between them and God’s Word. As a
result, they ignored the wickedness in their hearts while counting themselves
righteous. They created their own
traditions, waved their fingers at those who didn’t pass muster, patted
themselves on the back, and considered themselves worthy, while the Lord was
off on the sidelines.
Believe
it or not this was one of the things at the heart of the Reformation of the
Church in the 1500s. Martin Luther and
the Reformers actually were not anti-tradition, but rather, intentionally
rejected many of the Roman Catholic Church’s traditions that obstructed the
Gospel from the people and that wrongfully obscured the Word of God. They rejected traditions made by human beings
for the purpose of appeasing God and for earning grace, for this eliminated the
need for the bleeding savior. That’s right,
they excluded traditions that were contrary to the Gospel and that were
contrary to the teachings of the Christian faith. However, we must—I repeat—we must keep in
mind that the Reformers did not abolish every single tradition of the
time. Why not? The reason why was that many of the
traditions and ceremonies actually ‘did’ serve the purpose of teaching the
people what they needed to know about Christ; many of the traditions ‘did’ lead
the people to the confession of their sins and the reception of the Savior. These good faith traditions and ceremonies
were preserved by the Reformers! It
would have been foolish to toss these out, for they were noble, good, and
true. They served the saints of the
church by bringing them to Christ and His Word.
Traditions
are either formed from the imaginations of mankind or they are shaped and
inspired from the Word of God. You and I
must reject bad traditions, for they assault the faith of the children of God
and lead the faithful away from Christ to reliance upon human wisdom, human
piety, and human false doctrine. These
bad traditions lead us to our own agendas, our own piety, our own doings, and
our own work in regard to salvation; they lead us to the pits of despair, hell,
and damnation. However, good faith
traditions can and should be respected, insofar as they point you and me to
Christ and Him crucified for our sins and for the sins of the world.
Baptized
Saints, while we respect faith traditions not because they make us acceptable
to God, or, because they are necessary for salvation, we respect them and follow
them because they direct our attention to Christ Jesus and His gifts. For example, the pattern of our services, the
candles, the paintings hung on the wall, the sign of the cross, the changing of
the colors on the altar, the changing banners, the architecture of the church,
the artwork created by saints of the past, bowing at the altar, the stained
glassed windows, the clothing and vestments of the pastor, and all the
decorations are not just a meaningless show, but rather grant beauty, dignity,
and reverence. This beauty and dignity
and reverence are not for the sake of being worshipful, but rather are for turning
our eyes, ears, and minds to Christ and His gifts. These good faith traditions block
distractions and pull us out of our sometimes mundane lives so that we can hear—so
that you can hear now in this Divine Service the crystal clear Words of Christ,
“Come to me and I will give you rest. I
will make you clean; you are clean for I bled and died for you. You are forgiven. You are redeemed. You are adopted as my child. Take and eat, this is my body. Take and drink, this is my blood, given for
you for the forgiveness of all of your sins.
You are mine. Do not fear. I will be with you to the end of the age.”
The
peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.
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