When Tradition Goes Bad

 

Jesu Juva

St. Mark 7:1-13                                                                         

August 22, 2021

Proper 16B             

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          At some point over the next few weeks, school age siblings will stand together on front porches, wearing new clothes, sporting new backpacks, and brandishing sharpened pencils.  And someone—usually Mom—will take a picture.  The first-day-of-school picture is a tradition for many families.  It’s a way of marking time—a way of measuring just how quickly those children grow up.  Traditions like this one serve a good and loving purpose.

          Traditions are terribly important.  Tradition can be a way of carrying something forward from one generation to the next.  Every family has traditions.  Schools and sporting events have traditions.  The church—this congregation—has traditions.  Pastors often joke that it’s easier to change a doctrine than to change a tradition in the church.  It’s risky to mess with tradition.  The pastor who unilaterally changes the time of the Sunday service or, the pastor who decides to omit the singing of “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve—well, such a pastor shouldn’t be surprised when a mob with pitchforks and torches begins to gather on the lawn in front of the parsonage.  Why?  Because that pastor is tinkering with tradition.

          The power of tradition is undeniable.  And that power can serve a positive purpose.  G. K. Chesterton wrote of how tradition gives a voice to our ancestors—to those who have gone before us.  He called tradition “the democracy of the dead. . . . Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant [group] who merely happen to be walking around.”  We do well to recognize the positive power of tradition, especially at a time when our culture is abandoning traditions once held sacred, opting for the un-traditional when it comes to marriage, family, sex, and the sanctity of life.  Tradition ensures that those who came before us—that those far wiser than us—that they still have a voice.  And only a fool would ignore that voice.

          But today’s text from Mark 7 has a slightly different take on tradition.  Tradition can take on a life of its own.  When tradition becomes the most important thing—when manmade traditions are elevated over and above the clear commandments of God—well, that’s when tradition goes bad.  That’s the trouble with tradition.  That’s why Jesus accused the Pharisees of rejecting the commandments of God in favor of their own clever and convenient traditions.

          Let me tell you about some of the ways tradition can bring trouble.  One danger is that we make tradition into a museum or, worse, a mausoleum—a collection of dead and dusty things that people come to look at and maybe admire—but never pick up and use.  It’s like when Lutherans take the traditional point of view that the Bible is the Word of God—“Here I stand, I can do no other.”  But when those same Lutherans never open their Bibles to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the contents, well, that spells trouble.

          At other times, tradition can become a hiding place when we’re afraid.  When “change and decay” all around we see—when the whole world is coming apart at the seams—it feels good to hide behind what’s old and familiar and comforting.  It’s a kind of nostalgia, like going back to your old hometown and sleeping in your old childhood bedroom when you just can’t handle reality.

          Tradition can also lead us away from God and away from His will.  That’s what happens when tradition takes over—when tradition hijacks the faith once delivered to the saints.  That’s what Jesus encountered in this morning’s holy gospel.  It all began with the observation that Jesus’ disciples were careless about washing their hands.  The tradition was that you did not eat until you had ritually washed your hands.  (And the word used here for washing is actually “baptize.”)  And not only were you supposed to “baptize” your hands, but also your cups and pots and pans and even the cushions you sat on.  This washing had nothing to do with good hygiene or viruses—the way your mother used to remind you to wash your hands before supper.  This was “religious hygiene,” an attempt to be spiritually pure by your own doing and washing.  This is precisely how the Pharisees operated.  They were steeped in tradition and in self-purification.  They had come up with 613 traditions to do—and not do—in order to make themselves righteous and pure before God.  Tradition had taken over.

          But for Jesus, tradition is always trumped by faith.  Repentance also trumps tradition.  And so Jesus promptly skewered all 613 traditions of the Pharisees with one deadly sentence of Law from the Prophet Isaiah:  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.  It’s kind of fun to watch Jesus level the opposition, using their own playbook to do so. 

          It’s fun, that is, until you realize how often we do the very same thing.  We honor God with moving lips but our hearts are somewhere else—at work, at play, at brunch, on the golf course, up north.  We treat the divine service like tailgating fans at Miller Park—casually arriving late, and then leaving early.  We put in our time, do our religious duty.  But our hearts are far from the Lord, even on Sunday morning.  We sing our hymns, we speak and sing every word as it’s printed in the official hymnal of the LCMS.  We say all the right words and all the good words.  BUT, these wandering, hardened, unbelieving, ungrateful hearts of ours are always roaming somewhere else.  That’s the hard reality of our sinful hearts.  And it’s awfully easy to use tradition to build a wall around those hearts so that no one, including God, can get to them.

          Whenever we use “tradition” to get in good with God, or to justify ourselves before God like the Pharisees did, we have slipped into a kind of idolatry where our lips are close to God, dripping with all the right words, but our hearts are all tied up with self-purification and self-justification.

          The Pharisees had an interesting religious tradition:  If you devoted your entire investment portfolio and savings to God (if you declared it to be “Corban,” given to God,) then you were off the hook for supporting your aging parents.  You could get away scot-free with dishonoring your mother and father—with not lifting a financial finger to help them—with keeping all your money for yourself—just by applying a thin veneer of religious tradition.

          We’re pretty good at schmearing that same religious varnish all over our own sins—to dress them up and excuse them—whether it’s our sins of sexual immorality, or justifying some petty theft, or our drunkenness, or our gossip, lies, slanders, anger and pettiness.  But when your main concern is justifying yourself—you just may lose the justification that Jesus gives by grace, through faith, for His own sake.

          The Pharisees missed it.  With all their religious regulations and traditions, they missed the one needful thing.  They missed Jesus.  They missed the mercy of God that was theirs in Jesus.  They missed the true cleansing and purification that all their ceremonial washings and baptizings could never achieve.  They missed the most wonderful thing God has ever done, and will ever do, for the world—the

sending of His beloved Son in the flesh to be our Savior—to suffer and die in our stead, and to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.  They were so busy with their traditions that they missed the great good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—not saints!—that He had come NOT to call the righteous, but sinners.

          They missed it; but you don’t have to.  For when you cut through all the clutter of tradition, what’s left is the clear and simple command of God:  “Repent.”  Turn.  Do a one-eighty.  Come to a new way of thinking—a way of thinking that clings in faith to the clear words and promises of God.  Take refuge in the washing that God Himself has established to name you and cleanse you as His own dear child.  For your baptism is so much more than a quaint tradition.  It is the power of God manifested daily in your body and soul.  Eat the bread that is His body; and drink the wine that is His blood, as He bids us do in His own testament. For the Lord’s Supper is no mere tradition.  It is sacred sustenance for body and soul that will sustain you in faith to the life of the world to come.

          In Jesus—with faith in Jesus—you DO ACTUALLY keep the commandments of God.  For by faith you now have Jesus’ perfect record of obedience as your own perfect record.  That perfect record can never be achieved by what you do, by how good you are, or by the traditions you keep.  It is simply a gift, poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit.  May our Lord bless your receiving of that gift now and always. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.