More To The Story

What is your favorite tradition? Is it something with your family? Does it revolve around a holiday? Do you have a custom that makes your week or weekend complete? Whatever it is I bet it is great! And, I imagine that it brings some sort of fulfillment—otherwise why would you do it? 

You may already know this but college football season is imminent. Every year even though I look forward to this fall tradition, it always seems to sneak up on me. The pageantry, pregame tailgating, and prognosticating by the experts adds something to my Saturday experience. And, even though I don’t live in the same town as the rest of my family I know what all of us are doing when our team is playing. So, what could possibly be wrong with all the great traditions surrounding something so fun as college football? Well, nothing necessarily. But, if we are not careful this coming Sunday we might hear Jesus telling us to get rid of traditions altogether.

On this surface this passage from Mark’s Gospel account seems clear cut and straightforward. Using Isaiah as his inspiration Jesus claims that the Pharisees—the religious of the religious—“Abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” If we were simply to read these words out of context we might think we aren’t to have traditions, customs, or any sort of regular practices; however, there is more to the story than flatly attesting ritual is bad!

As important as the word tradition is in what Jesus said there’s another word, or actually set of words, that is paramount. Jesus appears livid with the Pharisees for calling out his disciples who were eating with defiled hands (eww gross… also, this was a big no-no for faithful Jews of Jesus’ day). Jesus’ response to their claim that his followers weren’t paying attention to the elders’ customs was to contrast God’s commandments with human tradition. These two modifiers (God and human) make all the difference and leave me wondering about my own practices? Whose custom or law or tradition am I practicing? For whom am I doing this thing I claim is so very important? Why is this tradition worth holding up? Is it?

These questions implore me to dig even deeper into this story. And, what I discover here (at least initially) is a frustrating tension. Tradition is often good. It helps provide a framework and consistency. But, by itself it is like the wisdom koan, which tells of a man who after crossing a river in a boat decided to stay there on the shore to worship the vessel, instead of continuing his journey onward. The morale implied here is that tradition alone is useless. What matters is how our practices bring us into ever deeper relationship with God, Our Eternal Parent.

If we spend our lives worried about whether or not we are “doing it [a tradition] right” we will completely miss the point. We will be the man worshipping the boat, instead of worshipping and walking with Christ Jesus. This week as I approach this text I see that traditions can be healthy, but they can just as easily be dangerous. What matters more than our human practices is our relationship with the Divine. Do your traditions and practices develop your relationships with God and neighbor or do they distract from them?

Big Rocks First

When I was in college I had a strange routine to prepare for writing a big term paper. Before I would sit down to put pen to paper or fingers to computer keyboard I would set out to clean my entire dorm room. If there was dust somewhere, laundry on the floor, dirty dishes sitting on a dresser, or books askew I would spend however much time it took to set right everything. There were a few times when I decided that I did not have time to do this, so I went to write my paper at the library instead. Could I have written the paper without cleaning up? Sure, well physically I could do it, but psychologically maybe not.

I hope that you will observe that my behavior was at best peculiar and at worst bordering on a mild form of obsessive compulsive behavior. We tend to laugh at idiosyncrasies that we or a loved one possesses. And yet, what happens when we begin to construct our ritual and routine around these odd actions? I may have actually written a better paper because I was not focused on the dirty laundry I needed to do, but what happens if I let the miniscule aspects of life control my main priorities?

A long time ago my mom gave a devotion at summer camp. She had a glass cylinder about a foot tall and with a diameter of about 8 to10 inches. In the container she wanted to put some sand, big rocks, pebbles, and some medium sized rocks. At first she started with the sand, then put the pebbles, then the medium sized rocks, before finally trying to stuff the big rocks inside. Guess what! This method failed horribly. There was not enough room for one of the big rocks let alone all of them. Then, she tried another way.

During this second run through she put the big rocks inside first. Then the medium sized rocks, next the pebbles, and finally the sand. This time they all fit with a little bit of room to spare. I sat amazed thinking about how much of a difference it made to take care of the big things first. Obviously this demonstration impacted me, as I still remember this process. Jesus too challenges us to focus first on the weightier parts of life before we focus upon the small stuff.

In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus railed against the Pharisees’ over-commitment to hygienic rituals. To a group of people that had so many sanitary rituals this obviously was a big deal. Jesus thought that their practices were backwards though. They were in essence putting the sand in their jars before they took care of the big rocks. Food does not make one unholy or out of relationship with God. Rather, Jesus stated that it is the intentions that exist within the human heart that may defile a person.

We as a culture worry more than perhaps any other in history about what we eat. Instead of whether it will make us impure we wonder, “Will this make me gain weight?” Jesus bids us to let go of our worries about the religious purity of food and even how many calories it has, as he says all things that God makes are holy. Instead, we are to focus on what we have control over, that is the intentions that grow in our hearts. Let us make sure that we focus on this big rocks first, before we concentrate too much on the small sandy matters in life. Let us focus on the intentions of our hearts before we obsess too much over our rituals.

The Feast of Holy Name: How Do You Celebrate New Year's Coming?

What do you do to celebrate New Year’s Coming? Do you stay up to watch the ball drop? Do you quietly make some resolutions for the impending year? Do you watch some football games? How about cooking up some black eyed peas and turnip greens? What ritual brings in the New Year for you?

Every year we celebrate Holy Name on New Year’s Day and we celebrate the circumcision and naming of Jesus in the Temple. Talk about a different type of New Year’s ritual! On the eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life, he would have been taken to a rabbi to take part in this ceremony, so that he would have been marked as one of God’s Chosen People. While this simple rite comes at the end of today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, what tends to overshadow this ritual is the visitation of the angels to the shepherds and recalling Jesus’ virgin birth from Mary.

Often at this time of year we are bombarded by the miraculous! Angels visiting Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Shepherds, a virgin giving birth to Emmanuel (God is with us), and the magi coming from far away to bestow gifts on this new born king makes overlooking this Jewish rite very easy. This makes me think of how I tend to overlook the commonplace, everyday presence of God, as I seek out some amazing bolt-of-lightning type moment.

When Jesus came to earth we hear of all the miracles that took place for him to arrive. The Incarnation of Christ, the Truth that God would want to dwell within the Creation He made, is in and of itself astounding. Yet, on this day, the Feast of Holy Name what stands out to me is the simplicity and the quiet action of Joseph and Mary taking Jesus to be circumcised and named in the presence of the religious authority of the day. While it comes off as everyday, this rite helps me to know that God With Us was just like us.

We do not have too much about Jesus growing up. There is one story in Luke’s Gospel of Jesus’ trip to the Temple as a child, yet for the most part we are left to imagine what the Son of God was like as a kid, a teenager, and a young adult. Jesus walked around just like you and me. He scraped his knee and ran to Mary for comfort. He played with other children in the neighborhood. He stood beside Joseph watching as the carpenter went about his work.

Certainly, I love to celebrate the magnificence of God coming to dwell with us, the angel’s visitations, and the magi coming. Still what the Feast of Holy Name reminds me of is that God came down and was a little boy of whom Mary and Joseph took care. He was presented in the fashion of his culture. He became just like us and when he did he made our simple rituals and everyday practices holy. Maybe it seems silly to celebrate New Year’s traditions, but even actions as simple as these are made holy by Christ’s coming to be with us.