Good Shepherd Community of Faith

An American Baptist and United Church of Christ

Welcoming and Affirming Congregation

Steeped in Tradition

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

 

Have you ever seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Although very weird, they are delightful—fun to watch. Johnny Depp is a great actor, who really puts himself into strange roles. In the Pirates series, he plays unusual and unique swashbuckler Jack Sparrow. Some of the other characters in Pirates of the Caribbean are also quite unusual—to put it mildly. Anyway, in the second movie, Dead Man’s Chest, we find the pirates Ragetti and Pintel in a longboat on the open sea. Having just escaped from jail, they are headed for Cannibal Island in search of Sparrow’s ship, The Black Pearl.

Ragetti is seated in the back of the boat and appears to be “reading” a Bible, which is upside-down. He pauses for a moment and says, “Well, I say it was divine providence what escaped us from jail.” Pintel responds, “And I say it was me bein’ clever.” There is a dog in the front of the boat, holding a set of keys in its mouth. Turning to it, Pintel asks, “Ain’t that right, poochie?” “Well, how’d ya know it weren’t divine providence what inspired you to be clever?” Ragetti asks. “Anyway, I ain’t stealin’ no ship.” “It ain’t stealin’” Pintel replies, “It’s ‘salvagin’! And since when do you care?”

Ragetti says, “Since we’re not immortal no more. We gotta take care of our mortal souls.” Referring to Ragetti’s Bible, Pintel says, “You know you can’t read.” “It’s the Bible,” Ragetti counters, full of righteous indignation. “You get credit for trying.” That’s all any of us can hope for, isn’t it? To get credit for trying. What bothers me, and I believe it bothered Jesus, is that some people don’t even try. Some, like the Pharisees, are so steeped in tradition that they don’t even make an attempt to understand the new way, the new covenant brought in by Jesus.

My husband tells me about hearing a comedian explain the Bible. This comedian said it’s very easy; the Old Testament teaches you “Don’t piss God off”; the New Testament teaches, “Love everybody.” Simple but true. Just look at the difference between our readings. Deuteronomy says to “give heed to the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to observe,” or, as The Message puts it, “Listen carefully to the rules and regulations that I am teaching you.” By contrast, James says, according to The Message, “Anyone who sets himself up as religious by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion is to reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight and to guard against corruption from the godless world.”

As a colleague of mine put it in one of his weekly reflections, “When the author of Deuteronomy spoke of a nation, he was speaking of Israel as God’s people. National existence is at stake here. God, who brought the nation into being and gave it a land, will destroy it if it defiles his lordship. The only hope Israel has lies in possession of God’s law. With the advent of Christ [however], God’s law, although not discarded entirely, has been fortified with God’s gospel. Where the law invoked fear, the gospel invokes love.”

M.Scott Peck, in his book The Different Drum, states, “Instead of being ignored, denied, hidden, or changed, human differences are celebrated as gifts. [In this new nation grounded in the gospel of Christ], we commit ourselves to rejoicing together, mourning together, taking delight in each other and making others’ conditions our own.” Billy goes on to say, “Just as God’s first nation was known by its ability to keep the law, we will be known by our ability to keep the gospel.” In other words, we should no longer be steeped in the tradition of the past but should be moving on to the new; we should be moving from strict adherence to the law to recognition of the spirit of the law.

Psalm 15 can almost be seen as a bridge between the old and the new, between being steeped in Old Testament tradition and the New Testament concept of having the mind of Christ. Yes, it refers to those who “fear the Lord,” but it also speaks of those who “walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart; who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors.” The difference, I guess, is that in Hebrew Scripture tradition, they do these things—walk blamelessly, do what is right, and speak the truth from their hearts—out of fear; in the new covenant of the Christian Scriptures, we do these things—walk blamelessly, do what is right, and speak the truth from our hearts—out of love!

Nowhere in Scripture is this message—the contrast between being steeped in tradition and being steeped in love—made more clear than when Jesus confronts the Pharisees. He does so many times. They are, indeed, his nemeses. They question his every move. They criticize his disciples for not “observing the tradition of the elders.” In the reading from Mark, they question the fact that the disciples do not adhere to ritual cleansing before sharing a meal. According to the Amplified Bible, they ask, “Why do your disciples not order their way of living according to the tradition handed down by the forefathers?” In response, Jesus calls upon their very traditions when he quotes Isaiah who said, “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

Jesus adds, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” The Quest Study Bible tells us that “worship is in vain when it consists of a rote adherence to human rules and teachings without honest, thoughtful, heartfelt praise to God.”

You know, churches (referring to the members, not the buildings) are the worst when it comes to being steeped in tradition. Have you ever heard the words, “We never did it this way?” or “We always did it that way”? Change was difficult for the Pharisees; change is difficult for us as well. Some of us want everything to stay the same as it was in the past. To make changes, to do things in a new way is frightening.

As I worked on this message a while back, the memorial service for Senator Ted Kennedy came on, and I couldn’t help but think about the ways in which he instituted change over the years. He was a voice for the underprivileged—advocating for human rights, for civil rights, for health care, for peace—and he didn’t let the traditions of the senate or of either party get in his way. 

Actually, I took a break from writing in order to watch the service and, although the worship was steeped in tradition, the priest who spoke pointed out that the liturgy is not just a remembrance of the past but it points us to the future; it moves us from memory of the past to hope in the future. And such it should be in our own worship and in our ministries. We can remember the past without being so steeped in tradition that we fail to move forward, that we fail to reach out in compassion and Christ’s love.

Jesus turned the traditions of the past upside down. He remembered. Indeed, he often read from and quoted the Hebrew Scriptures. He knew well the customs and practices of his faith tradition. He knew, too, that the Pharisees were locked into those customs and practices and did not demonstrate the love and understanding that were to be part of the new faith. They did not welcome change and were, in fact, quick to condemn the changes that Jesus instituted.

We would do well to hear the words of Jesus and to recognize our own Pharisaic behavior. We need to let go—to let go of traditions that anchor us to the ground of the past—and we need to open our hearts and our minds to the new, the innovative, the future that is ours to grasp. Let us remember but not be so steeped in tradition that we are blinded to what is necessary in order to build a future for ourselves and for God’s church. Amen.

Steeped in Tradition