Sermon 9/3/06
Within, Without - Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, James 1:17-27
(view lectionary notes for this text)
In the opening scene of the famous musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, the lead character, asks a question that is something like: “How do we retain this fragile balance in life?” His answer of course, he says he can tell you in just one word: Tradition! Throughout the musical, Tevye’s three daughters marry in turn, but each match poses a challenge to Tevye’s sense of tradition and how things are done. His oldest daughter, Tzeitel, asks her father to be let out of the arranged match for her, so that she can marry the man she truly loves, Motel, the tailor. Tevye groans and complains, but finally agrees that they can marry for love. Then his second daughter, Hodel, wants to marry revolutionary Perchik. When the approach Tevye, they tell him they are not asking for permission, only for his blessing. Again, Tevye is distressed and refuses at first, but finally gives in. And then finally his youngest daughter Chava falls in love with a Christian man, Fyedka. She, too, seeks to change her father’s heart about her match, but Tevye says “enough” – he has bent enough and let go of too much tradition. Here he will not bend. Eventually though, near the end of the story, he does pray God’s blessing on Chava and Fyedka. Tevye is not able to accept Chava and her marriage with open arms, but he is at least willing to keep Chava connected to his life.
As enjoyable as Fiddler is as a musical, as much as the songs make you (or me at least) want to sing along and as much as the script makes you laugh, the questions asked are serious ones, important ones. How far should you change traditions to meet the demands of an ever-changing world? How far is to far to bend? When do the traditions hold us to what is good and important, and when do they keep us from moving forward, from growing and changing in healthy ways?
Traditions can be such wonderful parts of our lives. We take comfort in traditions. They give us identity, and order, and bind us together when traditions are shared. No doubt you have favorite traditions that have shaped your childhood, your adulthood, your family and identity. I remember with clarity and affection the traditions, for instance, that guided our Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. I remember being in charge of making place cards every Thanksgiving, and I remember spending every Christmas Eve at my grandparents, first eating dinner with them, then going to church with them, and then opening presents from them. But these traditions eventually changed. The process of change was sometimes hard. It was sad to see old traditions let go. But today, my family celebrates new traditions. Now, I have Thanksgiving at the parsonage, and we always use a paper tablecloth that we color on between dinner and dessert. My Christmas Eves look quite different too. Traditions are so important, so powerful. But there are circumstances and situations that call us to reconsider what has been tradition.
Today we return to Mark in our gospel lesson, and Jesus is gathered with the some of the scribes and Pharisees, and tradition is the underlying topic. In Mark’s account, this scene happens just after the feeding of the five thousand, which we read in John’s gospel. The Pharisees and scribes right away notices that Jesus and his disciples are eating with unwashed hands – defiled, ritually unclean hands. John goes on to elaborate how concerned the Pharisees are with following the tradition of the elders when it comes to these rituals of cleanliness, rituals prescribed since the days of Moses. The scribes and Pharisees call Jesus out on his behavior – why don’t you and your lot follow tradition and wash your hands before you eat? Why eat with dirty hands? Jesus responds by calling the Pharisees out too – “You hypocrites,” he says. And then he quotes from the prophet Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” And then Jesus calls the whole crowd into the conversation. “Listen,” he says, “understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” In the verses we skip in our passage today, there is more of the same – Jesus says to the Pharisees, "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” He also goes on to call his own disciples dull because they don’t get what he’s saying.
Whenever we read a scripture passage featuring the Pharisees, it easy to fall into a pattern of scapegoating these religious leaders. We know we’re not supposed to do what they do. But we should always seek to see in ourselves the Pharisees that Jesus so challenges. How are we like the people he describes? How do we engage in the same practices Jesus talks about here?
Rev. Edward Markquart writes that Jesus teaches us two lessons in this text. “First,” he says, we see in this text “a matter of priorities – that many Jewish people had a priority for their traditions over the commandment of God to love. Secondly, and more subtly, that often their religious traditions became replacements for carrying out God’s work of mercy and justice to the human misery of the world.” He continues elaborating on these lessons: “[There is a] tendency of good, religious people to give more importance to their traditions than to the commandments of love and mercy.” (1)
When in the life of the community, the life of this congregation, and when in our own lives have we been guilty of letting a tradition stand in the way of God’s love and mercy? What are the traditions at St. Paul’s? What would happen if we tried to change or abandon some of those traditions? Do our traditions ever stand in the way of someone receiving God’s love? What if we decided to change the style of music at Sunday Services so that worship appealed more to younger generations? What if we stopped charging for the Harvest Supper and made it a community meal, open to anyone? What if we started holding worship at a park downtown so that those without cars could more easily join our service? What if we had young people chair all of our committees? What if all my sermons were as interactive as children’s time? What if we decided not to have services on Christmas Eve, but instead as a congregation went and served meals at the Karing Kitchen? What if we decided we should pool our resources and merge with First UMC? What if?
Of course, we would not want to change so many of our traditions, and changing things doesn’t necessarily make things better. But whenever we hold so tightly to tradition that we don’t have a place for God’s grace, we are in trouble. When this happens, Markquart says, we “revoke the commandment of unconditional love for each other.” He continues, “Sometimes religious people, ordinary religious people like you and me, sometimes use our religion as a replacement for doing the commandments of love, mercy and justice. Religion then becomes a replacement for love.”
“As is obvious, the church activities should in no way be a substitute for involving oneself in life. The purpose of Christ is to permeate all of life. The Christian faith is not to be the occasion whereby love is withdrawn from the suffering of the world. But unfortunately that always happens. There is always a large number of people in this world who are like me, who mistakenly and naively make their absorption in the church . . . as an excuse for withdrawing from the struggles of human misery.”
Our epistle lesson for the next several weeks will come from the book James. It is one of my favorite books of the Bible. His thoughts fit right in with our gospel lesson. James is very focused not on what Christians do or don’t have to believe to be a part of the community of faith, but on how Christians should live if they are part of the community. Because of this, the letter from James has been criticized through the centuries by theologians who think that James makes it sound like we can “earn” our way into heaven by doing good works. But personally, I think they’re missing James’ point. I think James is talking about faith – true faith, which, if true, is lived out by what we do because of what we say we believe. Today’s passage is “classic James” – he’s talking about being doers of the word, and not merely hearers of the word of God. James says those who just hear the word but don’t act are like those who look in a mirror, but, when turning away, immediately forget what they looked like. In other words, looking in the mirror has done no good, made no lasting impression, and likewise, hearing the word only makes no lasting impression on one’s life.
Sometimes our traditions and rituals – the way we have come to do things – the practices that shape our faith – sometimes these can be the very things that keep us from seeing in the mirror clearly, the very things that distract us from remembering what we saw when we looked at our faces, looked into God’s word, and heard God’s call on our lives. Jesus reminds us that it is not the things outside ourselves that make us who we are. Our traditions can show our love of God and our service to God, but God does not love us because of our traditions. Who we are is what is inside of us, and God hopes that what is inside of us is love. Love for ourselves, love for God, love for one another, without condition. Let us live as God’s precious children, a life of love within and without. Amen.
(1) Edward F. Markquart,
http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_b_tradition_fiddler_on_the_roof.htm
All sermons written by Rev. Beth Quick - please give credit for material used.