Tuesdays with Mark (Mark 7: 1-23)

“Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands…” (7:1). They then asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (7:5)
This whole passage is about how the Pharisees perceive that Jesus is breaking some of their most hallowed rituals and norms and traditions. I would invite you to read through the whole passage and think about the traditions in your own life and faith.
You could take from this scripture that Jesus is against all traditions—he certainly takes the Pharisees to task in this passage and says, in effect, it doesn’t make any difference how you wash your hands if your heart is corrupt; it doesn’t make any difference what you eat because it is not what goes into you that matters but what comes out of you. You can follow all of your traditions and be very far away from God; in fact, following your traditions can even compromise if not destroy your faith. Jesus is indeed hard on traditions.
But let me return to the question: Is Jesus against all traditions? I don’t think so and I certainly hope not. If our traditions move us more deeply into the heart of God, if they give us more grateful hearts, if they motivate us to love our neighbor, if they prompt us to get our own knees to say sorry and thank you and help me and use me, then I believe that Jesus would be totally supportive of our traditions. But if we think we do our traditions in order to earn God’s favor or in order to think or act like we are better than someone else, then I believe that Jesus would challenge our traditions.
I have given the better part of my life to being a traditionalist; that is, I have led people in traditions in our believing, our acting, our rituals, and our liturgies for many years now. I can see how traditions can bring us closer to God but also how they can allow us to drift. I can see how they can soften our hearts and harden them. I have seen them unite people and divide them. I have seen them awaken some people and deaden others. Traditions are sort of like dynamite. Used properly they can be wonderful; used improperly they can be…well, not so wonderful.
The Jews, the Pharisees most particularly, had a lot of rules and regulations and traditions—613 of them in all. Sometimes they spent so much time arguing over them that they may have forgotten the purpose of tradition, and that is to honor God, praise God, open us up to God, enable us to see God’s presence in each other, and help us to follow God’s desires in our life. Sometimes the way we go about our traditions helps us and sometimes it hinders us. If we replace our traditions for our faith we are in trouble, but if our traditions deepen our faith and make us more loving, more open, more tender, more humble, more courageous disciples, then bring the traditions on—all of them, of course, to the Glory of God.
As you might imagine this morning’s bible study was very lively and challenging. I invite you to be part of it by thinking about—as I asked earlier—your own life with traditions. Are they helping you be more faithful? Or, might they be getting in your way, or more importantly, might they be getting in God’s way to you? Again, traditions can cut either way.