Tradition is a wonderful thing. It helps us remember the past. Recall those who are no longer with us. Remember significant events of the past. Tradition is a gift from God that helps us remember where God is active in the world.
Many Families have traditions to celebrate their arrival in the USA. This was most certainly a way to celebrate God’s gift of bringing them to the USA where they could prosper. They were very thankful of God’s work in bringing them here.
Even communities would have these celebrations. Especially around here where we are not that far removed from the time of their arrival. Many small towns have celebrations that recall the ethnic heritage of the founders. Many churches do the same. How many times have we heard of the Lutheran Church in Lake Woebegon
hosting a Lutefisk dinner?We here at Saint Anthony Park UMC also have various traditions around Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, Advent, et cetera. Each of these traditions can be traced to a foundation in the Early Church. The community of Christians that wrote the Gospel of John celebrated these holidays too. Palm Sunday, which we celebrate next week, has been celebrated for nearly 2000 years. Paul, who wrote the Letter to the Philippians, would also have celebrated Palm Sunday and Easter.
The beginning of this tradition, of the lager tradition of The Way, later called Christianity, changed every thing for those who participated in it. The followers of Jesus understood this shift. They could no longer live with the old traditions, steeped in rigidly doing things as their predecessors had. Just as in the Isaiah reading we are to no longer expect God to so what God had done formerly. God was radically present, that is incarnate, in Jesus the Christ. God had anointed Jesus, calling him his own.
Paul sees this too. Paul knows that every claim he had to righteousness in nothing without relationship with God/Christ. For the sake of Christ, Paul has suffered the loss of all these claims. That is, all these things that make Paul a Hebrew of Hebrews had previously kept him separate from relationship with God. Paul had to suffer the loss of this status in order that he could be in relationship with Christ as Lord. Paul could no longer have a nationalistic pride. Paul like many others who were followers of Christ can no longer indentify with the ways of the world.
In fact, Both Mary and Paul know that God is not the same God of old. God has become incarnate, fully present in the world, in Jesus Christ. As we heard earlier from Isaiah, God is about to do new things. We should not look for God to do things the way God did in the past. Instead, we should see where God is moving now.
Today were are not in the same social-political situation that we were in when any of us were younger, much less when this church was founded. It is always a new and different world. Why would we expect God to act today the same way God acted in the past?
This is one of the core themes of the Old Testament. God is constantly interacting with the world in new and unique ways. This interaction did not stop with the recordings in the New Testament. We know that the Holy Spirit is with us still today, interacting with us.
The church though, heck, even humanity in general, gets hung up on tradition. We are afraid of change for fear of becoming more like the world. This is a valid concern, if we view ourselves are the agent of change. However if we allow for God to work within us as a community and to change us, we are bound to change from our old ways and traditions that do not give us life. We turn instead to God and the witness of God in Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit and see where they are working in the world and work with them there. We must never allow tradition to be more about sustaining the institution of church than about the freeing love of God.
All three of the scriptures today clarify this. And this radical understanding of the scriptures has been the foundation of every reformation within the church. Especially our own in John and Charles Wesley.
We have been discussing during Lent the Wesley Quadrilateral. That is, Tradition, Experience, Reason and Scripture. The highest of these would be scripture. The other three are used to help us read scripture and understand how God is active in the World today.
Reason, Tradition and Scripture are all malleable, They can change. These changes allow for us to have different understandings of scripture in every age. As we say at Luther Seminary, they allow for the Gospel to contextualize itself wherever and whenever it is in the world.
An example, your ability to reason as an adult is very different than your ability as a child. Likewise our experiences today are different than our parents when they were our age. Many of our parents never had the education that many of us here have. Many of our parents lived through the Second World War. Many people my age and younger have no memory of the Vietnam War, and don’t truly know the significance of the Berlin Wall falling. Wesley did not experience any of these world events, much less Paul or the Gospel writers. But their work and understanding of how God works in the world influences how we see God today.
Experiences such as various historical events inform how we see God active in the world. They inform how we come together to worship God. Our experiences in worshiping God, in honoring God, change from age to age too. Suffice it to say that we no longer worship in cathedrals in England, or with the high liturgy of the Anglican Church.
Truly God is still speaking into our world. We are no longer in the past, but we are here, now. We must ask ourselves how does tradition bring us into relationship with God. What is it that needs to change so that we can better relate to one another and to God?
What traditions do we still need within our congregation, within the church at large? And what traditions are we ready to let go of?
Amen.
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