For Sunday, August 30, 2015 – Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Some are quick to notice that Jesus and his disciples don’t rigorously follow religious tradition, in this case washing their hands before they eat. How slow we are to see our own deviations from practices and patterns of faith, and how glad we are to critique others. “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders?” they ask, presuming themselves to be in the clear on this matter. Jesus likely does not find the tradition itself unreasonable; hygiene is a fine practice. In fact, he has even greater concern for their health than they know. Without saying it directly, he raises an even more significant question: By what standard shall God’s people live?
Whether in family units or faith communities or educational institutions or governments, we can thrive—yet also sometimes spiritually die—from holding fast to tradition. Honoring beloved traditions can be a way to express genuine commitment and to be in authentic relationship. At the same time, tradition can be used as a means to control others, setting standards of judgment by which we call some right and others wrong, by which we honor and also blame. If we say an activity or belief is a tradition, how dare anyone argue against it? Even evil practices that generate shame, from family dysfunction to national sicknesses like rabid patriotism, mass incarceration, racism and poverty, become hard to confront when they are seen as having always existed. Even worse, we are trained in patterns of traditional response—to pray and keep quiet, to accept the norm, to offer charity but not demand justice.
Jesus is making some new traditions. For him, to pray is to act; to listen to God is to respond to our neighbor. He did not come among us to shore up ancient traditions but to lift up the God of right now, a God of relationship and encounter. We will be guided not by the outer forms of tradition but by the inner currents of communion. We do not “observe” our way into the new community. Only from within, Jesus says, do we honor or defile the things of God. We will be revealed not so much by what goes into us as what comes out of us. Who are we at our core? We will know by what spills out of us. This is the new tradition Jesus is preparing us to live.
