Because people have been following Jesus for around 2,000 years, there’s a wealth of patterns and examples to study. How do we make the best use of a previous generation’s experience?
In this context, the question of tradition is hotly debated. Those who find worthy examples in the past are accused of being woodenly and slavishly bound to tradition. Those who depart from patterns of the past are accused of blindly rejecting experience’s wisdom.
With a couple of millennia behind them, the followers of Jesus have experimented with, rejected, and accepted a diverse assortment of models. What might be called traditional in a North American Pentecostal church would be seen as a break with tradition in the Armenian Orthodox church, and vice-versa.
But God asks each generation of Jesus followers to reexamine these matters and sort them out again. Why? Perhaps He wants them understand, and engage with, whichever order they inhabit. He doesn’t want them to merely go through the motions of some organization.
How do we distinguish, in tradition, between what is valuable and what should be cast aside? How do we determine which innovations are salutary and which are wasteful? Noted scholar Jaroslav Pelikan writes:
Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. The reformers of every age, whether political or religious or literary, have protested against the tyranny of the dead, and in doing so have called for innovation and insight.
In making a distinction between ‘tradition’ and ‘traditionalism,’ Pelikan is giving us a bit of advice. A truly beneficial tradition is part of a living faith: it engages with the lives of the believers, and with the lives of the rest of the world; it brings the eternal into the present. Mere formulaic activity is not a living faith. Merely replicating a pattern, with little thought to its meaning or purpose or its points of contact with current life, is not a meaningful tradition, but rather a dead traditionalism.
Bound, as humans are, by living inside time, humans tend to make a great distinction between the past, the present, and the future. This difference may not be so great for God, because He lives outside time.
In 1979, when the Episcopalian church in the United States experienced animated debate about the adoption of a revised prayer book, a comment was made to the effect that God is neither old nor new, but eternal. (The reader is advised to search the periodicals of that time for an exact quote.)
The danger in a discussion about tradition is that one can be easily sidetracked into a consideration of concrete external symbols, which are not as important as the eternal meanings which such symbols are supposed to carry into contemporary daily life.
Phrasings, wordings, types of music, architectural and garment are, of themselves, of little value. They are the “jars of clay” (II Corinthians 4:7) which carry the wisdom of God into our hearts, minds, and hands. Richard Rohr writes:
Many religious people seem to think that God, for some utterly unexplainable reason, loves the human past (usually their own group’s recent past) instead of the present or the future of this creation.
Whether one maintains tradition or departs from it, in either case this choice should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. The goal is neither to preserve tradition nor to violate it. But such preservation or violation can be a step toward a goal. Rohr continues:
We can do much better than substituting mere traditionalism for actual God experience.
Obviously, the locus classicus for this theme is Mark 7:8, as Jesus says, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
Another relevant text is found in John’s Revelation (3:2): “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.”
If the goal is to “strengthen,” then we choose to follow, or depart from, tradition as that goal dictates. Richard Lenski explains that this passage
means to take strong, immediate, effective measures. “To make decisively firm” all that is ready to die completely conveys the idea of establishing it with new life and vitality so that it may be able to shake off this creeping death and to stand solidly against its inroads.
The stakes here become apparent: if we become sidetracked, then spiritual death will ensue.
Inevitably, we will become sidetracked. We will embrace tradition when we should depart from it, and we will violate tradition when we should preserve it. We are sinners and we are sinful.
Jesus reaches into our blind and confused fumbling, and He directs us. Despite our best efforts, not because of them, He will lead us according to His will.
He will forgive us for our bad corporate choices as well as for our bad individual choices. His Holy Spirit, not our squabbling among ourselves, will call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the followers of Jesus on earth.
