“Traditional Thanks”

Dad’s Thanksgiving Prayer

An amazing Thanksgiving Day prayer—one that my Father prayed, replete with Thees, Thys and Thous in about 1977—will forever remain etched upon my mind for one, simple reason: he broke with tradition. When it comes to table grace, which my family always prayed, my family totally wimped out. I Jesu nam, talbuts ve go; Val sing a Gut del mat ve fol; So fol ve mat; I Jesu nam, Amen. It’s Swedish, it’s traditional, it’s a ritual in our family. We prayed it at dinner, at lunch, and we even prayed it together at breakfast over our Sugar Puffs. When we were out in public at a restaurant, we’d pray sheepishly and quietly like secretive Puritans hiding out from angry Papists. [Whisper]: I Jesu nam, talbuts ve go….

So when we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner in ’77 or so, eager as we were to dive into the feast, we had every reason to expect that we’d pray our “Jesu Nams,” but no, Dad ran an option play—quarterback sneak—and when he finished his unique and self-composed Thanksgiving prayer, he must have looked up to see his beloveds in a state of shock. It was a jaw-dropper, for sure, and for a minute or so we all felt embarrassed, or shy, or otherwise tenderized. It’s not that the prayer was bad or inappropriate—quite the contrary—but still, we all hung in that following silence like a bunch of witless turkeys. Dad broke the code, changed the game, and violated the ritual.

The only thing as bad was the next year when we sat down at Thanksgiving. We didn’t say anything, but I know we were all thinking it: Is Dad going to go off-script again? As we bowed our heads, we heard that sweet sound of my father beginning the old prayer: “Iiiii-Jesu nam…” and all was right with the world once again.

Such is the effect of ritual upon our lives. We come to expect something because it has been part of our happy pattern. We enjoy the sameness and resent its violation.

Today’s text from Mark offers us the account of how Jesus violated the popular and cherished Jewish rituals of his day. Yes, he upset people, but he also led them to something far better than their beloved traditions. As we approach Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, let’s tune our ears to what Jesus may be saying to us about some of our traditions. When we know the difference real tradition and traditionalism, we’ll have confidence with need changes as well as deeper enjoyment of the ones we know and love.

Text: Mark 7: 1-13 Esv

1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" 6 And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, "'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' 8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." 9 And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' 11 But you say, 'If a man tells his father or his mother, "Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban"' (that is, given to God)-- 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do."†

Rituals Elaborated

Two lines from Franz Kafka say it well:

Leopards break into the temple. They knock over all the statues and drink the ceremonial wine. This happens again and again until it becomes part of the ceremony.

What we have here are examples of human tradition—elaborations on the law of Moses—that have swallowed up the original intent of the law.

The Pharisees’ hand-washing ritual was part and parcel of their self-understanding. Keep in mind, this wasn’t hygenic washing—any ancient with dirty hands would want to eat with clean hands—this was the specifically ritualize washing that took place in addition to (or even in place of) hygene. They washed “to the fist” which means either that they washed their hands by making a fist or they washed from the elbow to the knuckles, which is what the word for fist (pygmie, in Greek, just like the small race of people) means. Many surgeons have personal hand-washing rituals. They may have begun just as thoughtful ways to efficiently sterilize themselves, but before long it becomes a tradition—a well-rehearsed little dance—for which they take personal pride.  And not just the Pharisees, but “all Jews” practiced the ritual washing this way, which means Sadducees, Essenes, and every common Jew, in Jesus’ time, washed “to the fist.”

They ask why those who follow Jesus ignore the ritual. Granted, the Pharisees were just trying to be good Jews and obey the cleanliness codes of Leviticus, but what they were doing now was not the same as the original command. It was the centuries of commentaries that turned the law into highly-elaborated practices, which, for the Jews of the day, was their familiar ritual, their cherished tradition.

It is the elaboration that becomes the problem. Traditions can gather barnacles as they move through history. In time, barnacles grow on other barnacles and eventually take over the hull until it becomes impossible to tell where the barnacles end and the boat begins. Traditions work that way. Our traditions can acquire little elaborations along the way until the elaborations themselves are indistinguishable from the original intention.

For example, consider the communion cup of The Lord’s Supper. Originally, like the Disciples, the Christians just passed around the cup and everyone drank from it, just as Jesus told them to do. Over time, we decided that wine was too valuable and dangerous, so only the priests drank from the cup. Protestants reintroduced the cup, but in time people worried about germs and alcohol, so Welch’s replaced the wine and the single, unified cup got separated into hundreds of little, plastic, shot glasses. Today, some people feel very strongly about those separate little cups because, well, it’s what they’ve always known and always done. The hard thing to see is that dividing the cup undermines the core of the command! Jesus wanted us sharing a cup—one cup—to symbolize our oneness in him and his covenant. Our human elaborations on the sacrament become become our traditions.

We must always look critically at our own elaborations, our own traditions, and beware of how the core message, core practice, and the Word of God can be shuffled aside. We don’t want to veer from God’s Word in our attempts to do what suits us.

Rituals Contested

People don’t like their rituals contested. Jesus tells the Pharisees that their own, manmade traditions have taken over the substance of their faith.

9 And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!

Jesus, in allowing his Disciples to eat without the ritual washing proclaims the tradition irrelevant. He calls their attention to their preoccupation with their traditions by citing another example: Corban. In the ancient world, before Social Security and Medicaid, your wealth was your children, who cared for you in your old age. This is the true intent of the commandment to “Honor your father and mother.” We like to teach children this commandment so that they will obey us, but its real target is grown ups who have a moral obligation to care for their aging parents.

This corban rule was a loophole. It allowed a son, perhaps wealthy, perhaps angry at his parents over something, to give the money that would have gone to his parents’ care to the Temple instead. Such a one could say, “I’m so sorry, Mother and Father, but I’ve donated all your care to The Lord.” The parents would be up the creek without a paddle, and the Pharisees would honor it as a generous and godly gift.

This is kind of like a wealthy widow leaving her large inheritance to a televangelist or—preferably—her cats.

Jesus points out the loophole which subverts God’s will, and it was something accepted as tradition. We’ve always done it that way.

The point here is that Jesus sees and calls their attention to the fact that the traditions are not really about the interests of God at all; they are self-serving. The Jewish elders created a tradition that was less interested in pleasing God and more interested in preserving themselves and their own interests.

Church Barnacles

Historically, the Church has gathered its barnacles as well. Look at our central practices—the two sacraments of The Lord’s Supper and Baptism—and it is easy to see barnacles galore.

The Lord’s Supper was a celebration at a common table—a table exactly like you’d find in a common, ancient home. It was a table where people gathered and ate their meals, period. Move that table through history and see what happens. Elaborations on elaborations—the table gets turned into an Old Testament altar, which is the place where animal sacrifices were made. Animals were killed and split in halves and the Spirit of God was understood to pass between the pieces. The bread, which stands for the body of Christ, became the literal, physical body before it was broken at the “altar,” and thereby became a re-sacrificing of Christ week to week at Catholic mass. These traditions became the practice to the point that much of the original intent was lost. Protestants, in attempting to clear off the barnacle, returned the table to the floor as a table, and ensured that the bread was bread, and so on (though we’re still working on the wine part).

In our own practice, have you noticed that we say, “The body of Christ, given for you”? We don’t say “broken for you” because that does not appear once—ever—in scripture. It is a human tradition that just seems to nicely balance with “blood of Christ, shed for you,” and has become part of the ceremony.

With Baptism, it is the Protestants, not the Catholics, who have elaborated. Until the Reformation, there was a general unanimity regarding baptism. With the Reformation came new arguments and elaborations over when to baptize and why. Some refused to baptize babies, and others came to feel that it didn’t count unless you were really dunked under the water. In time, we developed dunkers, sprinklers, pourers, and more. Churches build tubs, pools and fonts in persnickety detail, or else they locate near the river or ocean. Again, all the barnacles can remove us from the core meaning: that all who are baptized are one in Christ!

And there is so much more! There seems to be a different denomination for every imaginable personal tradition. Protestantism has given us a endlessly fragmenting Church, each organized according to their own traditions or lack thereof. The end result is shameful: divided churches and a divided witness to Christ—something Jesus himself never wanted. His prayer in John 17 is that his Church may be one. What divides us is not so much essential tenets as it is our traditions.

Again, we should stay critical of them.

Tradition vs. Traditionalism

Jaroslav Pelikan has a great quote about the difference between tradition and traditionalism:

“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.”

Our task seems to be doing what we can to preserve the tradition—the living faith of the timeless Church—while scraping off the barnacles of traditionalism.

You’ll remember that the motto of the Reformed tradition, of which all Presbyterians are part, is:

Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda

The Church Reformed, Always Reforming

Although some have taken this motto as a justification to make whatever progressive changes they wanted to make, this is not what it means. We are indeed always reforming, but that reform is necessarily one of reforming to God’s Word and will. To be Reformed means is is one of our core values to be self-critical about our traditionalisms. We are committed to regular, ongoing barnacle removal—painful though it may be—in order that our life and witness remain well-aligned with God’s intentions for us and the world.

We consider our traditionalisms expendable and the substance of our core tradition—the gospel—as fixed and unalterable. Even so, that doesn’t make the work of separating the two easy. Many people have veered all the way out of Christianity in preference of the barnacles to the actual boat. We know what happens to such boats!

family traditions & thanks

I loved my father, but I think he missed an opportunity that Thanksgiving-after when he returned to our Swedish prayer. He had written a beautiful, personal prayer the year before. While we all felt relief at the return of tradition, I can’t help but think we missed out on something better.

As you plan your Thanksgiving, take the bigger risk: pray for real, from the heart, and dare to embarrass your loved ones with a gift of genuine thanks to The Lord for all we have and are. That is the tradition proper, and completely in order with or without the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and football games. May God bless you and yours this Thanksgiving, in Jesus’ name! Amen. †