Traditions: Viva la Powdered wig (Mark 7:9-23)
Let’s get right to the mother of all church issues. Traditions. Which ones are of God? Which ones can we live without?
By looking at the last 100 years of church history and by listening to the questions being asked today, it seems that one primary issue people are trying to determine is this: How do we tell the commands of God from the traditions of men? And once we figure that out, how do we handle the division that will arise once somebody steps outside those traditions?
This “tradition” discussion is not new, neither is the solution.
A few hundred years ago, every respectable man wore a powdered wig. What rebels broke against that great idea? Young Jeezy and I agree ... Long live the wowdered pig!
Look around. Many of the older generations of saints condemn the younger because they will not take up the traditions which have been their heartfelt, personal identity markers for decades and centuries. And many of the younger generation looks down on the older because they have too many identity markers they believe are unnecessary and outside of Jesus.
If my reading of church culture is too harsh here, read the Apostle Paul’s explanation of the weak and strong in Romans 14. This chapter is Paul dealing with controversy over traditions in the church in Rome 2000 years ago. We see this is an age-old problem of God’s people.
In the church in Rome, one faction believed you could eat and drink everything (the strong) and the other had traditions that strictly forbade some food and wine (the weak). To the strong it was a matter of preference. To the weak, it was a sin issue. Paul’s response? “Whatever you believe about these things, keep it between yourself and God” (vs 22).
So what were “these things” Paul talks of. In vs. 1 he calls them disputable matters … traditions passed down over time that may seem holy and beneficial, but are not outright commands from God. In other words, these disputable matters are not essential and cannot be expected of people. They are not covenant issues. They are not actually sin issues, though some may see it that way because of their traditions.
Jesus and the Pharisees
In this case in Mark 7:1-8, the traditions (the disputable matter) have become a tool of exclusion. The weak ones who lived by the tradition couldn’t accept Jesus and his disciples who did not wash. It made Jesus angry then, and it makes him angry now when weak saints use their traditions to exclude people from the church.
In vs. 9-23 Jesus jumps on the Pharisees for actually twisting the intention of the Word of God with their traditions. My friend says that when people make Bible say what they want it to say, they are “raping the word of God”.
So what do we do?
I think we ought to do as Paul taught in Romans 14. Whatever we believe about traditions … about disputable matters, we ought to keep it to ourselves.
THINK:
- What traditions are you wrestling with, trying to determine if they are Biblical commands or just a weird misunderstanding of a scripture?
- How do people in the church help turn others from sin if we are supposed to keep our opinions about such things to ourselves?
- How do we know what sins are real sins and which are actually just breaking against traditions?
Looking For Brilliance In Spoons (Mark 7:1-8)
On this idea of rules of God without relationship with God, Benyamin Cohen wrote a great book called My Jesus Year. In it he relays his life as a Jew “trying out” Jesus for a year. Below is an except that so perfectly fits this passage about the controversy of Jewish traditions in Mark 7:
Judaism is a religion in which actions trump faith. Checking lettuce for bugs (another weird Jewish law and real party favorite) is just as important as belief in God …
When we ask a rabbi about Judaism, more often than not it’s a legal question, not a theological one. For example, we’re not allowed to mix meat and dairy food. To be extra careful, we keep two sets of dishes. Let’s say I used a dairy spoon with a meat pot by accident. I need to ask a rabbi what to do with that spoon. Do I throw it away? Is there a way to make it “kosher” again? Most likely, he’ll respond with a litany of follow-up questions. What was in the pot? How hot was it? When was the last time the spoon had been used? And so on. Compounding this problem is that asking a different rabbi will often garner you a different answer.
I’m not asking the rabbi, as a Catholic parishioner would a priest, how many Hail Marys I need to say in order to be forgiven for this transgression. That’s not the point here. I’m asking a practical question. What the hell do I do with this spoon?
I’ll ask the obvious. What does this have to do with spirituality? Because once we go down this road, there’s no natural place to stop. Forget the spoon. What about the pot? What about the food that was in the pot? What about the stove this tragic episode happened on? …
Maybe I’m crazy, but I thought religion had something to do with belief in God and being nice to your neighbor. I wasn’t aware it had anything to do with oxen or pots or spoons, and even if it did, those things wouldn’t be of paramount import…
What kind of religion was this that worshiped minutiae over meaning?
Don’t get me wrong. There are brilliance and beauty in this faith. I just haven’t found them yet. ~ Benyamin Cohen, p 25 of My Jesus Year.
In looking at why the Pharisees and priests were so oppositional to Jesus and his apparent carelessness with Jewish traditions, John Ortberg says
James Dunn notes that in the first century a disproportionate amount of rabbinic attention was devoted to three areas of the law: dietary rules, Sabbath-keeping and circumcision. This was in spite of the fact that rabbis would not have claimed these as the central aspects of God’s will for humanity. They knew that the essence of the law was the shema — the loving of God with heart and soul and strength. So why the relentless focus on dietary laws, circumcision and Sabbath-keeping?
The answer, Dunn says, involves “identity markers,” or boundaries. All groups of human beings have a tendency to be exclusive; they want to know who is inside and who is out. So they adopt identity markers — visible practices of dress or vocabulary or behavior that serve to distinguish who is inside the group from who is outside.
Henri Nouwen wrote that it is very hard to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother. Any time people are not experiencing authentic transformation — as in Mark 7:21-23 — they will inevitably be drawn toward some kind of faith characterized by boundary markers. We will look for substitute ways of distinguishing ourselves from those on the outside. The boundary markers change from century to century, but they all reinforce a false sense of superiority, fed by the intent to exclude others,
Ironically, the one human being who was perfectly free from self-righteousness is the only one who was completely righteous. The least exclusive member of the human race is also its most exalted. The only person who has ever been truly free of a messiah complex was the Messiah (Pharisees are Us).
I started reading Cohen’s book last week and have only gotten halfway through it … so I’ll let you know if he finds the brilliance and beauty he was looking for in Jesus. Or I suppose you could read it for yourself.
THINK:
- What traditions do you see in Christianity that can be misused and overemphasized just like eating with “unclean hands”?
- Do you think traditions in the Church do more to exclude people, or include them? Why?
- What traditions do you use to mark your identity as a Christian? Why? Do they help or hinder your relationship with God?
- How can you determine the difference between a tradition of man (that has some root in scripture) and an outright command from God?
