Day of the Church Year: 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Passage: Mark 7:1-9, 14-15, 21-23
Each Christmas, my parents, my sister and her family, and I gather like many families do. From the time I was 8 years old until just a few years ago, we ate the same foods every Christmas Eve: hors d’oeuvres. Lefsa with butter and sugar, lefsa being a Norwegian potato flatbread, sausages cooked in a fondue pot with a sauce, sausages that we stabbed with toothpicks to serve, little Norwegian meatballs, crackers and cheese, a veggie tray, deviled eggs, and krum kaka which is an impressive trumpet-shaped Norwegian waffle cookie. Every year the same. When my family started this tradition, my dad was serving as pastor at a church where we had a Christmas Eve service at 4:00 pm and then a Christmas Eve service at 8:00 pm which meant that we had to celebrate Christmas between 5:30 and 7:30 pm. While all the families in our little town sat down to large turkey dinners, my mother reasoned that it would be far easier to put together all the hors d’oeuvres the day before, cover them in plastic, set them in the refrigerator, and quickly warm up the hot items just before eating—since we had so little time in between services. The next day, Christmas Day, blizzard or not, we drove to Minneapolis to celebrate with my mom’s side of the family. Then came the year I moved here, the year we scratched our heads and tried to figure out how to celebrate on Christmas Eve with the worship schedule of not only Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church in Mesa where my dad served as pastor but also Grace’s worship schedule. It finally dawned on us that could celebrate on Christmas Day, instead of Christmas Eve, since we all lived here and didn’t need to travel. For several years, we continued to dutifully prepare deviled eggs, a veggie tray, and sausages even though the reason for this tradition no longer existed. It took us several more years to realize that we could eat whatever we wanted because we were no longer constrained by church service times.
We likely all have similar traditions in our families, things we do a certain way that we started for a practical reason that then became just what we always do. Even when the practical reason for the tradition ends, we keep our traditions alive. Traditions such as these show up not only in our families but in our churches, in our workplaces, in our schools, in our government. Traditions that began as a practical solution to a problem that no longer needs solving. For instance, throughout most of the 500 year history of the Lutheran church, we have received Holy Communion every Sunday which may surprise you. Theologically and liturgically, the centrality of Holy Communion in Lutheran worship makes sense both because Luther was originally Roman Catholic where Holy Communion is central to mass and because Luther taught that we should receive Holy Communion at every opportunity. Holy Communion at every Sunday service was commonplace in all Lutheran churches everywhere until Europeans began to settle in what is now the United States. Because settlements grew slowly, there were not enough Lutheran pastors to serve all the little Lutheran congregations planted in the countrysides of the Midwest and east coast. Instead, pastors would preach and serve Holy Communion at Church A on the first Sunday of the month, at Church B on the second Sunday of the month, and so on, sometimes with as many as six congregations in one pastor’s circuit. The tradition that developed to accommodate the shortage of clergy during the settling of the US was having Holy Communion once per month instead of every week. In 2006, the ELCA worship office published a small book entitled The Use of the Means of Grace to set standards for Lutheran worship, and one of the standards was Holy Communion every week. A cry arose among many Lutherans: we’ve never done it that way before! To which I laughed and laughed.
Today in the gospel of Mark, the Pharisees question why Jesus’ disciples don’t follow the tradition of hand washing before eating. The Pharisees aren’t concerned about hygiene; they’re concerned about spiritual defilement as defined by the tradition of the elders. You understand, hand washing is not prescribed in scripture. Hand washing is not central to loving God and loving neighbor as ourselves. Well, except during a pandemic. Hand washing is a tradition of the elders, and while the Pharisees may be uncomfortable with Jesus’ disciples failing to honor that particular tradition, the disciples do not defile themselves. For Jesus says in response: There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. Or in other words: one cannot spiritually defile themselves by eating with unwashed hands. Rather, the evil intentions of our hearts defile us. Jesus frees his disciples from traditions that no longer serve them.
And Jesus frees us from traditions that no longer serve us. Sometimes, traditions can feel binding, sometimes comforting. But if our only reason for doing or not doing something in particular is: “we’ve never done it that way before,” today’s story from Mark reminds us that Jesus seeks for his disciples and for us what leads to life. Just parenthetically here, please don’t eat with unwashed hands. That actually could be harmful. But there may be other traditions that bind us today, that no longer serve us, either individually or communally. We are free to let them go.
Just yesterday, a few of us visited Beth El synagogue near 12th Avenue and Glendale as part of our education series Honoring Our Neighbor’s Faith. Beth El is a conservative Jewish synagogue, and we joined a small portion of their congregation in-person—with others online, just like we do here—for their weekly shabbat service. When we spoke with the rabbi after the service, I asked about some of the traditions of the synagogue and of the conservative branch of Judaism. I was surprised when she, the rabbi, responded: “Well, we traditionally do this, (she described some of their traditions) but nowadays, we don’t really need to do that anymore.” She spoke of the incredible importance of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, for her and her community and the less important traditions of the elders. Since I was already pondering Jesus’ words from Mark, I appreciated her clarity. For her and her community, what really matters is the Torah. Everything else is gravy.
So it is for us. Jesus seeks for us what leads to life and that is the law of love—love for God, neighbor, and self. He frees us from all else. Thanks be to God! Amen.