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Many years ago, in the 18oo’s, in Europe, a congregation started having problems with mice running everywhere during Worship. The pastor consulted with the congregation on resolving the problem. They decided to get a cat and let it live in the sanctuary. On Sunday, during Worship, they would tie the cat up during Worship. The mice were soon gone. The people had grown attached to the cat, and they kept it, still tying it up during Worship. Years passed, and the cat died; the church got another cat, tying it up during Worship. A few generations later, and many cats later, someone raised the question, after the present cat passed on. "Before we get another cat, I would like to know when we started getting cats for the sanctuary and why we continue to do it." After much discussion, no one quite knew, but all agreed it must be a sacred matter, for it had been passed down through the generations. They got another cat. Now, the congregation still has a cat and ties it up on Sunday morning. No one, still, knows quite why.
1Some Pharisees and several teachers of the Law of Moses from Jerusalem came and gathered around Jesus. 2They noticed that some of his disciples ate without first washing their hands.
3The Pharisees and many other Jewish people obey the teachings of their ancestors. They always wash their hands in the proper way before eating. 4None of them will eat anything they buy in the market until it is washed. They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls.
5The Pharisees and teachers asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples obey what our ancestors taught us to do? Why do they eat without washing their hands?"
6Jesus replied:
You are nothing but show-offs! The prophet Isaiah was right when he wrote that God had said,
"All of you praise me
with your words,
but you never really
think about me.
7It is useless for you
to worship me,
when you teach rules
made up by humans."
8You disobey God's commands in order to obey what humans have taught. 9You are good at rejecting God's commands so that you can follow your own teachings! 10Didn't Moses command you to respect your father and mother? Didn't he tell you to put to death all who curse their parents? 11But you let people get by without helping their parents when they should. You let them say that what they own has been offered to God. 12You won't let those people help their parents. 13And you ignore God's commands in order to follow your own teaching. You do a lot of other things that are just as bad. (St. Mark 7, CEV)
Tradition can help or hinder. Attachment to tradition, even helpful tradition, is a problem, for it is antithetical to faith, which lives, unattached, to the living process of Eternity, Now. Faith clings to nothing, not an image of God, nor an image of the past, neither an image of the future.
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Attached to tradition, we can forget that much of tradition entails cultural additions to the original deposit of faith and community life. We forget the reason for aspects of communal spiritual life, passed to us and, thereby, treat as essential tradition that becomes, over time, not needed or, worse, a hindrance to necessary change.
The accumulation of attachment to relative customs becomes a contributing factor to the inertia that leads to the demise of a once vital movement, which began in the fresh, dynamic vision of the founder. Rather than seeking the truth, persons focus on defending the faith and any number of matters that have nothing integral to do with faith. Attributing ultimate value to relative custom becomes a means of resisting the unknown and the new, and the unknown and the new is exactly where God is always leading us to go. Orthodoxy becomes equal in the minds of people to tradition, anything other becomes heterodox, and anyone heterodox must be silenced or ignored, or expelled, to protect the community.
Even now, the voice of a prophet, who is seeking truth and to share it in faith community, finds little place in much spiritual community, for it has settled on the truths from a past, shutting itself off to the ongoing revelation that can both rightly examine the past and change to align, not just with confessing a tradition, but letting the tradition live through changes arising out of the faithful integrity essential for communal health and survival, over time. In seeking to preserve a past that is no more, while trying to get to a future that is not, the community misses the ever-unfolding Will of the Living Christ, that, while never denying what absolutely is, seeks to take shape in this moment as an expression of the spontaneity of Love in loving each of us, in the ways Love innately knows to reach each of us.
Spirit is supple, for Presence adapts, taking different temporary forms, without compromising its essentiality, but because of its essentiality, to this moment, in order to love you and me. Persons who are being Love, likewise, lovingly adapt, through the essentiality, which is Spirit. Indeed, they can do nothing other, for they are One with Spirit, and they have the Mind of Christ, or the Word. They are suppled by Grace. They are Lovers.
Therefore, Spirit, being Love, while not antithetical to tradition itself, whether the tradition of thousands of years or the tradition of the last moment, neither attaches to such and will gladly set aside whatever hinders discovering a way to Love everyone, and each one as he or she can receive that Love and share that Love with others.
To follow Spirit, then, means never to be attached either to heterodoxy or orthodoxy, tradition or novelty, sameness or change, religion or irreligion, …. To follow Spirit simply means, through whatever means available and helpful, to receive, be, and give Love. What helps in that mission helps. What does not help best needs set aside.
Scripture nowhere says, "Pursue tradition" or "Pursue custom." Wisely, Scripture informs us, "Pursue love...." (I Corinthians 14.1, AV)
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