The story is told of a woman and her young daughter
who were getting ready to put a whole ham in the oven. When she put the ham in
the roasting pan, she got out a meat saw and carefully cut off exactly one
hand’s distance of the shank of the ham. The daughter asked why her mother did
that. “Just because,” she answered. She thought for a minute and said, “I don’t
know. It’s what I always saw my mother do. Let’s call her and find out!” So
they called Grandma and asked why she always cut the ham shank off. She thought
for a minute and said she didn’t know, it’s what she always saw her mother do.
So she called Greatgrandma, explained why she was calling, and expecting some
great culinary secret to be revealed, asked, “Why did you cut the shank of the
ham off?” Greatgrandma thought for a minute and laughed. “Because Daddy always
brought home the biggest ham he could find and if I left the whole shank on, it
wouldn’t fit in our oven!” Three generations of ham bakers were following an
unnecessary tradition “just because.”
The word “tradition” means something handed on from
one person or generation to the next. Traditions connect us to the past, bringing
the past into the present. The Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton called
tradition the “democracy of the dead.” If all we do is focus on the present
moment and have no regard for the past, we are ignoring our fathers and
mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers, and all those who came before us. A
people’s culture is preserved by its traditions, and in keeping the traditions,
your past becomes your present.
Religion uses tradition. All religions have their
traditions – their rites, ceremonies, practices, holy days, feasts, fasts, etc.
– and Christianity is no exception. Even the simply act of reading lessons from
the Scriptures and preaching on them is a tradition that reaches back to the
synagogues.
But when tradition takes over and becomes the sum
and substance of religion, things get mixed up. That’s what happened with the
Pharisees of Jesus’ day. They were steeped in tradition – 613 rules that were
created, called the Mitzwov, to do and not do in order to do the righteousness
of God. Washing hands and feet and dishes and cushions, not just for personal
hygiene but for ceremonial purity. And like all religious types, they took note
who followed the traditions and who didn’t. And they didn’t hesitate to point
it out to you too, when you weren’t keeping the traditions. They pointed it out
to Jesus when His disciples dared to eat with ceremonially unclean hands. And
they expected Jesus’ approval. He’s a rabbi. He needs to get his disciples in
line.
But Jesus turns the tables on them and quotes a bit
of Isaiah in their direction: This people honor me with their lips, but their
heart is far from. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the
commandments of men.”
When tradition takes over, when it becomes the thing
itself, the main thing gets lost. Or as Jesus said, “You leave the commandment
of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
Here’s a tradition for you. The commandment of God
says, “Honor your father and mother,” which also includes taking care of them
when they’re old and providing for them. But the tradition of the pharisees
said that if you declared a portion of your wealth to be “Korban,” which was
like sacrificing it in advance, then you didn’t have to use it to help your
parents. And God was supposed to be tickled about this, because the sacrifices
were for Him in the end, so how could He possibly not like that?
What’s the problem here? It's to think
that God needs our sacrifices. That’s pagan. The pagans thought that the gods
needed to be fed and liquored and kept happy. It doesn’t work that way with
God. He doesn’t need or want anything from us but faith. You've heard this over and over in our readings from Mark and John the past few months. That’s all He wants.
Faith. Trust in His Word and promises. “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” He says
it over and over again in the OT. Jesus repeated it to these same pharisees. I
desire mercy not sacrifice. Mercy directed to the neighbor in need. Mercy to
mother and father. Mercy to the broken stranger in the ditch. Mercy to the
least and lost and lowly. Mercy to sinners, forgiveness to those who have
wronged you, mercy even to those who hate you and revile you and persecute you.
See, it’s not so easy now, is it? Lip service to
God. That part’s easy. Just say the right words in God’s direction or do the
right things so he sees. We made 38 out of 52 Sundays plus a couple of the
midweek services – that ought to be worth something. At the end of the year, if
you’ve used all of your offering envelopes, do you feel like you’ve done your
part? Or if we had our sons and daughters baptized, then we take our kids to
Sunday school and confirmation class, then we’ve done our Christian duty and we
can drop off the church radar screen after that. Or maybe it’s providing
sandwiches for five church activities, serving on four nominating committees, being
three times on council, attending two Bible study groups, and having one
personalized Bible cover.
Before you think, “now, he’s just being ridiculous,”
that’s exactly the point I am making: when tradition takes over, we become
preoccupied with what we are doing for God rather than what God has done and is
doing for us. But mercy to those God whom has put around you, not so easy.
“This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” Faith
toward God, fervent love for one another. That’s what He desires. Faith-full
hearts from which flow mercy and love toward others.
The pharisees missed it. With all their religious
rules and regulations, with all their ritual washings, with all their
traditions, they missed the one needful thing. They missed Jesus. They missed
the mercy of God that was theirs in Jesus. They missed the cleansing that all
their washings could not work. They missed the most wonderful thing God has
ever done, and will ever do, for the world – the sending of His beloved Son in
the flesh to be our savior. They were like noisy patrons at a movie theater, so
busy talking to each other, they missed the best part of the movie. The
pharisees were so busy with their traditions, with their religious dos and
don’ts, they missed the great good news that Christ came to save sinners not
saints. That He came to redeem sinners not the redeemable. That He came to
raise the dead not the living.
They missed it. And lest we look down our long,
Lutheran noses at them, realize that we would have missed it too. We are ever
in the same danger. We focus on our hands rather than the hands of God. We
focus on our doing rather than God’s doing. We focus on what we think God wants
from us rather than what God says He wants from us – mercy not sacrifice. The
only sacrifice that matter to Him is the One that Jesus offered in obedience to
His Father. The only offering that can be held before God is the offering of
Jesus’ life for your life. Prayer, praise, thanksgiving, worship? Sure, God
delights to hear from us as any loving Father delights to hear from His
children. But we don’t do these things to be pleasing to God; we do them
because in Christ we are pleasing to Him.
Luther once said famously, “Sin boldly and trust
Christ even more boldly,” and you can see how that can be used in all sorts of
wrong ways. But Luther said it to someone who was constantly and obsessively
worried over his sin, like someone whose hands could not be clean enough and
kept scrubbing them until the skin started to crack.
Heard rightly, it’s a statement of freedom and life
and salvation. It’s Jesus saying to each of you today, never mind how soiled
and messed up your life may be. You know how bad it is, and I know it even
better than you do. And there’s no amount of tradition keeping, much less
commandment keeping, that is going to make you pure enough to sit at my table.
There is nothing you can offer God that is going to make it right again. But
come anyway and trust me when I say you are welcome. Never mind all the ways
religion tries to lay some sacrificial burden on you, come to me all who are
weary and burdened, and I will welcome you, and feed you, cleanse you, forgive
you and save you. The pharisees will cluck their tongues and wag their accusing
fingers at you, but you come to me. And I will give you rest.”
In the name of Jesus,
Amen
Amen
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