Dear Christ's Followers,
This week I thought we would take a look at the question "What is tradition?". For many of us it is our traditions that make us who we are. In my family, we have the tradition that Christmas Eve is our major time of getting together. We couldn't imagine a year of doing anything different than this. Yet in other families their tradition is that Christmas Day is their time of gathering and they can't imagine doing something different than that.
In the church we have many perceived traditions. One of those is Sunday School. It has always been around hasn't it? The truth is that Sunday School only began around 1790 and before that there was no such thing. It started as a way to teach children to read and write. They were working long hours in those years and didn’t have the chance to learn these necessary skills. So, some concerned business people started Sunday School to teach the children the necessary skills of life which included Christian education.
Another perceived tradition we have in the United Methodist Church is using grape juice for communion. We often see this as a difference between us and our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. The reality is that previous to the General Conference of 1864, only wine was served for communion. It was starting in 1864 that grape juice was used. This is why our liturgy still refers to us blessing the wine and not blessing the juice. Although the preferred practice of the church was changed the liturgy was not.
Still yet another perceived tradition is the celebrating of Christmas on Christmas Eve. This is a relatively new custom in the last 100 years. Previous to that, the earliest a church service would have been on Christmas Eve was slightly before midnight. This would be called the midnight mass. It would be the first of three services. The next one would be in the morning of Christmas Day and the last would be a service on Christmas Day in the evening. This is what Christians did for centuries in celebrating the birth of our Lord. It has only been in our recent culture that we have had our worship services on Christmas Eve and not on Christmas Day.
These are just a few of the perceived traditions that we have as Christians and as United Methodists. They are our traditions because we have lived with them for a few generations and yet they are not the traditions of all of Christianity. There are times when we need to ask one another why do we do what we do? Is there a Biblical reason to keep doing something in a certain way or is there a need to return to more scriptural understanding?
There is a story of a young women who married into a family and at her first family meal they were cooking a ham. Her mother-in-law explained to her that they first needed to cut off both ends of the ham and then place it in the pot. The young women asked why this needed to be done since there was plenty of room in the pot for the entire ham. The mother-in-law explained she didn't know but it was what her mother had taught her. So the young women went into the living room to ask the grandmother. The grandmother explained that this was how they had always done it. The young women pressed her for a reason but she didn't know either and told her to go and ask her mother. So the young women went back into the bedroom and asked the great-grandmother. The great-grandmother smiled and said we had to do it that way because that old pot was just too small for the ham. You see at one point in time there was a need to cut the ends off the ham but that reason no longer existed. The grandmother and mother-in-law had taken it as a matter of tradition though and just kept doing what had always been done.
Why do we do the things we do? Are these things Biblical, God honoring, and sharing the good news of the Gospel? If they are, then we need to keep doing them because they are then the things that God has called us to do. If, however, these things are not Biblical, they do not honor God, and they do not share the Gospel, then we need to get rid of them. We have been called to be ambassadors for Christ. We have been called to follow him and share him. Make sure in all that you do, in your traditions, and your new activities, that you are doing exactly this.
Along the Journey,
Pastor Jude