Stand, Bend, Raise

Matthew 15:1-9
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2  “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7  You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8  “‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me;
9 in vain do they worship me,
    teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” 

Jesus was for tradition.  We occasionally hear the apostle Paul comment about tradition.  Tradition is never a byword in scripture.  Tradition has always been a major component in giving shape to personal and corporate faith.  

But, Jesus did take issue with traditionalism.  In the spirit of Old Testament prophets like Amos, Jeremiah and Isaiah, Jesus shined the light on a traditionalism that was constructed out of the building blocks of skewed ideas and comfort zones of the flesh from which a sign hung that read:  the will of the Lord. 

Have you ever asked yourself how traditionalism goes-to-seed in a person?  We don’t study ourselves into it.  We observe it first and then bring texts alongside our perspective and practice.  In short, we practice our way into interpretation.  When a particular practice is based on healthy interpretation then faith is allowed to flourish offering a genuine and beautiful presentation of the gospel. The counterpart is unhealthy but wrapped in language and a passion that passes itself off as “the way of the Lord.”    

I noticed an example of this at a singing recently.  The chorus of a particular song says, “And I stand, I stand in awe of you.”  When we got to the “stand” part…you guessed it…we stood.  I have been in many congregational, group and retreat settings in which people traditionally stand when we get to that part of the song.  Do we stand “in awe” at that point or do we stand because the song says “I stand”?  That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?  But, something happened later that sets this in bold relief.  We sang a song that had the words, “I bend my knees in praise…” and “I raise my hands to you”.  The second song called for bodily expression – just like standing in the song a few minutes earlier – but...we sat still.  There was no “bending of knees” and no “raising of hands.”  Our comfort zone (familiarity zone, conditioning, practice) has allowed for – even encouraged – standing as THE appropriate expression.  Bending and raising are just as plain linguistically, but our social norms have conditioned us to put a premium on standing.   Why do we defer to one action and exclude the others?  Plainly, we are more comfortable with the one action than we are with the other two.  I suppose at stake here is what we are actually doing in song.  Are we singing out of nostalgia and a herd mentality or have we truly chosen to give physical expression to what is in our hearts?  Bending and raising can be dismissed as strange and perhaps “showy.”  Of greater concern here is how traditionalism has affected how we think about what we are “actually” doing when we are singing.  And…that’s just one example. 

Jesus’ words stand before us as much more than a blistering declaration against the aberrations within Judaism of his day.  They speak to us about how we reflect on and express faith today.  They summon us outside of ourselves.  They ask us to step outside of our congregational atmospheres and to breath a different kind of air.  They beckon us to take a long hard look at how we think about faith and what really matters.  Have the minors become majors and the majors minors in our way of thinking?  Do we passionately defend things that in our estimation are “of God” while missing the things that are truly “of God?”  Do we lean conveniently into socially engineered phrases like “comfort zone” and “that offends me” so we can maintain the wall between ourselves and critical thought?  I’ve done it on occasion.  Why?  My reasons are the same as anybody’s:  Fear of change, arrogance, ignorance masquerading as knowledge, trusting an environment instead of thinking…for myself…for a change.  Other things could be listed.  What’s on your list?

The aforementioned is a major baseline on which any group of Christians thinks, lives and serves.  Christians have always struggled with sorting this out.  The spiritual optimist in me says that if we can allow ourselves a more acute awareness of this baseline we increase our ability to think about faith and live with each other in a maturity that lives in the spirit of the message Jesus delivered in Matthew 15.  What is most important here is that we do our best to “think critically” about what we are doing, defending, and championing.  We might ask ourselves:  1.)  Who is the Lord? and, 2.) How does this honor Him?  To do otherwise, Jesus says, is to follow roads of thought and practice that lead to forms of worship that come short of what God intends for us as persons and as communities of faith.  

Father, give us eyes to see who we are and what we do the way you want us to see it.  May we be more interested in the heart of our faith than its trimmings.  Help us to glean from your word the shape of life that honors you in all that we do and say.  Amen.

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas