Traditions

What are some of the traditions of your family? Take a minute to think back to your own childhood. What traditions did your family have when you were growing up? Were there traditions that you can look back on with joy and thanksgiving? Do you think of certain people when you recall these traditions? [Pause] How about now? What family traditions have those of you with younger children created? What about those of you who are grandparents? Do those of you with distant adult children or no children at all have meaningful traditions in your lives? Have your traditions changed over the years? Are there traditions you’ve happily abandoned? Are there traditions you vow you’ll never give up? All of us have traditions, whether we realize it or not, and, for most of us, even in this secular age, traditions still play important roles in our lives.

The role of tradition is a significant theme in our reading from the Gospel of Luke. Tradition was important for Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus, Simeon, and Anna. In our Gospel account, Luke tells us that, “when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses,” Jesus’ parents came with him to the temple in Jerusalem, from wherever they were staying in Bethlehem, to make a sacrifice and have the child blessed. Most scholars would question whether Luke got the traditions correct in this account, since it is likely that Luke was not a Jew, and since the quotations from Scripture don’t match up with what is in the Torah. That is probably less important than Luke’s intent here, which was to show that Jesus’ family lived and worshipped firmly within Jewish tradition, and that he and his parents observed all the demands of the law. Jesus, Luke reminds his readers, grew up and came out of that life of tradition. As such, in his life and ministry, though he was often at odds with the religious leadership, he was speaking as an insider to his own people, as one who understood all that God and the Law demanded of them.

Tradition also played an important role in the lives of Simeon and Anna. In Jesus’ time many thoughtful and pious Jews expected that God’s anointed one might come soon, especially to deliver them from the hated Romans. They knew the prophetic writings well. They trusted that God would fulfill God’s promises. As they waited for the anointed one, they remembered that during the time of Exile, Isaiah had promised that a voice crying in the wilderness would announce God’s coming. Did they remember that the prophet Malachi also wrote during a time of discouragement, after the return from exile? About 450 BC, Malachi had also called the people to prepare for a Day of the Lord. He suggested that a messenger – the prophet himself? Elijah? – would come before the Day, to announce its coming. Echoing the prophecy of Amos, he described the Lord’s coming as a time of purification and judgment and foretold that the day would come when all the arrogant and evildoers would be burnt to stubble, but “for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

Inspired by God’s word and spirit, perhaps Simeon and Anna came to see John the Baptizer, as we now see him, i.e., as God’s promised messenger who prepared for God’s coming by proclaiming a message of repentance and purification through water. As Simeon and Anna patiently waited, the Lord whom they sought did suddenly come to his temple, in the arms of his parents. By God’s grace, Simeon and Anna were able to recognize Jesus as the anointed one for whom they had spent their lives waiting. They were given the grace of a vision of the fulfillment of God’s promises. As they looked in the face of the holy child, their hearts overflowed and they broke out with songs of God’s praise.

But there is something more here. Both Simeon and Anna also saw, in a nascent sense, that this child would be different from what their traditions had led them to expect. In looking at the child, Simeon already saw the Cross. He foresaw that the child would provoke deep conflict, and that he would expose the true intentions of those around him, especially those among the religious and political leadership. He saw only too plainly that, because of Jesus, Mary would experience the deepest possible grief. Perhaps Anna could see even farther ahead, to the final fulfillment of God’s promises, as she praised God and spoke “about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

Tradition, of course, has also played a vital role in the history of the church. We Episcopalians say that our faith is like a three-legged stool. We depend on Scripture, tradition, and reason. Our founder grounded his message in the Hebrew Scriptures. Although our arrangement of them differs from that of modern Jews, we still need them to understand the workings of God. In the fourth century, we agreed on the writings that would specifically inform our lives as followers of Jesus, the writings that we now call the New Testament. Reason is our God-given capacity for making judgments and is essential to a mature faith and a mature church life.

In the twenty-first century, perhaps we wonder what the role of tradition in the church should be. Some of our traditions go back to the earliest centuries of the church. The ashes of repentance with which we mark each other on Ash Wednesday go back to the Hebrew Scriptures. The Solemn Collects that we recite on Good Friday are the oldest prayers of the church. Do you know why the priest receives the bread and wine first? It is not because the priest is the holiest person in the room or the most exalted. It comes from the days before vestments, when Christians were being persecuted. By receiving first, the leader identified himself or herself to any spies present. Do you know why we receive the consecrated host by cupping our hands? We recall how Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms, and so we do something of the same with the host. As you heard, a Candlemas procession was known in the fourth century. Frescoes and mosaics tell us that bishops and priests wore vestments very similar to what we wear now, from at least the fourth century. Elevating the Gospel book, using candles on the altar, creating icons and stained-glass windows, making the sign of the cross, using incense, bowing, and many other things that we now do are also practices with ancient roots. Indeed, we Episcopalians may actually have a fourth leg to our stool, the body.

The Reformation was a difficult period for the Church of England. For a time during and after the Reformation we lost some of our traditions and much of our rich liturgical life. Indeed, there is still a strain in Protestantism that believes in sola scriptura, “Scripture alone.” If you look at old pictures from the Church of England or colonial times in this country, you will see priests in plain black cassocks presiding at unadorned tables. Beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century Anglicans, including Episcopalians, came to see that we could reclaim our ancient traditions without losing our distinctive history, polity, and way of following Jesus. Vestments, the use of different liturgical colors, candles, ashes, foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, processions, incense, confession, and the Eucharist as the principle Sunday service all represent a reclaiming of the traditions that once nourished the entire church.

As a church, we have also had to abandon some traditions. In the late nineteenth century we understood the injustice of forcing black people to sit in the balcony. In 1976 the Episcopal Church finally came to realize that women should be ordained priest. In bringing forward the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Episcopal Church made the difficult decision to abandon the sixteenth-century language that so many had come to love. Many of our dioceses, including this one, have adopted a form for the blessing of same-gender unions. As we live into the twenty-first century, we are still wrestling with our traditions: which old ones to keep or reclaim, which old ones to let go of that no longer serve us, and which new ones to adopt that will reflect the new places to which we believe the Holy Spirit is leading us.

And we might ask the same questions of our own personal spiritual lives. What nourishes us spiritually? What helps us to see where Jesus might be leading us? Bishop Curry suggested that praying daily is a way of hearing Jesus’ call more clearly. Is that a tradition that you are willing to adopt? As a church we have a very rich heritage of spiritual life on which to draw. I am always willing to suggest or teach practices, many of which have very ancient roots, that may open your eyes afresh to God’s presence.

We are midway between Christmas and Ash Wednesday. Stop. Pause. What are your spiritual traditions? What might change?