There’s an irritating dichotomy that we all have to deal with, every day of our lives, whether we realize it or not.  I’ve been thinking about it lately in physical terms, because my family just bought a property that needs a lot of work.  My wife and I have made list upon list of changes to make, and at the time, each item seems minor—but then my obsessive attention to detail kicks in, and what seemed like a one-hour project turns into a full day or more.  So far, we’re always happy with the results, but we’re certainly not breaking any speed records.  I end up frustrated, because the big picture isn’t taking shape as quickly as I would like.  In truth, this is probably just a good exercise for me in developing better patience and efficiency, but it has brought into focus the choice that we all have to make many times each day: will I focus my efforts on the big picture, or the minute details?

Perhaps finding a good balance in our everyday lives will be beneficial, but as so often happens, the lessons that we learn in the physical world can help us see what’s happening behind it, in the spiritual realm.  In Matthew 23.23, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”  The problem is more than simple neglect of particular commandments.  In the first case, Jesus calls justice, mercy, and faithfulness “the weightier matters.”  In the second, the difference between the sizes of the unclean animals being (metaphorically) consumed is comically exaggerated to make the point—they’re focused on the small things, to the extent that they have completely missed the big picture.

That doesn’t mean they should’ve deliberately ignored the herbs and spices they grew when they counted out the tithe, or that they should’ve left the gnats in their drink—only that it was worse to fail in the grand scheme of things, than it would have been to have a handful of accidental oversights to their accounts.

Since the law of Moses is a bit foreign to us, perhaps it’s easier to use a more modern analogy, making use of the expression, “the big picture,” that I’ve already used three times above.  In the digital world, pictures are made up of vast numbers of tiny pixels, each of which is assigned a very specific color (one of 16 million even in the most common compressed format), and placed in a very specific location in relation to all the rest.  Even my phone has a 12-megapixel camera, which means any given picture I take has roughly 12 million little dots.  That’s 192 quadrillion values each pixel could be, and a practically infinite number of ways they could be arranged—and even that would present a compressed image, which is to say a slightly distorted approximation of what the sensor actually saw, which in turn was also a slightly distorted approximation of the reality in front of the camera.  The point is that obsessing over each infinitesimal pixel may mean you end up with a high degree of accuracy…but you’d never in your life be able to cover the entire picture that way.  You’d end up with a highly accurate little speck, while completely missing…the big picture.

Yet, at the same time, significant errors in even a small number of pixels stand out on the finished product, and our eyes can detect them, and focus in on them accompanied by silent judgment of whoever edited the photo.  This is only a rough analogy for the task facing us spiritually, but I think it frames the challenge pretty well.  God wants our lives to form a certain “picture”—essentially, we ought to look like Christ.  And throughout our lives, we expend untold effort over years or decades trying to get each little dot as perfect as we can; yet, we’re in danger of completely failing, if we spend all of our time on a handful of small points, while excluding the rest of the picture.

Put this way, it’s slightly terrifying to think how many different ways we could fail to live up to God’s expectations, and how few ways there are to present a complete picture to him that is close enough to his standard to be acceptable.  If we spend our entire lives perfecting and tweaking a particular practice or belief—be it an element of worship, a complex moral issue, an exegesis of a particular text, a fine point of theology, soteriology, christology, ecclesiology, epistemology, eschatology, or any other arcane -ology that strives to accurately describe and inform, but means almost nothing to our everyday lives—if we spend our entire lives on one or two of these, what good is it, if on the day of judgment the Lord tells us we’ve missed the big picture?

On the other hand, if we take the general approach and worry only about the major, life-shaping, and obvious, and reassure ourselves that the big picture is “close enough,” what good is it, if the Lord holds us responsible for relaxing one of the least of his commandments (Mt 5.19)?

Mercifully, God has given some pointers to keep us from despair.  Jesus tells us, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22.37-40), and “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 7.12).  Paul tells us, “the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Ro 13.9-10).  And yet both of these, and the the rest of the Apostles and New Testament authors, also give us ample commentary on a large number of the minor points, too.  The big picture ought to be our smell-test, a gauge we consult carefully and frequently, but that helps us to identify which parts of the picture need our attention, using simple questions, easily answered most of the time: does this behavior or belief reflect love?  Does it look like Christ?

We have to live from day to day among the small decisions, the infinitesimal little dots that make up the big picture, and we ought to be careful to conform each of them to God’s standard to the best of our ability.  Then, we need to reassess the big picture, and move on to the next area that requires our focus.  We won’t ever really finish the task in this life, but that’s ok.  The process, as much as the product, is the point.

There’s another expression in English, “to miss the forest for the trees,” that conveys the same problem we’ve been discussing.  Perhaps it’s even a better representation, because the forest is so much more complex than the sum of its trees.  Ideally, the countless small factors of a dozen different systems add up to a beautiful forest, but just a few of them being improper or less than ideal can leave the forest ratty and troubled.  It’s a mistake to ignore the trees, or the water, or the wildlife, or soil, air, drainage, etc. in favor of the overall image of the forest as a whole; but it’s a tragedy to focus on making one tree what it ought to be, while the whole forest is in flames.  In our spiritual lives, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ep 6.12).  This is the biggest picture there is.  Let’s do our best to play our parts, to faithfully execute God’s instructions without omission or oversight, “so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming” (1Jn 2.28).

Jeremy Nettles

We’ve all heard or read stories of Christians being exiled, beheaded, crucified, fed to lions, or burned alive as punishment for their faith in the first few centuries of the church’s existence, but in this day and age we don’t see such extreme examples of persecution on a regular basis.  Most of what we see is financial, social, or psychological, and while it would be irresponsible to equate such minor impediments with the horrific acts perpetrated when the church was young, we also shouldn’t ignore the impact or depth of the toned-down version we see today.

Amid the pandemic that has hijacked our lives, there has been a widespread movement to help.  Misguided though much of it is, the generally quasi-Biblical values held by much of the population of the United States, and the broader Judeo-Christian tradition undergirding western civilization, have taught our society that it is good to help others without recompense.  Leaving aside Jesus’ note that “they have received their reward” when they do these sorts of good deeds “that they may be praised by others” (Mt 6.2), we may still generally approve of the results, when the needy have their suffering alleviated, and the wealthy deliberately and willingly relinquish some of the material blessings God has given them. 

Charitable deeds

Thus, for example, I’ve recently heard of a charity campaign in which hundreds of thousands of dollars were donated to help provide food—as well as ways to store and prepare it!—in impoverished neighborhoods in Detroit where the norm for many people was a daily trip to the grocery store for that day’s food, exacerbating the risk of the virus spreading.  I’ve also heard of a member of the Jewish community in the D.C. area who realized that a) front-line medical workers who keep kosher often had no food options readily available during their busy shifts, and b) the already struggling kosher restaurants in the area would likely all go under due to the lockdown conditions, and so she organized a campaign to collect donations and order food from the local kosher restaurants, to be delivered to the hospitals employing kosher-keeping workers, helping both sets of people.  And, of course, I suspect everyone has heard of the grassroots efforts being made to manufacture masks, face shields, respirators, ventilators, etc. in an effort to fill the gap in the supply chain so that everyone who needs them, has them.  This is all great to see.  It’s minor in comparison to the spiritual needs, many of which are going unfulfilled, but it’s also evidence of people making a concerted effort to do good, and we should applaud that.

Punishable deeds

However, it should not be a surprise that some of these stories haven’t ended so cheerily.  There’s an explicitly Christian organization called Samaritan’s Purse (a nod to Luke 10.35), which set up a field hospital in New York City’s Central Park—ground zero for the pandemic in this country—in order to provide, for free, medical care for virus patients.  They treated hundreds of patients.

Now, at this point it is incumbent upon me to mention that I have serious reservations about the way in which this group is organized, and how they go about doing this work.  I don’t know for a fact, since like most of you I have more pressing matters on my plate, but I suspect the funding is coming primarily from churches, that it blurs the lines established by the New Testament if not erases them completely, and that as a whole it is misrepresenting the role God intends for his Church to play in the world, in a way for which God will one day hold them accountable.  However, while I’m sure there was plenty of room for improvement in the way this organization went about doing this work, we shouldn’t condemn the spirit in which it was done, which by all appearances was a desire to “do good to everyone” (Ga 6.10).

Not everyone is so disposed, though.  A member of the city council, the mayor, several members of the United States Congress, and others vilified these people who put their own health and lives on the line in order to do a good deed, eventually prompting the hospital partnered with them to cut ties, and pushing the organization out of NYC ahead of schedule, no longer accepting their help.  Why?  Because they believe in the Bible.

Chiefly, this comes from a strange cognitive dissonance that holds that Christians are evil if they believe what the Bible says about homosexuality—that it should not be practiced (1Co 6.9-10, 1Ti 1.8-11, and Ro 1.26-27, for example)—while it seems to be just fine in the books of these same critics that homosexual behavior commonly receives the death penalty in most Islamic countries, for instance.  There’s no evidence that this organization did anything to harm anyone, or to withhold care from anyone on the basis of sexual orientation; yet they’re being called evil, not because of what they do, but because of what they believe.  Good is being called evil, and evil is being called good, and not even based on a consistent standard, since the reaction depends on who holds the belief.  It is difficult to paint this as anything but a deliberate attempt to persecute Christians for being Christians.

This was, of course, expected.  Jesus said in Matthew 5.11, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”  This acknowledgment that the social and psychological persecution is real and meaningful, coming from Jesus himself, should keep us from downplaying the instances we see in the world around us.  On an individual level, of course it’s better to be insulted and hit with false accusations, than to be murdered; however, on a societal level, this notion that it’s ok to write off, mock, smear, and otherwise damage the reputation and standing of God’s people, is perhaps worse than simply killing them, because it’s more dangerous to the message Christ wants to be spread throughout the world.  Christianity thrived amid deadly persecution in the first few centuries, but today it is a struggle to maintain, let along grow, in part due to this dismissive attitude toward Christians, replacing God’s will and orthodoxy with a humanist orthodoxy that says Christians really should know better than to be involved with such antiquated notions of right, wrong, and salvation.

Jesus calls us “blessed,” when we incur this kind of treatment, but we’re also given some instructions on how to behave when faced with such persecution, in 1 Peter.  Peter echoes what Jesus said, “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1Pe 4.14), but he also says, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (2.12), and that we should strive to maintain “a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil” (3.16-17).  Sure, we could vociferously denounce the denouncers, and defend ourselves loudly, but it’s more effective to simply behave in an unimpeachable way, so that any reasonable person, on seeing against what kind of people such accusations are being made, will see the truth, and glorify God.  

It’s a sad predicament, when public officials state that they’d rather their constituents die, than receive help from Christians, but while it’s a strong indictment of society, it only serves to bring glory to God, and for that we should rejoice.

Jeremy Nettles

In writing these articles each week, as well as writing sermons and other programming, the hardest part for me is always selecting a topic.  It’s not for any shortage of material, but because there’s so much to cover, and so choosing one tiny aspect of God’s will and our efforts to please him is a daunting task, each and every time the decision must be made.

On those occasions when nothing in particular jumps out at me as uniquely pertinent and urgent, I find myself looking over what has been covered lately, and asking the question, “what is missing?”  Phrased another way, it sounds like a question someone once asked Jesus: “what do I still lack?”

When Jesus was posed this question, it was a by a rich young man who led not with this open invitation to hit him where he was most vulnerable, but with a more detached, “what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Mt 19.16)  Jesus passes by the man’s profound misunderstanding of the kind of covenant he is inaugurating, and instead addresses the question from an Old Testament perspective, telling him to keep the commandments, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (vv18-19).

Now comes the question that got our attention in the first place—he responds in v20: “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?”  This question is frustrating as we attempt to follow the story and, in a sense, attempt to experience this interaction ourselves through our reading of it.  The words alone do not tell us the man’s thoughts, and his thoughts are what would seem to hold the greatest insight for us.  But we’re left with ambiguity—is the man sincere?  Much has been made of Mark’s note, that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (Mk 10.21), but that doesn’t mean he’s sincere.  After all, Jesus loved a bunch of horrible sinners enough to die for us (Ro 5.8), so there’s not an easy answer to the question.  Is he asking in good faith?  If so, that would leave us with one lesson to take from this interaction, and especially Jesus’ response to the man.  But if he’s insincere, it would be a different lesson, although the two would have much in common.  As so often happens in the Bible, the ambiguity is deliberate—God uses the record of this one interaction to speak to people coming from different directions, and to thereby focus the lessons they need to learn better.

Perhaps the man is just fishing for a compliment—he’s kept these commandments, or so he thinks, and so he hopes this famous Rabbi will give him a pat on the back and validate his membership card for the holier-than-thou club.  He expects Jesus to respond by saying something like, “you lack nothing; well done.”  That, I’m sure makes it quite an unpleasant surprise when Jesus smacks down his ego by poking exactly at his most vulnerable spot—his love of wealth.  It teaches us not only a lesson about greed, but also about about arrogance, about self-righteousness, and about the massive shortcomings hidden by those who appear outwardly to be perfect specimens of piety.  All the details about him running to meet Jesus, kneeling before him (again, Mark supplies these), addressing him tones of great respect, and even the questions he asks, are now tainted by the man’s selfish hypocrisy, and we’re left passing judgment on the man before we even realize it.

But while that lesson would be valid, it’s not necessarily the case for this man.  Perhaps he really is sincere.  Perhaps his display of humility before Jesus is just that; perhaps he really regards him as the Good Teacher; perhaps he really has kept the Law of Moses without any obvious failures.  In that case, when he asks the question we’ve been considering, it’s suddenly very meaningful that he hasn’t asked, “do I still lack anything,” but “what do I still lack?”  He takes for granted that he does fall short, even though he’s not sure why.  This innate conviction of his own shortcoming now speaks well of him—as if he’s actually a great guy, but hasn’t gotten a big head, and never looks down on others, because he’s too busy trying his best to be what God wants him to be.  Now, the end of the interaction becomes all the more poignant: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (Mt 19.21-22).  He was convinced he wasn’t good enough; and he was right.

Of course, in both cases the greater lesson is that we must be willing to give everything for Christ, and when push comes to shove, must follow through on that willingness and truly devote our lives to following Christ, rather than pleasing ourselves; but because of the way this story is related, there’s much more depth, and a more personal, exposing, motivating punchline, since it applies to all of us, no matter how different we are from one another.

In the end, it may seem better for the man not to ask the question—since he has, in the one scenario he’s an arrogant blowhard, in the other a self-flagellating no account—but I don’t think the exchange is intended to teach us that.  Rather, its very ambiguity prompts us to realize that we’re all asking that question, constantly, whether sincerely or not; and while it’s better to be the honest and humble one, the truth is that, regardless of whether we ask out of pride or humility, the answer to the question “what do I still lack?” Is always the same: plenty.

Jesus gave an answer to the rich young man; have you done what he said?  Have you given your all to the pursuit of discipleship?  I’m sure that even Peter, John, James, and Paul were looking at themselves regularly, routinely finding something more they could’ve given.  In fact, Paul tells us as much in Philippians 3.12-14:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

This is not a part-time job, or a passing phase.  It’s about our entire lives, and whether we truly surrender everything to Christ and his will.  That doesn’t mean we should leave the world—the world is where Jesus wants his work to be done!  But it does mean that we should be sojourners here, making it the goal of our every thought, action, and moment to get home to him.

Jeremy Nettles

A careful reading of all four Gospels reveals that a period of at least weeks separated Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness of Judea, from his preaching to great crowds in Galilee.  In between, he acquired his first several disciples, traveled back home to Nazareth, attended a wedding, moved with his family to Capernaum, attended the Passover festivities in Jerusalem, performed miracles, taught and baptized around the Judean countryside, preached the Gospel to Samaritans, and learned that John the Baptist had been thrown in prison (not all in that order).

Yet, Matthew’s Gospel mentions a couple of those events in passing and blitzes right past most of it, going from Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness to the Sermon on the Mount, with only a few verses in between.  He has a purpose for doing this, and it’s obvious that he wants to portray Jesus as coming out of his corner swinging, given that chapters 5-7 comprise the longest continuous sermon of Jesus that is recorded for us.  He wants to highlight that, from the beginning, Jesus knew what he was talking about, that there was no awkward, beginning phase full of errors and missteps—he was competent, coherent, and effective from the very start.

The point is well made, and Matthew’s extensive coverage of this particular sermon has led most of us to focus intently on this version of the sermon, nearly to the exclusion of the very similar one found in Luke 6.20-49, which may or may not be a shortened version of the same exact occasion.  That’s fine, especially since the contents of Luke’s version can almost universally be found either in Matthew’s version, or elsewhere in Jesus’ teachings throughout the Gospels.  Almost.

The major difference occurs in the intro, which is made up of a series of statements called The Beatitudes (because Latin).  While Matthew’s version focuses on spiritual things (par for the course with Jesus), Luke’s is decidedly more…fleshy.  Where Matthew says “poor in spirit” (Mt 5.3, my italics), Luke just has “poor” (Lk 6.20).  Where Matthew says “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Mt 5.6, my italics), Luke says “Blessed are you who are hungry now” (Lk 6.21).  The difference isn’t as pronounced in the rest, but these two already show a pretty significant shift.

It’s natural that most of us have only paid significant attention to Matthew’s version—the spiritual, we are told throughout the New Testament, is more important than the physical.  The spiritual realm is where all the really significant stuff takes place, and even in the earthly rendition we read in Luke 6, Jesus has the spiritual in the background, slightly out of focus.  In addition to this, most of us have never tasted poverty and hunger of the level that was normal to most of Jesus’ audience.  Even when we’re pretty poor, in this day and age, and especially in this country, we are rich beyond the wildest imaginations of a rural day-laborer in Galilee in the 1^st century.  We take for granted luxuries that would have been mind-boggling to them—indoor plumbing, air conditioning, copious artificial light after sunset, cheap clothing and shoes, telecommunications, vast quantities of information at our back and call, a selection of affordable foods from all over the world that would’ve been impossible, and impossibly expensive, just a couple centuries ago, all ready to be kept in a magic box that keeps them frozen until we stick them in another magic box that warms them up just unevenly enough for us to complain that we might as well be living in the dark ages…the list goes on; we’re rather pampered.  I suppose it’s a little embarrassing, to me at least, when I read the simple, pared down, earth-focused beatitudes of Luke 6, because although at numerous points in my life I’ve been quite poor, at least in comparison to the people around me, even during those times I fit better in the next section:

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” (Lk 6.24-26)

This is a brutal reminder of the transience of earthly wealth and prosperity, and perhaps we’re getting the first taste of that reality, right now.

Woes

The economic news keeps getting worse and worse.  As I write this, the unemployment rate, so recently a stunningly good 3.5%, has crossed the threshold of 20%, which is the highest rate since the depths of the Great Depression.  In a word, this is no good.  Since my family has moved three times in the past seven months, and we’ve traveled all over the country, and I’ve changed jobs twice, my wife and I have adopted a saying, “every day is an eternity, but the weeks fly by” since we’ve lived in a constant state of flux for so long.  However, since the pandemic response has come into force around here, that’s been reversed, at least from my perspective: the days fly by, but every week is an eternity.  So little time has really passed, but we’re cooped up at home, we don’t get to spend time with many of the people we love, and it seems as if our whole lives must, for a time, revolve around the coronavirus.  We’re still, in some regard, in the early stages, and although I hope the easing of restrictions and the alleviation of threats will not only come soon but also usher in a period of great resurgence and growth in this country, we ought to consider the possibility that it’s not going to get better.

No one but God knows how this will play out.  Thought I hope not, it’s possible that we’re a the beginning of a second Great Depression; about to become truly poor, hungry, and saddened, as the new normal.  Take some time, then, to consider Jesus’ words all together:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” (Lk 6.20-26)

No matter what happens, no earthly disaster can compare with the heavenly gifts Christ has given.  However bad things get in this life, remember that the kingdom of God is open to you.  No matter how hungry or thirsty you may become, remember that Jesus is true food and drink.  No matter how saddened you are by the suffering and death around you, remember that through Christ you can be reconciled to your loved ones to live with him forever, where there is no more pain or sorrow.  No matter how much the world may vilify you as a Christian and blame you for the evil in this age, remember that Jesus’ approval means more than the whole world’s hate.

Perhaps, even if the tragedies keep compounding, bringing an economic collapse on top of a public health collapse, spiraling ever downward until the deaths from privation far outstrip the toll from the virus itself…spectacularly unlikely as that scenario may be, perhaps the silver lining for all of us would be learning to depend more heavily on our Savior, coming to more fully understand through grim experience why he calls the poor, hungry, weeping, and hated, “blessed.”

Jeremy Nettles

I once attended a small town, rural, high school production of Fiddler on the Roof, an experience I fully expected from the start I’d regret later.  I do not like musicals, partly because of the wishy-washy, sometimes dramatic, sometimes operatic nature of the thing, and partly because the music is often irritatingly catchy, yet void of any depth or value.  Of course, when put on by a high school the point really has less to do with the artistic production, and more to do with kids going out on a limb, and parents being proud of them for it; but nevertheless I had every expectation I would happily forget the entire experience immediately.

For the most part, that’s what happened, but one of these kids, while not musically or dramatically gifted, had a startling level of confidence and charisma that made it obvious why he’d landed the lead role, a Russian Jew at the turn of the 20^th century named Tevye, around whom the plot revolves.  This kid surprised me, and so his first big song, “Tradition,” stuck with me.  From what I gather (mercifully, that day was the only time I’ve ever seen Fiddler on the Roof), the story involves Tevye doing his best to live by the traditions passed down by previous generations, during a tumultuous period of radical—often violent—social and cultural change; and this song, extolling the virtues of tradition, sets the stage for the struggle that follows.

Back in the real world, this same struggle is often seen, almost always between the older generation and the younger, in which the elders appeal to their own authority as elders to bring the whippersnappers in line, and the kids scoff at the old timers and their outdated ideas, resisting their guidance.  There’s usually fault on both sides, and there’s also value on both sides.

Tradition, or Commandment?

Jesus himself had to deal with this conflict during his time on earth.  One of my favorite examples of this is found in chapter 7 of Mark’s Gospel.  Here, the Pharisees and scribes notice a breach of etiquette among Christ’s disciples, and without a shred of self-awareness, ask him in v5, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Mark has already primed us to see the problem in their notion of authority, pointing out rather deliberately that this group included scribes (v1), i.e. experts in the Law of Moses, and twice calling their scruples tradition, while attempting to demonstrate how ridiculous these traditions had become, before the scribes and Pharisees themselves appeal to “the tradition of the elders.”

But on the other hand, it would be difficult to argue that washing before eating is a bad thing; nor should they have ignored everything their elders told them—the Bible itself teaches the younger to treat those who are older with deference and respect, for example in 1Pe 5.5 and 1Ti 5.1.  We can see the wisdom in this when we examine our own traditions—we have many of them passed down to us from previous generations, and by and large, while they are not commandments of God, they are wise conclusions, sage advice, and good practices to safeguard against many different threats.  

Yet, the circumstances do not always lend themselves to the keeping of even wise traditions.  Jesus defended his disciples on this account a handful of times, and his approach reflects even greater wisdom than the traditions of the elders—he doesn’t catalog extenuating circumstances, appeal to a vague smell-test, or get bogged down in the fine details of when a person’s responsibility is to keep the tradition or not.  Instead, he simply calls out the accusers’ hypocrisy, and highlights the difference between tradition and commandment—a comparison which does not reflect well on the self-important authoritarians.

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

        And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mk 7.6-13)

Today, we might call this deflecting, or even “what-about-ism,” but he makes a good point!  It’s not just that these scribes and Pharisees don’t abide by their own standard, it’s that they have the wrong standard!  Jesus’ reply carefully avoids saying, “your traditions don’t matter,” because that’s not really the case; it’s just that they are traditions, and traditions, however good, ought not to be considered binding; the Word of God, however, ought not to be ignored!

Today

This is an important lesson for all of us to understand and implement: live by what God says, and then pay attention to the collective, inherited wisdom, too—but remember that only one of these is authoritative.  It was important when Jesus walked the earth in the flesh, it was important a year ago, and it’ll be important next year and forever, until the Lord returns.  But we are in a position of having to deal with a major upheaval of our traditions, right now, and we’d do well to heed Jesus’ words in all of our decision-making.

With this unprecedented pandemic response, we all are stuck with some counterintuitive wisdom, like “don’t go to work,” “don’t have in-person interactions if at all possible,” and “don’t go to church.”  Understandably, many people are chafing under these new norms—we all should!  We’re left, seemingly, trying to juggle the commandment to love the Lord, and the commandment to love our neighbors, when they may appear to be irreconcilable.  Of course, this is not the first time Christians have faced such a quandary.  The New Testament is filled with examples of such, we just usually don’t think about them in those terms.  Acts 6, 10, and 15 all record instances where Christians—Apostles, no less!—struggled to one degree or another with this balance, and it’s not until a solution is found, in each case, that it becomes clear, there really is no conflict between the two commandments, after all.

As we all wrestle through this frustrating and seemingly unending attempt to preserve lives and avoid enabling or contributing to our neighbors’ suffering, let’s keep in mind that stopgaps, substitutes, and solutions to the current problem can, and must, be found without rejecting God’s commandments.  They won’t often adhere to “the tradition of the elders,” though.  That’s ok, considering the circumstances; but we should all look forward to a time when we can again make use of the wisdom passed down to us from previous generations.  “Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set” (Pr 22.28).

Jeremy Nettles