Sacrificy Souls for Tradition First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 8/22/2010

Sacrificing Souls for Tradition
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 8/22/2010
Based on Isaiah 58: 9b-14; Luke 13:10-17

In the acclaimed Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the opening number is titled "Tradition". In the song, the main character, Tevye, explains the roles of each social class (fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters) in the village of Anatevka, and how the traditional roles of even the matchmaker and the rabbi contribute to the village. The song also sets the major theme of the show: the villagers trying to continue their traditions and keep their society running as the world around them changes. Wikipedia
This song speaks to the importance of how “Traditions” help stabilize and give a sense of continuity in a world that is ever changing. As each ethnic group has migrated to this country, they bring with them traditions that helps bring some familiarity of their former lives. Traditions are designed to teach the next generation values of their ancestors. For instance, many Germans, Swedes, and Italians, to name just a few, once arriving in this country set up churches that held services in their native languages. It had nothing to do with not wanting to become “fully” integrated with other Americans, but it had everything to do with being able to sustain a part of their past, to be able to pass on to their children a pride of who they were by showing where they had come from; of providing for just a few hours a sense of belonging without the need to work at converting a new language in your brain. It is like going back home to mom and dad after you have moved out and are on your own, a place where you bring your children and know that they will experience a part of the history that was learned while growing up.
As positive as “traditions” can be, they can also become restrictive to growth and a movement forward. I am beginning to find myself more and more reflecting back on what life was like in my childhood and find myself warmed by the reminiscing of days gone by. Yet if I try to conduct my life today in the same way as it was when I was five years old in 1958, I would not be able to function very well. It is a natural thing for us to think back about years gone by and say, “I wish we could go back to the way life was in so and so year or decade.” Yet would we really want to do that? Would we really want to go back to a day when female teachers were only able to teach if they were single, not being allowed to have a husband or a family? Would we really like to live in a society where women were not allowed even a simple credit card in their name? Would you really like living in an environment that oppressed you because of the color of your skin or the gender that you were born with, an oppression that dictated which neighborhoods you could live in or what position on the bus to sit down as you commute to work? Would you truly be happy living in a world where you are censured because of your parent’s behavior, such as being born out of wedlock?
The conflict that Jesus is involved in this morning’s Gospel reading comes with the leader of the synagogue, where Jesus was teaching, trying to chastise Jesus for breaking not just tradition, but the law that focuses on “not working on the Sabbath.” The leader tells everyone that there are six days in which to come to the synagogue to be healed and that the Sabbath was the day of rest, where no work was to be done.
This was based on the acts of God when God created the earth in six days and on the seventh day rested. Over time this traditional observance became a part of the Judaic law that is found within the Torah. The idea being that if God worked for a certain amount of time and then took some time off to admire and commune with the fruit of this work, then we as God’s created, should follow suit and take time in which to honor the one who created us, for it is only in the taking “time out”, do we have the opportunity to do reflection.
Isaiah wrote, “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD…”
So why would the leader of the synagogue become so upset with Jesus, for doing something good and kind during a time of worship? Why would he become so outraged that Jesus was breaking a “law”, that had come out of a tradition of focusing on God one day a week, and in what we would recognize as “a house of God?” It wasn’t because of what Jesus was doing, for the leader indicates that there were six other days of the week in which to do healing. It wasn’t the fact that Jesus was breaking the understanding of “no work” on the Sabbath, although that was the rule brought up as being broken. The true reason for the leader’s outrage comes from Jesus undermining the authority of the priests. It was a control issue that the synagogue of Jesus’ day used as a way to keep the general population under their influence.
Quoting from Feasting on the Word this thought written by Dr. Rodney S. Sadler, Jr,
Associate Professor of Bible Union Presbyterian Seminary at Charlotte, “The desire to control Sabbath observance is critical for maintaining another social order as well. The slavocracy of the American South was in part maintained by the restriction of “doing good” on the Sabbath. Reflecting on religious practices in the slaveholding South, Frederick Douglass notes: It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael’s unacquainted with the fact that instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.
While enslaved Africans desired to worship God and to educate themselves, literally to “do good,” they were prevented because their improvement represented a threat to the social system that circumscribed their lives. Although the plantation setting is clearly not a direct parallel to the situation Jesus faces, similar issues of power, control, and order are present in both cases. The control of Sabbath practice in both instances represents a convenient way of maintaining an oppressive system whereby some people are forced to endure perpetual suffering by others who are more concerned with sustaining a system that benefits them than alleviating the burdens of those it cripples.”
It was the church of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, especially in the American South, that supported slavery and it took the courage of some of the churches of the American North to challenge that belief which ultimately led to the great Civil War in order to end that particular system of oppression.
Note that the woman, who was crippled, did not approach Jesus to be healed; she simply had come to worship at the synagogue. It was Jesus who took the initiative and invited her to come to him. By her accepting that invitation of “welcome” she opened herself up to being healed of her affliction, which is stated to have been a result of Satan, so this was in truth dealing with a spiritual problem. She would have been considered as “unclean” and would never have been touched by any of the Priest’s for by traditional thought in touching her; they too then would become “unclean.” Jesus’ healing of this woman was in two steps, first he pronounced her healed, thereby allowing her access back into the community; then he actually touched her as a second step, which then included her physically back into the community.
The church today is so very much like the synagogues in Jesus’ day. Too often the church wants to fall back on laws, rules and traditions of the past, solely in order to keep the status quo. In the 1800’s it was used to maintain slavery for the purpose of providing wealth for a particular group of people at the cost of another group of people. We still deal with racial hate today because of a system that the church, in general, supported. Today many churches are using the same bible and the same arguments to try and oppress various people groups based on social economics, race, sexual orientation and mental illness, as a way of protecting what some perceive as only being appropriate for a select group and keeping out others from those same privileges and rights.
This past Tuesday, some of us took the opportunity to listen to Jen Smyers, of Church World Services speak about the brokenness of our Immigration laws. We had representatives attending from the Hispanic community and the Jewish community, which helped give another aspect to this topic. I’m sad to say that we only had one member and a former member from this congregation attend that discussion. During Lent this last Spring, the opportunity to educate ourselves on the building blocks that lead to social justice, as well as to social injustice were presented, but very few people took advantage of that opportunity. As a congregation, we voted to enter into discussions on the Open and Affirming process, so that as a congregation, we can educate ourselves as to where our strengths lie and our willingness to be an inviting people of God, and learn what areas we need to work on in order to become a more inviting and affirming congregation. Yet I observe very little interest in this topic based on previous attendance of those opportunities that have already been offered.
What is this saying about who we are? Are we satisfied with who we are as children of God and don’t feel a need to explore, or question, or work at expanding ourselves? Or are we like the religious leader that became upset at Jesus for “rocking the boat”, who are afraid of change or giving up preconceived beliefs that if challenged, would upset the way we conduct our lives? Are we sacrificing our own souls to maintain what we are familiar with, let alone sacrifice the souls of those who are not being allowed to be included into the family of God?
I am sure that most of you get tired of hearing about the sexually oriented minority topic, be it from the news, or from me in the pulpit. Some of you may even think that it is an “agenda” that I have and want to promote. The reason why I speak about this topic so often is because; I have been one of “those” people who have been victimized by the church, solely because of who I am. I have lived with good meaning Christians telling me that I am not loved by God. (I want to tell you that I have never experienced this from this congregation, for you have welcomed Paul and me with such love.) But I speak from a perspective of knowing extreme injustice and I understand its power to defeat and spiritually enslave a person. I can relate to racism, I can relate to the inequities of the immigrant, both documented and undocumented, I can relate to the struggle for equal rights for women, because I have to struggle for equal rights myself.
As I have studied history about this country, I see in more recent times that our social justice issues have their grass roots, not in the church, but in secular society. In fact, it is the church that in many cases vocalizes extreme opposition to social justice issues such as: the right of marriage, such as forty years ago speaking against inter-racial marriage and now between same sex marriage; of the demonizing of people who are not heterosexual in their orientation and how God hates them; through their interpretation of scripture of being masters over this planet allows for the raping of our environment instead of good stewardship of our natural resources) there by supporting social injustice. What is wrong with this picture? The church is supposed to be the leaders in teaching the world about God’s love and of God’s reconciling desire. This can only be done, my friends, when we do what Isaiah wrote about: to keep the Sabbath and not let our own way keep us from doing God’s will. We need to be like Jesus, pro-active in seeking out those who are on the outside and inviting them to join us. We need to take the time to grow through study and conversation, even when it is inconvenient to us, so that we will be open to seeing those who are being victimized by injustice, so that we are not scarifying souls for traditions that are not God’s bidding. Amen