Religious Tradition: Pure or Profane? | Ps Rob Buckingham

September 9, 2023

And I will make room for You
To do whatever You want to
To do whatever You want to

Shake up the ground of all my tradition
Break down the walls of all my religion
Your way is better
Your way is better

It’s a lovely song with great intent, “I will make room for You.”

I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t sing it. I simply want to make us aware that there is nothing inherently wrong with either religion or tradition. So, let’s investigate both of these things and their dangerous counterfeits.

Text: Mark 2:21-22

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” I’ll come back to those mini parables soon.

1. There’s nothing wrong with tradition.

“Shake up the ground of all my tradition.”

Traditions are the unchangeable aspects of our faith that give us deep roots.

Paul told the Thessalonian church to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions we passed on to you.” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

Traditions are customs handed over from one generation to the next.

Traditions can be good, but we can cling to traditions that become detrimental to our faith and to others. That’s what I believe the song “Make Room” is challenging. The Scriptures also confront this. The counterfeit of traditionalism.

Charles Swindoll defines traditionalism as “an attitude that resists change, adaptation, or alteration. It is being suspicious of the new, the up-to-date, and the different. It is substituting a legalistic system for the freedom and freshness of the Spirit.” (Living above the level of mediocrity, p. 163).

Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the world’s leading scholars in the history of Christianity, once wrote, “Tradition is the living faith of those now dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of those now living.”

Traditionalism is defined by three things:

1. Continuing something with which God has finished.

2. Forgetting why we do what we do.

3. Being resistant to change even in light of new information.

I.e., we’ve always done it this way, and we’re not going to change now!

That’s what we see reflected in Mark chapter 2, where Jesus confronts traditionalism head-on by telling the mini parables in our text. In this chapter, Mark reports three encounters Jesus had with the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees. At each meeting, they asked Jesus a question:

Encounter 1: The healing of the paralysed man.
“Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (They were resistant and lacking in curiosity).

Encounter 2: Matthew’s calling and party.
“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Encounter 3: A question about fasting.
(To Jesus): “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”

At which point Jesus tells them the parables:

Q. What does that mean?

Old garments had already shrunk from washing.

Old wineskins had stretched to capacity by fermenting wine.

And so, if old wineskins were filled with unfermented wine, the wineskins would be forced to expand further, but they’d already reached their capacity. They were brittle and unbending and could not contain the fermentation process of new wine. They would burst, and both the wine and the wineskin were ruined.

Remember, Jesus was speaking to the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees. These parables are about THEM.

They were like old garments that couldn’t be patched with new cloth. They were like old wineskins that couldn’t be filled with new wine.

Q. I wonder how they felt about that.
Q. How would we feel if Jesus said that to us?

Reflective questions:

• Am I resistant to change?
• Am I ever brittle or unbending?
• Do I consider myself to have “arrived” in my faith?
• Am I a lifelong learner?
• Do I approach my faith and the Scriptures with humility?

Jesus didn’t come to patch up the old. He came to initiate a New superior Covenant established on better promises (Hebrews 8:6).

Hebrews 8:13, By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.

Traditionalism will cling to the obsolete and outdated.

Q. Did these Pharisees learn the lesson? Probably not…

Look at the very next thing Mark tells us in Chapter 2:

One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” (Mark 2:23-24) ~ Were they hiding in the corn?

These guys were so bound by the past that they missed the Messiah. There’s nothing wrong with good traditions, but we need to be aware of the counterfeit of traditionalism. Likewise…

2. There’s nothing wrong with religion.

The New Testament uses the word “religion” seven times: Twice referring to a particular religion (Judaism), once in connection to angel worship, and four times to encourage us to express our faith in practical ways.

1 Timothy 5:4, But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

(8) Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (i.e., your religion is worthless).
Break down the walls of all my religion.

James 1:26-27, Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein [lit. a bridle] on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Keep a bridle on your tongue. (19) Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

Paul calls this counterfeit religion “worthless.” He contrasts this with religion, which is pure and faultless and has two characteristics:

to look after orphans and widows in their distress.
(In distress because they have no family to look after them).

Look after = to visit (Matthew 25:36) “I was in prison, and you came to visit me.” (Pure religion is about giving clothes to the naked, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, feeding the hungry and thirsty, offering hospitality to strangers).

Strangers = foreigners. People who are in a foreign land. Displaced, refugees, new arrivals, and in need of community.

People have said to me, “I just want to worship God and not be bothered by all this social welfare stuff.” Well, all this social welfare stuff deeply concerns Jesus. And, if we want our religion to be pure, it will deeply concern us too.

Pure religion is to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Meaning that we will keep ourselves morally unblemished, impeccable in our behaviour, and free from evil.

And so, back to the song:

Shake up the ground of all my tradition
Break down the walls of all my religion
Your way is better
Your way is better

Jesus’ way clings to the ancient traditions of our faith but resists traditionalism.

Jesus’ way expresses genuine religion through good words, good works, and good lives but resists a faith that lacks substance.

And so, whenever we sing this song, let’s make it a prayer asking God to rid our lives of empty and pointless practices and beliefs and to fill us with His Spirit so that we express a meaningful faith to each other and to the community around us.

For discussion and further study:

Discuss some of the traditions you enjoy and why. These may be faith traditions or customs of your family or ethnic background.
Discuss the quote from Charles Swindoll, who defines traditionalism as “an attitude that resists change, adaptation, or alteration. It is being suspicious of the new, the up-to-date, and the different. It is substituting a legalistic system for the freedom and freshness of the Spirit.” How does this apply to faith and church? What about current issues such as the Voice Referendum?
Read Mark chapter 2 and discuss the stories and encounters Jesus had with religious traditionalists. What can we learn from these accounts?
Read and discuss 1 Timothy 5:3-8 and James 1:26-27. What do these verses say about pure and impure religion? What can we learn and apply personally and corporately?
Pure religion is about giving clothes to the naked, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, feeding the hungry and thirsty, and offering hospitality to strangers (foreigners in need of community). How could you, as a connect group, express your faith in one of those ways?
(Visit the Bayside Community Care website for ideas).
In Hebrews chapter 8, the author writes about the superiority of Jesus’ New Covenant. Read, reflect on, and discuss this chapter. Also consider Jeremiah 31:31; Luke 22:20; 2 Cor. 3:6-8; Hebrews 9:15; 12:24).
Further study: Matthew 15:1-9; Colossians 2:8; Galatians 1:14.
Find a quiet place and prayerfully reflect on these questions: