Without Knowing Your Tradition, It's Hard to Know Who You Are
by Rev. Dave Roberts.+
Many times throughout the Old
Testament, the Jews are reminded to
keep their traditions alive and to pass
them on to their children. It is part of
their identity and, as long as it doesn’t
violate the Word of God or diminish it
in any way, they are encouraged to continue
in them for future generations.
Jesus did warn the Pharisees in Mark
7:13 that they had made the Word of
God of no effect because of the traditions
they had passed on to those who
had been looking to them as religious
leaders. But note that He was talking
about the traditions they had passed on,
not the ones that are good traditions.
And there are good traditions.
One of the things that I notice the
younger generation doing a lot is discarding
the old to make way for something
new, whatever it may be. There is
something called “The Emergent
Church” which, from what I can tell, is
a revival of the old liberalism/modernism
of the last century. Some who
follow it try to return to some old mystical
liturgies and whatnot but are still
chucking the evangelical traditions of
their parents to make way for something
that is “a brand new tradition.”
That’s kind of an oxymoron, though,
because a tradition is something that
takes time to develop, especially if it is
to be established and to endure for years
to come.
I would like to suggest a couple of traditions
I’d like to see restored that have
somehow faded to the point of where,
when I try to demonstrate them to even
our own home fellowship here, they are
foreign entities to those under fifty.
One is hymns. While the age-spread
here at Church of the Risen Christ is
between 19 and 67 (no names,
thanks!), no one under 40 seems to
know what hymns are. In Colossians
3:16, St. Paul encourages us to make use
of “psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs,” but most of the younger generation
wouldn’t know much beyond
psalms, only because there’s a book of
the Bible with that name, and some
might think that “spiritual songs” are
the spirituals that African Americans
used to use in the days of slavery.
I guess I decided to have us return to
using hymnals because I realized that
part of the legacy I needed to pass on to
the next generation coming up is the
tradition that we once knew. My cousin
Ellie, in Colorado (but formerly from
New Yawk), is still trying to find a
church in the evangelical mecca of
Colorado Springs where they use
hymns. She told me not long ago that
when she walks into a new church and
sees drums, guitars and the like, she
wants to leave. She was raised in the
Evangelical Free Church in the 1950s
and hymns were the norm. I remember
them too from the time I became a
Christian in the Baptist church nearly
five decades ago.
When I mentioned my desire to see our
church start using hymnals to our
weekly ministers’ group, Pastor Cecil
Meadows told me I didn’t need to buy
them because they had 16 of them sitting
in storage that they’d be glad to
give us if they knew we’d use them. He
did and we did. And we still do use
them. We don’t use them exclusively
but at least my folks’ repertoire of
hymns is taking form now and one gal
told me that one song we did stayed
with her all week.
The theology is what I guess I’m looking
for in our worship music, as well as
worship and praise. But it’s hard to worship
God with hypnotic, repetitive choruses
that don’t say anything of substance.
In fact, one song I heard in a
church in the Midwest repeated “You
are beautiful” so many times with no
qualification of who “You” was, that
any Baha’i or Hindu could have sung it
as well. Another church farther east I
visited was playing a repetitive chorus
when I walked in and was (I timed it,
seriously!) still singing it 35 minutes
later! While those folks were pleasant
and joyful, they didn’t know basic theology
and I doubt could have defended
the Faith in the face of a heretical belief
if it came into their church. Sad.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying
that we should just use hymnals and
just be able to offer a Christian apologetic
on call. No. I feel there should be
a balance because a lot of good worship
music is out there that is not in a hymnal
because they are not hymns. That’s
OK. As long as the Identity of God is
clear and Jesus is glorified, there’s a
place for it in our corporate worship as
well. But to raise a whole generation of
Christians now who have never read,
much less heard,
There is a Fountain
Filled with Blood, A Mighty Fortress is
Our God
or The Church’s One Foundation
is our being remiss at giving them a tradition
that describes the history of our
Faith and the development of its unique
theology that flies in the face of heresy
or false belief systems. There are serious,
eternal reasons why the Christian Faith
is unique and stands alone in a world of
increasing chaos.
Amazing Grace is
about the only hymn anyone of that
generation has heard. Even then it’s
been so over-used by the secular world
because it, well, face it, goes great with
bagpipes, that the meaning of the lyrics
is still unfamiliar to most people who
are clueless about the Christian doctrine
of salvation by God’s grace alone.
As an aside, find yourself a hymnal or
look it up on the Internet:
The Battle
Hymn of the Republic.
Read all the verses
and you’ll realize that this, the national
hymn of the United States of America,
can no longer be sung in public because
it would be so terribly politically incorrect
now. And, like abortion, we allowed
it to happen, ever so slowly.
One other tradition that I believe is still
useful but must sound archaic to many
of you reading this: Taking your Bible
with you to church! Even before I was a
Christian, I still took my Bible with me
to the liberal church in which I grew up
because that’s what people did in the
1950s and -60s. In fact, I’ll give you a
little story about when it probably saved
me from serious assault one day on a
street in Brooklyn.
While I was living in Queens, one
Sunday I took up a friend’s invitation to
visit her church in a very bad area of
Brooklyn called Bedford-Stuyvesant. It
was 1967 and racial tensions were heating
up that would explode the next year
throughout that whole part of New
York City as well as Newark, Boston,
Los Angeles and elsewhere. I got off the
A-train (the same subway line that
Duke Ellington sang about because it
connected the two largest Black areas of
New York, Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant) at a certain station on
Fulton Avenue and walked several
blocks south past burned out tenements
and apartments. A group of small Black
kids ran up to me and spit on me calling
me “whitey” and telling me to my a-
- out of there. I had my Bible in my
hand and kept walking until I came to
the Church of God in Christ on the
next block and for the next several
hours experienced one of the most powerful
moves of God I had ever known in
any church. But that’s another story for
the Memoirs one day.
As I was getting ready to leave to walk
back north to Fulton Avenue, pick up
the A-train and head back to my apartment
in Queens, a heroin addict came
dragging himself up to me on the sidewalk,
very high, and telling me I was
crazy to be there. But then he said, “hey
man, you gotta’ Bible! Today is my
mutha’s birthday and she be dead. But
her fav-or-ite thang in there was the
23rd Psalm. I can’t read, my man, but
can you read it to me?” I said I’d be glad
to and read the psalm to him slowly
while he nodded along. I asked him if I
could do anything else for him and he
said “no man, I don’ want no money or
nuthin.’ I just wanna’ remember my
mama today. Thank you, suh…” and he
shuffled down the street. If I hadn’t had
my Bible in my hand, I wonder if a different
scene could have gone down. The
murder rate was very high in that part
of Brooklyn and the streets I walked,
even on that sweltering July day, were
deserted. I never saw anyone except him
and those kids earlier; anything could
have happened and, typically New York,
no one would know anything.
I still take my Bible to church when I
visit somewhere but I am amazed that
almost no one of the younger generation
does. Why? Because most of the
churches they attend these days have
big screens on which they show the
Bible verses the pastor is using during
his message. That’s fine BUT it doesn’t
help you know where to find them
when you go home and try to look up
those verses in your Bible later. One of
the benefits of having read it in your
own Bible at church, at home, on the
subway or anywhere, is that you can
almost remember where you saw it on
the page or that Proverbs comes after
Psalms. But don’t ask them to find
Nahum!
I guess I’ve beat this to death and can
call it a message. I mean, we don’t have
to insist on “King James only” or that
you even have to bring your Bible to
church but it would sure help if I knew
that people were using it, even marking
it with footnotes, anytime, anywhere.
Unfortunately, few open a Bible during
the week and are at the mercy of the big
screen at church.
Rereading this message, I realize that
I’m starting to sound like a crotchety
old guy who is mumbling something
like, “…in my day, we used to…” I don’t
mean to come across like that, but let’s
not forget that we have a tradition of
respecting God’s Word. For me, that
means not putting it on the floor or on
the seat of a chair – something that
Muslims see as highly offensive and
convince them that we don’t regard our
God’s words enough so we really do
need the Quran after all. Let’s remember that people died for centuries to
ensure that we could have God’s Word
in our hands today. Because of the current
age’s lack of reverence and ignorance
of our tradition, I’m afraid we’ve
lost sight of not only the Bible itself but
also Who and what’s inside.
© Copyright 2010 by Dave Roberts