Maintaining Tradition for the Sake of Truth.

Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked Him, "Why do Your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat."

I wonder if the law of entropy applies to the spiritual and intellectual world as well as the physical world. For example, when people value an idea, they seek to present that idea in a way that will have influence on the whole group. But over time the idea begins to lose its influence. It leaks, or as in the law of thermodynamics, left to its own, entropy takes over. Leaking begins as soon as the idea is embraced by the group and without continued input, entropy leads to a total loss of influence.

Because we live in a reality of decay, it is necessary to reenergize the disciples of the idea. We must work to maintain an idea’s influence. There is inherent danger in this reality. In our attempt to maintain the original idea, we lose the idea in our attempts to maintain it. As we, out of necessity, attempt to prop up the value of an idea, we risk that the prop will become more important than the idea.

Jesus replied, "And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? For instance, God says, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.' But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, 'Sorry, I can't help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.' In this way, you say they don't need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition.”

I’m pretty sure the Pharisees and the teachers of the religious law didn’t set out to lose the meaning of God’s direct command. They were passionate about maintaining its influence. No doubt a majority of them desired to please God and lead others to live right. Their lives revolved around fighting the entropy of God’s direct commands. Ceremonial hand washing was just one of the props used in the battle to reenergize an idea’s influence. Jesus takes the opportunity to show where their props had become more important then God’s direct command. It had become so convoluted and complex that the prop, like ceremonial hand washing, and not God’s direct command, defined their culture. Instead of being defined by the truth behind their traditions, they were now defined by those very traditions.

You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, 'These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

As always, Jesus obliterates the prop and lances the heart. I place myself in the Pharisees’ shoes. As one who had given his life to the protection and expression of God’s truth, what would it be like to have this bombshell dropped on your soul? These men took their worship seriously. They took their desire to seek after God seriously. Deadly seriously. What must it have done to their souls to have the Rabbi tell them that their worship was a farce?

Let me make it a little more real. Having been called pastor in the past, I’ve desired to protect and uphold the truth. I’ve desired to live in such a way that people would be pointed to Jesus. I’ve given my life to that idea. So my first response to these words of Jesus is to assume that it’s not me. I’m not a Pharisee. But If I’m honest, I have to say that the main reason I don’t think I’m a Pharisee is because I desperately don’t want to be one. Not really foolproof reasoning.

So I let these words into my own soul. What does the Holy Spirit look at in my life and say “Your worship is a farce”. Where am I teaching man-made ideas as commands from God? What props have I used in an attempt to uphold God’s truth? Where in my life have I tried so hard to follow God that I’ve developed traditions that have become more important than God’s truth? Am I willing to let the Holy Spirit tear down what needs to be torn down without fighting to save the traditions on which I’ve based my life?