September 1 – The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
The Rev. Claire Keene
So, are you a traditionalist or an innovator?
Are you a traditionalist or an innovator, and what difference does that make in your family, in your church, in your larger community, in the world?
If you changed your preference, if you switched from being a traditionalist to espousing change—what difference would it make for you and others to whom you are connected? Or if you switched from being an innovator to defining yourself by tradition, what difference would that make? What would you do differently? How would your becoming a traditionalist affect your friends, your family, your role at work, your expectations for yourself?
If you asked me that question, I’d have to say, “Well, it depends.” So much, I think, depends for you and me on the contexts in which we live and move and have our being. That’s where we can observe ourselves— see how we influence others by our presence among them, and how we ourselves are shaped, by the preferences and pressures we experience in our homes, in this church, among extended family, in our professional circles, even in our political preferences.
One way to discover our preferences is to look at how we habitually act in one setting or another. In other words, we can look at the traditions we’ve built into our lives (personal or communal) and read where our commitments lie.We can discover a lot by looking at what has become not just a habit but a tradition in our lives— things we almost always do in particular situations. Maybe we’ve come to do them out of habit or maybe they reflect some intentional commitment to God, to others, or to self. Try taking a look this week at the habits of your heart in different settings, as well as the actions that follow: is the person you see someone who is following the example of Jesus, or just mirroring the traditions of the culture around you?
Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, our religious traditions were less formal than those I noticed in the Episcopal Church, when I visited it for the first time in 1969. At that point, in my old home church, there were no women up front in leadership, except for those singing in the choir or playing the piano or organ. The pastor wore a suit with white shirt and a tie. No one other than the pastor read scripture aloud to the congregation, though rarely we might read a passage together from a Psalm. No one other than the pastor—or a guest pastor—preached. There were no members of the congregation coming forward, as we do for communion, except that maybe, during the last hymn, someone would walk forward to the pastor to announce a commitment to Jesus and to ask for baptism.
Occasionally, in those days, a woman might wear a hat during the Sunday morning service. Men took off their hats as they came in the front door and hung them in what we Episcopalians call the narthex. (They called it the vestibule.)
We shared communion a few times per year, passing trays of what seemed, to this child, to be broken crackers and tiny glasses of grape juice. Once the trays had been passed, the pastor said the words from scripture that described what we were doing, and we all ate and drank at the same time.
Fast-forward, then, to 1969, when I first visited an Episcopal church in Morristown, Tennessee, having been invited by an RA in my dorm. When I said, “Yes, I’d like to go with you,” she told me to be sure to bring a scarf or a hat, because women were supposed to cover their heads during worship in the Episcopal Church. (I didn’t know then what my cradle Episcopalian husband later told me—that churches usually had little doily-looking things on a table at the back which women and girls could bobby-pin to the top of their heads as they entered the nave.) I didn’t mind. I took a lace scarf to wear—it seemed to me, at that time, highly romantic.
Again, only men were at the front of the church. The priest, and others near the altar, wore robes. The sermon was certainly shorter than I was used to. And when it was time for communion, I whispered to my RA, “Can I take communion?” She asked me if I had been baptized. I said, “Yes, but not in this church.” “Then you can’t,” she said. So I just let others on the pew slip past me when they went up for communion.
A lot of our Episcopal traditions have changed since then, and I’m glad for that. All baptized Christians are now welcome at the table of the Lord–young or old, Episcopalian or Methodist, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran–anyone baptized into the life of Jesus, receives the food he gave us.
A friend of mine from seminary, Lou Tucker Parsons, was raised at St. John’s in Knoxville. Early in her marriage, her family move to Hawaii because her husband was getting some of his medical training there through the army. Lou’s son, William, was young and that time, and St. John’s had taught that one needed to be confirmed before receiving communion. So when he sat in church with a friend of his, a little girl, Lou always reminded him that when he went up to the altar, he wasn’t to receive the bread and wine. He promised to obey.
But one Sunday, Lou, her son William, and his friend all sat together. So when it was time to receive communion they lined up at the altar rail: William’s friend, William, and Lou. When the priest got to the little girl, he placed a wafer in her hands, as was usual. Then the priest, who knew that William did not receive communion, passed him by and went on to Lou. As Lolu glanced over toward her son, she noticed that his little friend was looking at the wafer in her hands, looking at the wafer in her hands, and then at William’s empty hands. Then the friend broke her wafer in two and gave the other half to William.
That’s when Lou got it, the meaning of our all sharing in the body and blood of our Lord. She saw the grace enacted, beyond the bounds of the tradition that she had known. William’s friend, unknowingly broke with the tradition Lou had known, but enacted the practice Jesus taught: sharing, especially sharing Jesus’ presence among them. From that day on, William has received communion.
Different brands of Christian churches, we know, have different traditions for worship. Every variety has reasons for the traditions they have chosen. Unfortunately, different Christian denominations over time have built walls around the ways in which they conduct worship and around what their traditions say about their faith. For example, some of us Christians still argue over who gets baptized, at what age and for what reason. Some use what we would consider “real bread” and “real wine” at communion. Some don’t. Sometimes we argue about how to baptize: should we sprinkle water on the candidate, pour water over his or her head, or immerse a candidate completely in a larger pool of water? Some argue over whether a profession of faith has to come first; if so, then children aren’t baptized. We try to ponder out who can perform a baptism and where and when?
(I’ll let you in on a little secret: Did you know that in an emergency, any Episcopalian can baptize someone as long as there is water and it’s done in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?) If the person survives their emergency, the other portions of the baptismal service are performed with the congregation gathered around as usual. I did that in the Intensive Care Nursery at Children’s Hospital when our granddaughter, Emily, was born 14 weeks early.
All these traditions are ways of enacting what we believe and what we hope for, and they vary from one denomination to another. That is one reason we have the Book of Common Prayer: to help us stay clear about our traditional practices and their meanings as we celebrate them together.And that helps us stay clear about how we are to live together.
These traditions link us together experientially; they enact our basic tenets of faith community. They are not just rules of custom, like “Don’t wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day.” That’s a custom in some places, but it has nothing to do with enacting our faith.
We get into trouble, as the Pharisees and scribes did in today’s reading, when we confuse loyalty to religious tradition with loyalty to custom. We get into trouble, as the Pharisees and scribes did in today’s reading , when we confuse the less-than-loving imaginations of our hearts with reverence for God. The things we do from our unbridled hearts, things we do from a reflex of will–that human drive to “by-golly get what we want,” regardless of whom it hurts– those are what we have to watch out for.
Primary reverence for God, on the other hand, steers us toward bettering the lives around us. Reverence for God steers us toward reverence for those human lives whom God has made and shared with us, regardless of whether they know their way around a church or not.
You know, what proceeds from us either softens the world or hardens it, clears the air or befouls it, shines the gentle light of love on another’s face or spurns it. Jesus greeted our muddled mess of humanity by healing us, feeding us, teaching us, blessing our children, and forgiving us. And then he told us to go and sin no more.
May the habits of our hearts be filled with his tradition, that we may love as he loves and forgive as he forgives. That is the tradition worth entrusting our souls to.
Year B – The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost – September 1, 2024 – The Rev. Claire Keene
