Back at You

Never one to shy away from those in-your-face moments, Jesus seems unwilling to let those who come to Him with questions get away with their own silliness. A great example is found in the opening verses of Matthew 15 where Jesus is asked a question about His followers. “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?” (15:2, NRSV)

One might expect that Jesus would launch immediately into a discussion of the difference between tradition and Scripture, but before He ever gets to that idea, He returns a question for a question. He says to them, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (15:3)

The fact that their question has to do with “your disciples,” that is, they don’t say, “Why do you break the tradition of the elders?” probably suggests that at the heart of their question is the accusation against Jesus that He is teaching His disciples to break these traditions. The question probably isn’t just a complaint about an occasional lapse of judgment where tradition is ignored, but a more systemic approach to tradition that says it is unimportant.

Rather than defending His disciples, which is perhaps what the Pharisees wanted, Jesus turns the question on them. Using the same verb for “to break,” (which is found only in this text and Acts 1:25 in the entire New Testament) Jesus answers them by asking, “Why do you break the commandment of God in order to keep your ancient traditions?”

This is “back at you” at its best! They are now backed into a corner of sorts – where they will need to explain how they could possibly view human tradition at a higher level of authority than the commandment of God. It is interesting that Jesus says “commandment” in the singular, not plural. Perhaps their idolatry of tradition has trumped the entire message from God.

It isn’t too difficult to find a kind of convicting spirit in this text. Convicting not just of the Pharisees who asked the question, but convicting of us as we look at our own lives. Where are we guilty of letting tradition get in the way of obeying God? It is so easy to confuse “tradition” and “doctrine” that we probably don’t even think about it in the ways that we should.

This is close to the point of the story of the Good Samaritan. Remember that in answering the “who is your neighbor?” question, Jesus has two very religious people avoid doing what godly people should have done. This is pretty much in the name of their traditions over the commandment to love your neighbor.

I have to wonder a bit, about my own life – that’s the only one for which I can answer. How often do I miss out on opportunities to love God and love neighbor because I’m keeping tradition that has little or nothing to do with either of the great commandments. Not unlike the Pharisees, we can easily slip into our self-assigned roles as judge and jury and be condemning of those who aren’t quite so impressed with our “tradition” and appear, from our vantage point, to be unworthy of the name, Christian.

Of course, there is a sense in which the idea of tradition has an important place in our lives. But, whatever that place is, and especially when by tradition we tend to mean traditional, it cannot be allowed to get in the way of obeying God!