Weekly Devotional for October 11

Pastor’s Note: I seem to have goofed up. Last week, I wrote a devotional on Revelation, claiming that the text was appointed for October 5. It turns out, I got my weeks mixed up and the Revelation text was appointed for this week, not last. So, this week’s devotional will use texts appointed for the week of Oct 4 to make up for my error.
Scripture text: Amos 3:13-4:5, Matthew 15:1-9 (Appointed for October 10)

As my Facebook wall is eager to remind me, Christmas is just a mere ten or so week away. I’m not keen to get those reminders. It may something blasphemous to admit as a pastor of the Church, but I’m not overly fond of the Christmas holiday. I’ve got a lot of reasons for this, some personal, some theological, others sociological. It’s the latter that I wish to talk about today.

So what do I mean by “sociological?” Well, in recent years, the Christmas holiday, a time of the year that we claim to dedicate to “good will” and “peace” among humankind, has become another battleground in the ongoing culture wars. We are told by pundits that there is a “war” on Christmas. People have become openly hostile to being greeted in stores to anything other than “Merry Christmas.” People grow upset at the absence of nativity scenes on public properties.

I get why people regard these things as important. But they remind me of the long-standing “traditions” of individual congregations. The carpet is red because “it’s always been that way.” Pastor does X, Y, and Z in his duties because that’s how Pastor So-and-so of Blessed Memory did it. We have communion once a month whether we need it or not. As silly as it often seems, congregations have self-destructed over the failure of members or clergy to respect these traditions. As a friend of mine recently observed, “I thought my Army unit was the most destructive force on Earth, but I’ve come to find out nothing compares to a group of angry old church ladies.”

But, in the end, we have to ask ourselves: “Is this really something God cares about?” All too often we mistake our human traditions for holy writ and our sentimentality for divine sanction. Consider our Scripture lessons today. Here are two examples of we humans failing to recognize what truly matters to God and what does not.

Amos, like many of his Old Testament peers, has the thankless job of constantly calling the people of God back to Him. The irony of these passages is that the people are often rather fastidious about their religious observance. They worship in the temple. They keep their fasts. They make their sacrifices. They uphold the Torah. They do all that is required by the book, but their hearts and minds are focused elsewhere. They keep the letter of the law, but not the spirit. They do it all by rote, but lack passion and sincerity. In the meantime, they find plenty of loopholes to abuse and ignore those in need, mistaking human traditions and observances for God’s will. And God will have none of it.

The dynamic is similar in Matthew. Over the course of its evolution, the Jewish religion had adopted numerous rites and rituals that were not proscribed in the Scriptures. For instance, one could dedicate a portion of their possessions for use by the synagogue or temple and those resources would then become off-limits for any other usage. When the Pharisees call Jesus and his disciples out for their failure to observe proper hand washing (another human-born tradition), he reminds them that they use that tradition of dedication to abandon their elders in their time of need. Once again, human tradition has not only trumped God’s Word, it is causing harm to others. And God again will have none of it.

When it comes to our human traditions, whether they’re connected to the Christmas holiday or to the life of the church, we do have to ask ourselves what is truly important. Is slavish loyalty to this thing or that truly serving God and neighbor or is it getting in the way? An important question for us as we dive once more into the holiday insanity. As Christians, our loyalty is to Christ first and foremost. We must be cautious that our traditions do not detract from that and become idols that we worship instead.