“At that time Jesus exclaimed: ‘I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike’” (Mt 11:25).
Why did the wise and the learned, referring to the Sadducees, Pharisees and scribes, reject Jesus? Jesus challenged their idol of tradition. Even though Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it (cf. Mt 5:17), the invitation to go deeper was challenging. This is certainly highlighted in the six antitheses, Jesus shared during his Sermon on the Mount. Here is one such example: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil” (Mt 5: 28). Offer no resistance to one who is evil? Hard to swallow for people of Jesus’ time. For us today? Insert that verse into our present dialogue regarding refugee and immigration policies, or Church entrenchment in reaction to atheism, secularism and scientism.
Jesus offered then and continues to offer today the intimacy of the Trinitarian Love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To be fully alive, to share in his Love, we need to resist fear and holding blindly to tradition for its own sake. Instead we need to be open to growth, change, and renewal. Gerhard Lohfink, in his book, No Irrelevant Jesus, quotes the Polish philosopher Leszak Kolakowski: “A society in which tradition becomes a cult is condemned to stagnation; a society that tries to live entirely through revolt against tradition condemns itself to destruction” (2014, 2).
Many have left the Church because they feel we are too steeped in tradition, but in their throwing the baby out with the bathwater, they have no secure ground or foundation. Others remain hunkered in the Church entrenched in a bunker of tradition fearing the secular tide. Both are postures keeping us from Jesus’ invitation of a communal Love with God and one another.
Jesus sees the potential we have as well as our brokenness and fear. He meets us where we are, as we are, in our present condition, and from that starting point he invites us to crawl, then to walk, then to run, and eventually to fly – to experience and share his unconditional Love. Let us resist the temptation of rejecting tradition altogether or idolizing tradition alone, but instead build on the foundation we have been given; Jesus Christ: “The Way, the Truth and the Life” (cf Jn 14:6). Within the life of the Church, “we must not do away with its traditions, but at the same time it must continually clarify, renew, and deepen them” (Lohfink 2014, 2).
Spend some quiet time with God. Ask him to reveal something you have been holding onto that is keeping you bound in fear. Then offer it to him and let the Holy Spirit burn it, so as to purify you with his eternal flame of Love. Trust in Jesus each step of the way!
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Mass readings for today, Wednesday, July 19, 2017: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071917.cfm
Lohfink, Gehrhard. 2014. No Irrelevant Jesus: On Jesus and the Church Today. Minnesota: Liturgical Press.
Spiritual Stepping Stones