Saying Goodbye to Traditions

Scripture Lessons: Psalm and Mark 7: 1-23 Sermon Title: Saying Goodbye to Traditions Preached on July 18, 2020 In the midst of so much chaos, I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in food. Have you? Last Monday for dinner we did something different. Having bought whole catfish at Kroger, I breaded them with corn meal and fried them. We’re a chicken breast family, so catfish was a little out of the ordinary. However, something made me want to mix it up, even though I’d never fried catfish before. As a kid I’d seen my grandmother do it, so I knew it could be done. We’d often spend weekends in one of the rental cabins at a place just north of Clayton called Andy’s Trout Farm. Andy and his wife Betty, who my grandmother knew, had two or three ponds filled with trout, and what we’d do is use one of their cane poles and fish. It wasn’t fishing, strictly speaking. There wasn’t much sport in it. It was like there was more trout than water in those ponds, but it was a lot of fun for me, maybe not so much the fish. According to my Dad, we were all allowed to catch just one, as we had to pay by the pound. Sometimes my grandmother would let me catch hers. Then we’d carry the caught fish in our metal buckets back to Andy or Betty who would clean them and my grandmother would fry them up in a cast iron skillet back at the cabin which we’d rented. That’s as close to a recipe that I had to go on when frying our catfish last week. So, I got out our cast iron skillet, filled it with oil, dredged them in our corn meal, and fried our whole catfish until they were perfectly brown and crispy. My grandmother’s been gone for years, but cooking this way made me think of her, which was wonderful and comforting. That’s the magic of food. My brother recently wrote about it. He reviewed a book of poetry for a literary journal. In his review he said that this poet, described food in such a way as to turn the everyday meal “into sacrament.” Maybe you know what he’s talking about. I do. The Pharisees were good about that too. The Pharisees ate in such a way that the three daily meals reminded them of who God was and who they were. They never would have rushed through supper or eaten a meal in the car on the way to a meeting. There was no McDonald’s drive-through in ancient Israel. It would have gone out of business, for these holy people stopped everything to think about when the grain had been harvested, who raised the goat, and did the cook wash her hands before she fried it? It was all a way of worshiping God with each mouthful. They were doing more than filling their bellies but were connecting to something holy. So, what Jesus said to those Pharisees and scribes must have been so completely destabilizing that they felt as though they’d been hit upside the head by a cast iron skillet. They asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Then he said to them, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” Can you believe he said that? Here’s some advice: don’t invite Jesus over for dinner unless you’re ready. He would have suggested that I grill my catfish, or worse. He’s just the kind of a person who calls us away from our unexamined lives and makes us think uncomfortable thoughts. His refusal to accept the table manners of the religious authorities here in the Gospel of Mark reminds me of this story a woman named Marcy Lay once told me. Marcy Lay directed the church choir. She is a sage of a person. Wise and faithful. After a grueling debate over the color of poinsettias to decorate the Sanctuary of our church in Tennessee: white as it had been for years or new and risqué red, she told me about how in her family at holiday dinners someone had to cut the last three inches off the ham before cooking it. Not on the big side, but on the little side where the bone might stick out. Someone had to go through the trouble of cutting three of four inches off the ham before it could be cooked in her family. That’s just what everyone did, it was the family tradition, until somebody – it was probably her sister’s boyfriend or some other interloper – asked, “That’s silly. Why are you doing that?” No one had ever asked that question. You weren’t supposed to ask, and so no one was really prepared to give an answer. Fortunately, out of the uncomfortable silence, grandma piped up: “Years ago, the biggest pan I had was about four inches too short for the ham we bought at Christmas, so I just got into the habit of cutting off that end. I don’t know why you’re still doing it. That pan you have is plenty big enough to fit the whole thing.” Is that the way with any of the traditions in your house? Do you feel like you have to cook macaroni and cheese a certain way? Is it necessary to mash the potatoes rather than whip them? Or is your pre-thanksgiving meal tradition talking about that awful man Susie brought home for Christmas who asked all those stupid questions. “Thank goodness he’s not been back.” They asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” Do you know how hard it is to tell the difference? Do you know how difficult it is to let go of any routine in a world like this one? By now you’ve heard that our kids won’t be going back to school. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked forward to the tradition of back to school shopping, but not doing it is breaking my heart. This week our Cece was looking through masks to wear on her first day. Lily was supposed to start at the 6th Grade Academy. I don’t like how they grow up, but this feeling of not being able to watch them go through the milestones of life that they’re supposed to go through has me all tied up. I miss the traditions. I miss our routines. I miss how normal life felt. Surely, Jesus can understand that. Surely, He’s not unsympathetic to whatever suffering we feel, regardless of how minor or how major, only in a time like this one we must always remember that Jesus doesn’t care about human traditions. He cares about the Commandments of God. He cares, not nearly so much about getting things back to normal, as moving us towards the Kingdom, so even in a time such as this one when the last thing I want to think about is changing the semblance of a routine that I’ve managed to establish, Jesus pushes us to ask the question: are we abandoning the commandments of God to hold onto human tradition? Are we still cutting off the ends of our hams even though our pan is big enough for the whole thing? Are we risking our health and the health of our neighbors for some time-honored rituals, which in this moment just don’t make any good sense? Since the Marietta Daily Journal doesn’t run on Sundays or Mondays, my wife Sara very thoughtfully gave me a Sunday subscription to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I prefer to read my news rather than watch it on TV, and my Sundays have been disrupted enough already, so I’ve really missed my Sunday paper. I’ve been enjoying her gift. Then last Sunday there was a special note from the editor in the AJC: The first half of 2020 saw people across metro Atlanta face big challenges and do extraordinary things. Parents figured out how to do their jobs from home and guide their children’s education at the same time. Families worried about the health of their loved ones. Everyone made sacrifices with some being hit harder than others. Through all of this, many did their very best work, every day. I love this paragraph. I love it, as for one thing, it’s just important to stop and reflect on what’s happened over the past weeks and months, what we’ve done and what we’re capable of. I also believe that the AJC has it right: through all of this, many did their very best work, every day. That’s true of you. That’s true of our church. Last Sunday the most amazing thing happened. You’ve probably heard about it. Bill Fogerty turned 93 years old. Normally there would have been a party. Maybe we would have sung him happy birthday in here. Surely, we all would have shaken his hand or given him a hug to celebrate the gift from God that he is to this church. None of that could happen, but this did: his wonderful daughter Jean and her daughters sent out a message and organized a drive-by birthday party for him. And there were so many cars in this parade that we couldn’t all make it through the same traffic light. Once we got to his neighborhood we had to wait, causing a traffic jam. Then when we finally were all there, we all drove past to shout, “happy birthday” out the windows of our cars. Driving by I thought to myself, “This is what church is all about. This is what it means to be in a family of faith.” It couldn’t happen like it did before. It might not happen the way we remember for a very long time but remember this: Love is the same. We are still First Presbyterian Church. We are still, one holy people, who worship God together. We are still changing lives with faith, hope, and love – and no virus is ever going to stop that. In this strange and challenging season, when as soon as you’ve given everything you thought you could give and then are asked to sacrifice even more, do not cling so tightly to tradition, ritual, or what we’ve called normal that you go down with this temporal would which we’ve always known would fall away. Cling tightly this day, not to human tradition, but to the promises of God. For everything is changing, but God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Amen.