A few years ago a graduate of one of our Missouri Synod seminaries received his first call to a church in a neighboring state. The first time he walked into the church, he was horrified to see that the lectern was on the right side of the altar as you faced the altar and the pulpit was on the left side – exactly opposite of how the lectern and pulpit are placed here at St. Paul. The reason he was horrified was that he had learned an ancient tradition that the pulpit should always be on the right side – over here – and for reasons that I can’t understand, he felt that the worship service was somehow lessened because of this placement.
The young pastor explained his problem to the church trustees and the elders, but they told him that the church had always been set up this way and they saw no need for a change. Firmly convinced that he could never conduct a proper worship service until the pulpit was correctly placed on the right side of the altar, he decided to take action on his own. On a Saturday evening – when no one would be at the church – he entered the sanctuary. He unbolted the lectern and the pulpit from their floor supports and moved them so that the pulpit would be properly placed on the right side and the lectern would be on the left.
As you might expect, people were both shocked and confused when they arrived for worship on Sunday morning. There was a lot of talk: “What’s going on? Did you know about this? When did this happen?” But one elderly member was more than just shocked and confused. She started screaming – and ran from the church with tears running down her face.
What the young pastor didn’t know was that her husband had died during the past year, and she had donated a large amount of money to the church in his memory so that the entire sanctuary could be recarpeted. Since a pulpit is larger than a lectern, the floor space that it covered was much larger than the floor space covered by the lectern. When he moved the lectern and pulpit, he left a huge hole in the carpet where the pulpit used to be – and the lectern wasn’t nearly big enough to cover that hole in the carpet. It looked awful, and in no time at all the elderly widow was not the only one letting out screams and cries of outrage. By mid-afternoon an emergency meeting was being arranged with members of the church council, the circuit counselor and the district president. The young pastor was willing to admit that he had acted rashly – but still insisted that he was correct and the people were wrong on the issue of where the pulpit should be placed. After more meetings and more heated discussions, the pastor resigned his call.
As ludicrous as this story sounds, I want to assure you that it is true – this actually happened just a few years ago. I am absolutely convinced that this young pastor meant well. I believe that he did what he thought was right and proper. He wanted to make sure that the worship services at this church were conducted with reverence and honor to God. But he forgot about something that I guarantee he had heard a lot when he was completing his seminary studies – the Latin word adiaphora. An adiaphoron is something that is neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture. Luther complained that many commands and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church 500 years ago were adiaphora and were absolutely not required of Christians. Many of the things that we do in the church are based on things that we have – by tradition – done in the past. But Scripture does not command us to do them that way.
In today’s Gospel lesson we have an example of the Jewish religious leaders enforcing religious rules that were never commanded by God – rules that we would label by the term adiaphora. Listen again to the opening verses of our text: “Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders.)”
“The tradition of the elders.” By definition, a tradition is something that is handed down from one person to another. Now remember that the Children of Israel had the Law given to them by God on Mt. Sinai – the 10 Commandments – but in addition, God had given His people many other commands that were meant to separate God’s chosen people from their pagan neighbors. You probably know some of these – such as the rules about eating meat from clean animals such as cattle and sheep and not eating meat from unclean animals such as pigs. God gave these rules to His people because he expected – he demanded – that they live by them.
But over time, the Elders – the religious leaders – began creating rules of their own, rules intended to supplement God’s rules, to explain God’s rules, even to protect God’s rules. Let me give you an actual example. God commanded His people in the Third Commandment to remember the Sabbath Day as a day of worship and a day of rest. Over hundreds of years, Jewish Elders decided what God really meant when He told his people to do no work on the Sabbath. Today a faithful orthodox Jew who follows the traditions of the Elders cannot sign his complete name to a piece of paper on the Sabbath. According to the traditions, writing just two words – a first and last name – represents work in God’s eyes. You could spend a lot of time searching Scripture and you will never find this specific command of God – it is entirely a command of men. But these traditions were eventually made every bit as important as Scripture. In many cases, the traditions became more important than Scripture.
So we read that Jesus’ disciples are being criticized because they have been seen eating with unwashed hands. When we tell our children to wash their hands before a meal, we’re doing so for reasons of health. But the traditions of the elders had nothing to do with hygiene. When Jewish people washed their hands, they were declaring that they were special people chosen by God – and that other people were unclean in God’s eyes. If a Jew went to the marketplace to buy food, he or she might be defiled by coming into contact with a Gentile – or even by touching food that had been touched by a Gentile. This tradition went back hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Its original intention was to remind the Jews that they were God’s elect people and therefore had to keep themselves separated – had to keep themselves holy from pagan worship practices. But by Jesus’ time, this well-intentioned reminder had become a hard-and-fast rule that was nothing more than an empty ritual.
They thought that they were pleasing God. They thought that they were doing what God wanted them to do. But they didn’t realize that the rituals – the traditions – had become more important than faith. They appeared to be honoring God by their lips and their acts, but they failed to honor God in their hearts. The First Commandment demands that we shall have no other Gods, but they were actually breaking that commandment by making human rules more important than God. And so Jesus responds: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” And then Jesus tells them: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
My friends in Christ, it would be easy to look at today’s Gospel lesson and see it as nothing more than a historical account of one of the many run-ins that Jesus had with the Jewish religious leaders. But if we pause to examine ourselves, we realize that Jesus is speaking to us in these verses. Sometimes we convince ourselves that we are pleasing God by going through the motions, by doing what we think God wants us to do. Sometimes we say and do all the right religious things simply because that’s what we’re supposed to do, or simply because our parents make us, or our spouse wants us to, or even as a mask to hide our sinful behavior. Sometimes we are guilty of honoring God with our lips – but not our hearts. But even if we’re good at fooling others, God is not fooled. As we read in Psalm 44, God knows the secrets of the heart.
When Jesus told the Jews that they were hypocrites, the Greek word that he used was originally used to denote actors – people who performed behind a mask – people who pretended to be something that they were not. People who put on a false front to hide their real appearance and their true self. People who pretend to be one thing – but deep down are something or someone entirely different.
God wants us to worship Him, to love Him, to long for him with our hearts. God wants us to be with Him. He wants this so much that he was willing to sacrifice His own Son on the cross. As soon as Adam and Eve plunged the world into sin by their disobedience of God, He lovingly promised that He would send a Savior for their redemption and for our redemption.
God’s words were more than just lip service – He did what he promised. He said that he would send His beloved Son to suffer and die for our sins, and that’s exactly what he did. And when Jesus went to the cross, he went willingly to His death. No lip service, no masks, no false pretenses, no false show of piety, no man-made traditions – just simple obedience to His Father. All of His words of teaching and all of His miracles culminated in that action of deepest, heartfelt love. Love for you and for me.
Are any of us guilty of honoring God with our lips but not our hearts, of sometimes just going through the motions? Absolutely. At one time or another, we all fall into that trap, we all let our guard down. We all sin. But we are forgiven! Not only does God know the secrets of our hearts, but He also knows the faith that is in our hearts. And so He washes our hearts clean in Holy Baptism, calling each of us by name and making us His owns sons and daughters. He nourishes our hearts when He gives us the true body and blood of His Son, making it clear that in this body and blood each and every believer receives forgiveness of sins.
Our God is not a God of tradition. Our God is not a God of empty words or meaningless gestures. Our God is a God of love and a God of action. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Return to Pastor page
