A Sermon delivered to St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Charleston, WV on November 10, 2013, and based on 2 Thessalonians 2:15.
I spent my teen years in
Minnesota, in a little village called Mahtomedi. It was the land of
10,000 lakes - and as many Lutherans. We had Swedish Lutherans,
Norwegian Lutherans, German Lutherans - and we had troubles.
The
late sixties and seventies were a tumultuous time, what with the
hippie revolution, the anti-war movement, bomb threats in the schools
- and drug use creeping up everywhere. Almost as bad as today! Very
precarious times...
With all the problems, you might
ask, how did we keep our balance?
that I can tell you - in a word:
tradition!
Because of our traditions, we
were able to keep our balance for many years. We had traditions for
everything: (Slides accompanied the sermon)
traditions for what to eat
(picture of “Salad”: Jello mold)
traditions for what kind
of clothes to wear… (pic snowmobile suit)
traditions for how to put the
dock in the lake (Picture of dock being installed)
and traditions for watching the
Vikings lose the Superbowl every year... (picture of Bud Grant and
the Vikings)
How did all this get
started?....
I don’t know - but it’s
tradition!
“Because of our traditions,
every one of us knew who we were and what God expected”…
Well, maybe you recognize this
little spiel from the opening scene of Fiddler on the Roof. And maybe
it worked for Tevya and the little village of Antevka, but in modern
American culture, tradition gets a bad rap mostly.
We are, in our cultural and
spirtual DNA, essentially anti-traditional and anti-authoritarian. We
Americans stand squarely in the Free Church ‘tradition’ that
views traditions and hierarchies with distrust.
But Tevya was on to something.
Without traditions, we lose our way and forget who we are and what
God expects from us.
Regarding the latter, we forget
the essence of the Christian message. This is what the Apostle Paul
was warning about in 2 Thessalonians 2: 15, where he says “stand
firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by
our spoken word or by our letter…”
But the traditions that Paul was
talking about are not the traditions practiced by Tevya or by those
who put in the dock each spring in Mathomedi. No, we could accurately
place a capital T in front of Paul’s ‘Tradition’ and say that
what he was describing is really more like a Vikings football game…
The
Quarterback takes the snap from the Center and then hands off to a
runner, who takes the ball, intact, to the end zone - hopefully
without getting tackled or fumbling along the way. The ball is
received, transported and deposited at the goal unchanged in its
essential form.
It’s
just like what Paul says in I Cor. 11:23 as he introduces the words
of institution: ”For I received
from the Lord what I also delivered
to you… “
Capital T tradition is about
receiving something, preserving it and passing it along to the next
generation - so that we remember who we are and what God expects of
us.
“The
very Latin word traditio
means
a transmission from one party to another, an exchange of some sort,
implying living subjects” (DH Williams, Retrieving
the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism,
pg 35)
“Traditio
is as much a verb as a noun - it’s an active process of handing
something over.” Again, think of the football analogy.
But
here’s a caution: the word 'traditor'
is
where we get the English word ‘Treason'! In the early church it
applied to one who had handed over copies of the Scriptures to the
authorities in times of persecution! (Williams, pg 35)
Unless
we preserve and hand on the Tradition accurately we run the risk of
becoming Traitors to the Gospel!
Without
the Capitol T tradition, a culture erodes and we cease to be who we
really are.
So
today, we’re going to talk about that Capitol T traditon - what it
is and what it does for us - what we must do to preserve it and what
we must avoid to prevent it from degrading. To get warmed up a
little, let’s have a couple of Quiz questions to test your
knowledge...
Q:
How many years was it from the time that Jesus died until the list of
New Testament books was officially recognized?
a) 0 - they just used the King
James Version that Jesus used.
b) 33 - the same number of years
as Jesus lived
c) 1980 - it’s still being
settled
d) 292 - it was decided at the
Council of Nicea
A:
d) It was officially decided at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD
The Council was called by
Emperor Constantine. The list was proposed by a man named
Athanasius and voted upon by 220 Bishops from across the church -
mostly the East
Q: How did the Council of Nicea
decide which books to include in the New Testament?
a) they looked it up on the
Internet
b) the authors all argued for
their own books in open forum
- they used the Hebrew technique of drawing lots
- they only recognized books that were written by the Apostles or their close associates
A:
d) they only recognized books that were written by the Apostles or
their close associates.
Think of the Gospels -which were
written by the disciples Matthew, Mark and John, of Luke, who was a
close associate of Paul, and who had personally interviewed Mary and
others, and, of course, Paul, who had also seen the Lord and whose
letters comprise the bulk of the New Testament.
Q: What did the early Christians
use for Scripture on Sundays?
a) The DaVinci Code
b) The Dead Sea Scrolls
c) The Torah
d) Emails and Tweets from the
Apostle Paul
A:
c) The Torah
The early Christians used the
Hebrew Scriptures of the “Old Testament” - However, just as our
text from 2 Thessalonians mentions, there were letters (not emails or
tweets!) of Paul which were circulated among the churches and read
during the worship services. There were also other Gospels and
writings which many considered Scripture, but which did not make it
into the New Testament.
So, how’d you do? Get most of
the answers? Good.
Now imagine with me a moment
what it must have been like as a first century Christian. In the very
early days, you heard the Gospel from someone who was right there
with Jesus, who probably knew him and knew the message he preached.
In the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch
(Acts 8): The Eunuch heard the
message, first by reading the book of Isaiah, and then by having it
interpreted for him by Philip. The Eunuch believed the Gospel
message, proclaimed, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God” and was baptized on the spot. (Then the preacher gets whisked
off by the Holy Spirit for another preaching gig hundreds of miles
away!….)
At first it was sufficient to
simply affirm one sentence in order to be baptized into the faith.
”Jesus is Lord’ was one of the most common affirmations. This was
in contrast to what Roman Citizens would have said in their worship
of the Emperor: “Caesar is Lord”. To say “Jesus is Lord”
would have been enough to get you killed, so you didn’t say it
unless you really meant it. Death has a way of clarifying your core
beliefs!
As time went along and more and
more folks believed, there began to be variations in the message that
people were hearing and there was conflict about what really was the
true kernel of the Gospel message. Heresies arose around key
questions:
Was Jesus really God? (Arianism)
Was
Jesus really a man - or did he just appear
to
be a man? (Docetism)
Is the knowledge of God
available to all, or is there ‘hidden wisdom’ available only to a
few select initiates?(Gnosticism)
There
were also questions about the nature of Scripture:
Can we get a true belief from
the Old Testament and Scripture alone?
What if people who believe
radically different things claim to base their beliefs on Scripture?
These
were some of the questions the church began to face and grapple with.
And how did they deal with it?
As Paul himself has indicated - by relying not only on written
documents – which, after all, could be written by anyone to say
anything at all, - but also on the reliable testimony of witnesses
who had been with Jesus - people who could be trusted to tell the
truth. These witnesses handed on their testimony and teaching to
others who felt it was important to preserve it intact.
As questions of doctrine arose,
this core teaching the 'Captiol T' Tradition became the basis for
shaping the teaching of the church. There was continuity but also
change in response to controversy.
An example of this is the
concept of the ‘Trinity’. The word itself is not in the
Scriptures of the New Testament - but the early church had to figure
out a way to describe the nature of God because there were competing
explanations about who God was. It was the elders of the church who
had to grapple with this and come up with what we now consider part
of the Capitol T tradition. Every true Christian believes that God is
a Trinity - but it’s not because we found the word in the Bible, it
was because the Church - guided by the Holy Spirit, arrived at this
understanding by struggling against heresies!
Keep in mind too, that the
Gospel was being handed down to generations of disciples and people
were worshiping for many, many years - before there was a New
Testament! People were living their lives and making ethical
decisions based on the Gospel. How did they do it?
….
They had to base their faith on what we are calling ‘Big T
‘Tradition - the core message of the Faith passed on through the
reliable testimony of trustworthy witnesses, writings of those who
had known Christ or been close associates of those who had known him,
- and the shared understanding of how one was to live life in
“Imitation of Christ”. In other words, they relied on three key
aspects of the Tradition:
The Preaching of the Apostles
and their written works
The Worship of the Church
The Ethical Teaching of the
Church
As new believers were being
baptized and taught the faith, there arose a need for a fuller, but
still concise statement of the faith, which the baptismal candidates
could proclaim as they were accepted into the church.
Hippolytus
was a Roman believer who wrote a work called the Apostolic Tradition
around the year 215 AD. In it we find an early formulation of a
baptismal confession, written in Q and A Format. Listen to this and
see if it seems familiar:
Do you believe in God the Father
Almighty?
Do you believe in Christ Jesus,
the Son of God,
who was born of the Holy Spirit
and the Virgin Mary
who was crucified in the days of
Pontius Pilate,
and died (and was buried)
and rose the third day living
from the dead,
and ascended into heaven,
and sat down at the right hand
of the Father,
and will come to judge the
living and the dead?
Do you believe in the Holy
Spirit, in the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh? (
Apostolic Tradition XXI. 12-18)
If it sounds like the Apostle’s
Creed- it should, because this statement was the forerunner of
something called the Old Roman Creed, which in turn was an ancestor
of the Apostle’s Creed. This and the later Nicene Creed were the
result of the Church reflecting upon false teachings and trying to
state clearly what was the True teaching of the Gospel.
Even with all this, however,
people still tried to distort the Scripture and the Creeds, using
them to justify alternate beliefs. Ironically, early Church leaders
such as Tertullian had to appeal to something besides the Scriptures
in order to arrive at the true faith - precisely because Scripture
itself was a point of contention, Tertullian came to the conclusion
that:
“ ...only
where the true Christian teaching and faith are evident, will be the
true Scriptures, the true interpretations, and all the true Christian
traditions be found.,” (Tertullian, On
Prescription of Heretics, 19)
We
recognize the true Scripture where the true Christian faith is taught
and practiced!
Let’s bring it down to today:
Q: How do we know that Marriage
is properly defined as a Covenant between one man and one woman?
A: Because the Scripture teaches
it - and because the Church has taught and practiced it that way for
2000 years.
Q: How do we know that Human
Life begins at conception and the Abortion is properly understood as
the taking of an innocent life?
A: Because the Scripture teaches
it and because the Church has taught and practiced it that way for
2000 years.
Q: Why do we stand against the
ordination of practicing homosexuals?
A: Because the Scripture teaches
it- and because the Church has taught and practiced it that way for
2000 years.
Well, you might say, “The
Church is a stick in the mud and needs to get with the program! It
needs to change with the times or die!”
And to that we reply, We “stand
firm and hold to the traditions that [we] were taught by ...the
Apostle’s spoken word or by [their] letter[s]…”
and by the consistent teaching
of the church over the centuries.
Or suppose someone might object
that Martin Luther himself posted his 95 theses against tradition?
The
answer to that is that Luther was calling for re-formation of the
Church - going back to the Capitol T tradition because the Church of
his day had strayed! His was an appeal to stand firm to the tradition
he had been taught by the Scriptures and the teaching of the church
through 15 centuries. Luther stood on the shoulders of Augustine, who
stood on the shoulders of Tertullian, who stood on the shoulders of
Irenaeus and Polycarp and the Apostle John in a great succession of
faith and practice.
Then again, this whole
discussion may bore you to tears. You might want to throw up your
hands and ask, “What difference does it make to me right here and
now?”
And
to that I would reply:
It matters because the Truth is
important and Amazing!
It matters because people’s
eternal destiny depends upon it.
And
It matters because Jesus has
entrusted us with his message and his work.
Think of it. GOD, the Creator of
everything, the almighty, all knowing and all loving GOD chose to
take on human flesh! He lived among us an allowed us, his creation to
nail him to the Cross so He could die for US!
This
is not a boring message! It’s an earth-shattering message - the
BEST message possible. If it’s TRUE we have to respond to it in
some way. Nobody just ignores Jesus!
Everybody
has an opinion about Him.
And that’s only right because
everyone will have to deal with Him sooner or later!
Jesus claimed that he came to
give us Life and that Abundant - good measure , tamped down and
overflowing. - He also claimed that believing in Him was the only way
to have eternal life. The state of your soul depends on how you
answer the question “Who is Jesus?
Will you answer, “My Lord and
my God!” or will you say, “He was a good teacher” or “He was
a misfit who managed to survive crucifixion by the Romans, escaped to
run away with Mary Magdalene and opened a convenience store in
Brooklyn, where he started the Knights Templar and plotted to take
over the world…”
Friends, we believe that Jesus
is Lord and that he entrusted us, his church with the Life - Giving
message of Salvation. We believe that he will come back one day and
ask for an accounting of what we have done with his message. It will
be very important to give a good report - to say to him that we have
taken good care of the message and that it has not been distorted.
When he comes back we want him to find Faith on the earth.
We want to be found faithful and
we want Him to say to us , “Well gone, thou good and faithful
servant”, enter into the joy of your master!
In the trials of these days and
the trials that are sure to come, let us summon the courage to Stand
Firm and to Hold Fast to the teaching that has been faithfully handed
down to us, preserving it and passing it on whole to all generations
until Jesus comes or calls.
AMEN and again, AMEN.
