Tuesday, Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
We sometimes use the phrase ‘the dead weight of tradition’. This is when tradition is experienced as a burden that holds us back from forging new paths. However, tradition need not always be a dead weight. There are elements of any tradition which can be liberating and life giving. For us as Christians, it is a matter of discerning which elements of our religious tradition are worth drawing on and returning to and which elements we need to shed and move on from. In today’s gospel reading, the Pharisees and scribes want to know from Jesus why his disciples are not following what they call ‘the tradition of the elders’, when it comes to the usual ritual washings prior to eating. In his response to their criticism, Jesus does not reject the value of his own Jewish tradition. Indeed, he quotes from that tradition, from the prophet Isaiah who declared that human regulations do not always correspond to God’s will for his people, ‘the doctrines they teach are only human regulations’. Jesus quoted from the tradition to critique the elements of the tradition that the Pharisees and scribes were emphasizing. Jesus was saying that all the legal traditions that have grown up over the centuries have to be interpreted in the light of the more important tradition found in the writings of the prophets, in the word of God. That remains the task of the church, of all of us, today. The Scriptures, especially for us Christians the books of the New Testament, are the most authoritative expression of the church’s tradition and all other traditions have to be judged in their light. We have to keep returning to the word of God, to the primary source, to get the true measure of all later church traditions. We have to keep asking, ‘Is this particular church, family or personal tradition serving God’s purpose for our world as revealed in his word, especially the word of Jesus in the gospels?’