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| Mardi Gras on the Boulevards, Camille Pissarro, 1897, Harvard Art Museums |
A Thought for the Day given at a lunchtime service of Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street on Tuesday 10th February based on the text of Mark 7.1-13 and preparations for Lent, which begins next week.
Just before Christmas, the Church of England Social Media Team got in touch and asked me to record a series of short explainer videos about different Advent traditions.
The origins of the Advent wreath.
Why we put up Christmas Trees.
What The Twelve Days of Christmas mean.
- the list went on.
I’ve been involved in a number of these explainer videos over the past few years. There is some evidence to suggest that their appeal is not simply novelty - but that they help to address a desire for rootedness in the rich traditions and mysteries of our faith. Of which there are many – and as it happens, not all of them are all that ancient!
Some of the most watched and clicked videos have included:
Chalking the doors at Epiphany - simple marks that prompt prayers each time we walk through our front doors.
The traditions of Candlemas - including a candlelit procession - being physically led by light into the world,
and Beating the Parish Bounds - a prayerful walk through the landscape, connecting faith, memory and place.
Each of these traditions originated as a way to teach something about the truth of our faith without lecturing. To help root belief in the body as well as the brain. To encourage awareness of God who is transcendent and yet immanent - a Lord who is everywhere and whose Spirit is here.
Jesus’
sharp words to the scribes and Pharisees in our gospel reading today are not an
attack on tradition, ritual or inherited practice. We know this because we read
elsewhere of Jesus participating fully in the liturgical life of Israel. His
challenge in this passage is specific - and unsettling.
“You
abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
He
says.
The example
Jesus gives perhaps needs some explaining. He talks about something called
Corban - which we understand to have been money or goods dedicated to God.
Nothing wrong with that, you might say. But the gospel implies that some people
had been using Corban as an excuse not to help those in need. To say, to their
parents, for example - I cannot use this money to help you because it is
dedicated to God, while still retaining control of the money themselves.
The
tradition of Corban, while honourable and respectable in itself was being
misused. Jesus is clear that such uses of tradition are contrary to God’s will.
It allowed people to seem pious and faithful while not sharing God’s love by
helping those in need.
Instead of
connecting head and heart, to allow God’s love to shine forth in all they
think, say and do, the way some had begun to use their traditions had started
to do the opposite. To separate head from heart. To separate devotion from
obedience to God’s command to love.
This is
when traditions become dangerous.
Jesus’
words this lunchtime help us to ask questions about the rich traditions we
encounter in our own church in a way that is formational. Not “is this
authentic”, or “is this Anglican” but “in what way is this tradition opening
our hearts to God?” “In what way is this tradition helping to connect our
brains and bodies becoming to receive and share His amazing grace?”
As we
prepare to start the season of Lent next week, another period in the church
rich with tradition, one useful practice might be to look at the traditions, rituals
and habits that we follow - both in church and outside - and ask whether they
draw us closer to God and to each other?
To use the
invitation to live a holy Lent to not just examine our hearts and consciences
but to ask how our devotional practices shape and connect them. So that what we
think, say and do today flows not from self-interest or appearance, but from
hearts and lives genuinely formed by God’s love and his will for us.
Amen
Links
More information about The Church of England’s Daily Devotions through the
forty days of Lent can be found at this link. We have a
stock of booklets with daily reflections, which cost £2.75.
The Diocese of London is offering an online Lent Course, which can be joined
live or watched later. Find out more at this link.
Here at St Olave Hart Street our ‘Hart Group’ – a friendly group of those at
different stages of their faith journey who meet for discussion over dinner,
are going to start looking at the structure of Choral Evensong – why we say
what we say and sing and how it makes them feel.
Our own Lent Course this year, offered in three online sessions, explores the
text of 1 Peter to ask what it means to be God’s own people – and what it means
for St Olave Hart Street to be our ‘own church’. Find
out more at this link.
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