For This Reason 8

[HKHaugan]

Ephesians 3 has really had me doing some looking back and seeing the depth of the ‘Jew/Gentile’ conditioning and how the Lord Jesus made the two one in Himself so that we too could become one in Him. So please indulge my revisiting. I believe it can be beneficial as a kind of spiritual housecleaning in which we all can participate. Ephesians 3, in fact that entire epistle, is like finding yourself walking on a tightrope caught in the middle between two cliffs, structure and freedom, reason and tradition, fear and faith, the visible and invisible, needing balance and thinking you can’t make it and calling for someone to come and rescue you. But the Father whispers from Heaven, “This is my Son whom I love, listen to Him” and you continue. You’ve found the balance He put within called the Holy Spirit. You’re still who you are but the half that was lost has been returned. The tightrope is grace and His Word is what keeps the Holy Spirit’s balancing power free to traverse that deep canyon between personal faith and tradition.

Shortly after my descent into the bowels of New York City I was introduced to a youth group about twelve blocks south from my neighborhood. I don’t remember who got me there or even why but it became my safe haven. It was in an architecturally magnificent set of buildings, brownstone gothic with beautiful stain glassed windows, warm and inviting, I looked forward to being in. It even had a gym. People there were glad to see me. The kids at church never made fun of how I dressed, spoke or looked. It was the usual teen age chatter, but no demands that if not met ever meant my elimination.

There was no judgment just acceptance none of which I could articulate at that point because acceptance, rejection, hate and love were still being processed for later identification. You just kind of knew where you felt different and where you were safe and not afraid. It was an Episcopal church which meant nothing to me because it was the kids I connected with that were housed there. That was the beginning of my being connected to ‘church’, again a word that had no real meaning for me then. As Bible-belted as the South was in the 40’s I had never seen or even known what a church was except for an occasional reference to it by my parents whose distant connection was the Norwegian State Church.

What I had become a part of was not about faith, or Jesus or God but a tradition about God and Jesus and faith. I went to services every Sunday and looked forward to getting out of the apartment and the neighborhood whenever I could. The minister was a dignified clerical collared Englishman who dressed in very suave grey and a Homburg hat. His wife had that other trim, class conscious, country club look. Their children never associated with us, went to private school and seemed to avoid us even though they lived in the vicar’s house attached to the church. But the minister had something special about him when he was in the pulpit. Whoever was behind the beautiful carved gothic altar in the above and beyond, he had contact with and seemed to know who that was. I didn’t, but after memorizing a catechism that opened me up to a tradition of belief statements about God, sacraments, church and a Prayer Book, I became an Episcopalian. I joined a tradition, a group and a safe haven. It was something you did because the other kids had done the same thing.

Being confirmed got me to the next level of membership. I became and enjoyed being an acolyte serving at the altar with the vicar. I got deeper into the tradition and actually became a crucifer, the acolyte specially chosen to lead the choir in procession at the beginning of a worship service. My neighborhood saw less and less of me and I was getting closer to graduation which I longed for and finalized. The city was closing in on me and I had to get out. But I carried that tradition with me and went to church on Long Island where I also served as an acolyte. After a short while there I was really on the road, and never went back.

Now the reason for this little touch of history is the tradition part. Like I said I had joined a tradition which later would lead me to become a professional traditionalist called a clergyman, pastor, preacher or whatever you call them. But after ten professional years the tradition, which I think I was good at, didn’t work for my heart. While the idea of God grew on me, the Bible was still just a part of the tradition. Ultimately intellect and psychology, the conflicting culture and my own inner confusion led me to want out, at least in my mind. More about that later in another writing.

The point I want to make here is that many people are either raised or born into a religious tradition. The tradition was the important thing. It’s the new Pharisaic Law. It was part of a local culture or seen as necessary to be accepted and marketable. The personal-relationship-with-God idea was the private ‘tradition’ of Baptists and Pentecostals, their ‘corner of the market’ so to speak, and those traditions were not seen as appealing to the more religiously elite Episcopalians, Presbyterians and classic Lutherans. One simply did not share personal ideas of a religious nature. That was considered a bit tacky and rather embarrassing in polite circles. And if someone came into a clergyman’s office saying he had had a personal conversion experience or any spiritual happening he would be listened to either as someone with a psychological disturbance or having ‘a call to the ministry.’

Becoming an Episcopalian therefore was a self-promoting move that gave me keys to something the ‘they’s’ alone possessed, social acceptance on the highest level. And that is what I found to be the social truth when I joined the Episcopal Cathedral in Jacksonville and became a crucifer in 1950. Little did I realize at the time that that tradition would be foundational in my conversion at a later date. God has a unique way of gaining entrance in each unique person’s unique heart at the right time in their unique life. He rescued me with a life-preserver called tradition but getting me in the boat took longer.

What had happened to me has happened to many others like me who came in the back door of tradition like Paul, like the elder son with a prodigal brother, like the apostles in their just being ethnic Jews and found that Jesus was the heart of life, the reason for being and, of all things, actually the Savior and Lord of me and the entire universe! What I found out was that the tradition, which was supposed to give me that information, had left Him out. All the pictures, all the stained glass windows, the altars, the Prayer Book, the clergy; all the trappings were really pointers, arrows that were supposed to remind me of His centrality in my life. If anyone started with the personal faith idea I know I had that ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ look. My heart door would shut and shut tight. Tradition can get in the way but for me it was the foundation that gave me the mind but it would be Jesus who would make me a whole person in the Spirit.

John Stott had great wisdom and cautions us not to throw the baby out with bathwater. Tradition has its place but we must remember He came to the Jew first and then the Gentile. In our scrambling about to be as close to Jesus as possible in all we do we don’t divorce ourselves from tradition which is really a structure we need to stabilize our walk in the Spirit. He knew it was necessary when He told one of those he healed to go show himself to the priest and also that the Law could not be broken, both of which pointed to Him as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

“When we seek to follow Christ in distinguishing between Scripture and tradition, we must be careful not to overstate the case. Jesus did not reject all human traditions out of hand, forbidding His disciples to cherish or follow any. What He did was to put tradition in its place, namely a secondary place, and then, provided that it was not contrary to Scripture, to make it optional (Authentic Christianity 1995 John Stott).”