I've been hearing a lot of talk about Lent this year, probably more so than I have in any other year I can remember. I'm not even sure how to approach all of this, because I have yet to figure out where I fall into place in this picture. But here are my thoughts that I have been wrestling with for a few weeks concerning Lent but moreover tradition.
Tradition is a peculiar thing to me. We are definitely creatures of habit and yet the artsy part of me wants to continually reinvent myself or the things I'm doing. This is obviously contradictory. Can you have tradition and reinvent simultaneously? Probably not. So I guess many of us are stuck in this cycle of pushing forward and looking backward. Well then, what takes precedence?
There is great value, I believe, in living within our context. You are never going to reach out to someone using very structured, organized, repetitive faith. Repetition, to me, is an easy way to find yourself very bored very fast with even the most exciting stories and the best news. I get upset when I see Christian sub-culture becoming more and more exclusive. In many churches I've observed a trend, which I'm equally as guilty of, in which they place high importance on community (which is a necessary and great thing) and little on how they are being light in a world that is very much consumed by darkness.
All that to say that there is value in being engaged in culture. This example may be widely overused but if we look to follow Jesus and we observe where he's been and what he'd do then we can see that he found himself immersed in culture and hanging out with what would be considered filth by not only today's society, but Christians as well. Then what are we so afraid of? I will not blindly let my children do what they wish without concern about their spiritual welfare, but when they are wise enough to know that they are to be in the world and not of it then there can be great worth in allowing them to observe the word as society views it (i.e. movies, music, etc.). This step into culture requires a bit of straying from traditional practices of Christianity in which we have a cookie cutter form for each believer.
Growing up I think I was trained to just assume that tradition, specifically within Catholicism, was a bad way to find God. For years I thought my friends who were Catholic really didn't understand Christianity. I believe that tradition was an evil that was destroying God's message. The older I've gotten the more I've come to believe that I was missing much of the point. Liturgy is just as important now (maybe even more so) as it was when it began in the book of Acts at the foundations of the Church.
I like to relate tradition to hymns. There is a resurgence of hymns in the modern Church that is very powerful. For me personally there is something exciting about singing the words that someone wrote in a completely different time and a completely different context. When we study the history behind the hymns/words we sing they take on new meaning and empower us to worship the creator of all things more passionately. I don't believe the authors really could even imagine the impact their words would have on many generations to come. So our tradition of singing the same words for hundreds of years is something to be excited about and when we look at tradition in this light there is a great deal of benefit to be had from it.
If Christ is unchanging then can it be wrong that we find ourselves in worship that is unchanging?
Let's perhaps rethink our stance on tradition, not losing ourselves in repetition, but gaining momentum as we build on what millions of other followers of Christ have already started.
love.
