Tradition on Fire

As a part of my own ordination process in the UMC, I recently had to go through a "barrage of tests" to determine various aspects of my personality and learn how traits might impact my ministry. It was a long and draining process, but a blessing to see an outsider's view of what my gifts--and challenges--could be while pursuing my vocation.

While much of the results seemed right on-point (I'm energetic, creative, a big-picture person, and not-always-good on follow-through), one seemed ridiculously out-of-place. According to the results, I don't like history or tradition.

I was floored. Me, the Church-History-Scholar, anti-tradition. Mrs. "I wrote my senior thesis on renaissance music and to this day geek out over Tudor England," against history. I could tell you more than you'd ever care to know about the development of far too many hymns and hymnals. And yet, there was my paper reflection looking back at me, claiming my dislike of what came before. Obviously, the results were off. But why?

It seems the tests missed that my love of history stands beside my yearning for relevance. History, on its own, is never enough. A meditation by Franciscan friar Richard Rohr reminded me that we must always have one foot in our historical faith communities and one foot in the larger world; one foot rooted in a good tradition that will hold you accountable to honest (though often difficult) truths and one foot in our own worlds of service, occupation, and subgroups. Christianity, more than anything else, is a lifestyle which should move beyond mere belief and styles of worship and into new systems to support each other as we live lives contrary to dominant culture. As Rohr said,

"How else can we imitate the surrender of Jesus, who did exactly the same in relation to his own Jewish religion? He never left it, and yet in some ways he always left it when it did not heal or help people. He formed his own little "parachurch" within and yet alongside the Jewish priestly system, which became, rightly or wrongly, its own separate religion which we now call Christianity."

We've been talking at First Congo a lot recently about what our mission is to be NOW. Who we are, where we've been, and what we want to be. And a big part of that is determining how to share our identity, our message, with others beyond our walls. As anyone familiar with 12-Step programs can tell you, we don't really embrace an idea ourselves until we actively carry it with us and teach it to others. We have to find the Love, and then give the Love away. 

It's amazing to me how these two things don't always happen in the same group.  And yet, both grounds are so, so important. Our history, our tradition, is what makes us who we are, is our well-spring and home base. The other, the outside, is the channel away from home that keeps our well from pooling up or becoming brackish. God may lead us beside still waters, but those waters are never stagnant. As composer Gustav Mahler is accredited with once saying, "Tradition is tending the fire, not worshiping the ashes."

And so we must. We must all put on our Educator hats, and go forth from this place to give the Love away to those in search of it. With that mission, however, a slew of questions. If our world looks different than it did last time we thought about such things, how does that change how we share our same tradition? How does our tradition's depth of beautiful worship, history of social justice, and identity within the gospel shape our responses to the world outside? And how can our gatherings at our well-spring better prepare us to go forth as Love-givers in the community?

May we carefully--and creatively?--tend the fire, and set the whole world aflame.