Jesus Plus…Tradition St Mark’s 6.3.16 Deut 6:4-7; Ps 78:1-8; Gal 1:11-14; Matt 15:1-9
“For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.” (Gal 1:11-14)
Introduction
Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one long rebuke whose pitch is consistently high. Where he thanked God for the Corinthian church, though they had sins ranging from incest to denying the resurrection of the dead, he has no praise for the Galatian church because they were entertaining teaching that attacked the gospel message (1 Cor 1:4). This letter is a profound picture of the ongoing spiritual battle between the grace of God and the laws of man and between a religion of good works and one of faith. But our passage today touches on a root problem that has constantly corrupted Christianity and is almost always very poorly dealt with. I have fought against this terrible problem in every church I have been a part of because it drains off the spiritual power of Christians to reach out into the world with the gospel. It is the “Jesus plus…” problem. The false teachers in Galatia were preaching Jesus plus the Jewish law, some churches today teach Jesus plus baptism for salvation, another teaches Jesus plus Mary. When I was younger I was thrown out of a church meeting for argument with a “Jesus plus speaking in tongues if you want to go to heaven” group.
I hear that last week Alison preached against trying to follow Jesus plus “other gods”; spiritualism, Hinduism, Buddhism and so on. This is important. But there is a dimension to the “Jesus plus…” problem that is so devious it is rarely recognised and confronted because it induces spiritual blindness to the presence of Jesus himself (Rom 2:19; Rev 3:17). The stubborn problem which Paul confronts in today’s passage is Jesus plus religious tradition. This problem hides in the most unlikely places.
As a new Christian I joined a dynamic new Pentecostal Church which was very conscious of being different to older traditional churches. I remember a preacher, they never preached for less than 45 minutes [why not?], describing the mainstream churches being like Lazarus; when Jesus raised him from the dead, he hopped out of the tomb like a mummy wrapped in the grave clothes of useless traditions, Jesus’ word to the older churches was the same as that spoken to Lazarus, ““Unbind him, and let him go.”” (John 11:44). After a while I realised that this church’s condemnation of tradition was in fact part of their tradition of spiritual superiority and it took our eyes off Jesus. When I raised with the pastor why he allowed speaking in tongues in public without interpretation his answer had nothing to do with Christ and I knew my time in that place was limited. The dividing line between godly traditions e.g. saying the creeds and reading the Bible in Church (John G’s repeated comments) and useless human traditions has to do with the gospel.
Who’s Gospel?
When Paul say to the Corinthians, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,” (1 Cor 15:3); he unapologetically uses the language of tradition because gospel tradition is all about Jesus. Thus when he says in Galatians, “I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.” he is making it crystal clear that no earthly authority was the source of his message. The gospel of Christ does not come out of Paul’s head but out of God’s heart (Piper). As such it was spoken with divine rather than human authority (Mark 1:22). As our passage makes clear for Paul to start preaching the gospel of Jesus as the Messiah involved a remarkable transforming conversion experience.
The Paul of Tradition
“For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.” (Gal 1:13 cf. Acts 8:1ff; 9:1ff, 13ff; 16:9ff; 22:4ff). Before he met Jesus Paul/Saul was a Jewish terrorist. The book of Acts describes him leaving the stoning of Stephen “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” (Acts 9:1). Just this week (2/2/16) there a major article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz titled “Christians in Jerusalem Want Jews to Stop Spitting on Them.” The article relates incidents of spitting, assault and intimidation. This is the type of attitude, though much worse, that Paul carried because he was absolutely convinced that the Jewish Law as it had been taught to him was utterly irreconcilable with the message that the crucified Jesus was Messiah. Christianity was a corrupt heretical version of Judaism polluting the faith by suggesting that Gentiles could be saved without keeping the Law of Moses. The key to understanding this degree of fanaticism is wrapped up in the words, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.” (1:14). Paul has more to say about the nature of such “fatherly tradition” in Acts.
Tradition
““I am a Jew, born in Tarsus… brought up in Jerusalem…educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God….” (Acts 22:3). Gamaliel was a rabbi famous for his learning and his veneration of the Jewish law, a law which in Paul’s day included hundreds of strict ritual and moral rules handed down by word of mouth. Whereas Jesus attributed his great authority to his heavenly Father (John 14:11) the rabbis looked to men like Gamaliel as father-figures to whom they were powerfully bound by ties of loyalty. The constant clash between Jesus and the Pharisees was ultimately a clash over fatherhood (Matt 5:21ff; 15:2; 23:2ff.). Christ made his Father wonderfully accessible; the “traditions of the fathers” in Judaism made getting to God seem impossible (Matt 23). Paul had once been trapped in a father-son religious system that was a dead human tradition and hated the prospect that this would happen to his spiritual children in Galatia (4:19). From personal experience the apostle knew the difference between being under a legalistic system of rules and the liberty which the gospel of Jesus brings. Jesus shares us the power of his own glorious life but following mere human traditions cuts us off from the life of God. Let me give a recent example.
When fighting broke out last year between different tribes in South Sudan it triggered off conflict amongst Anglican Sudanese in Perth that was so strong that the archbishop shut down one of their churches. After praying about this problem I went to their senior minister with a very counter-cultural message I believe was from God. Underneath the obvious idolatry of tribalism was a generations old tradition of accepting unquestioningly the authority of tribal fathers in their condemnation of other ethnic groups. It had never crossed the mind of the archdeacon that the root problem was a tradition of false fathering which had nothing to do with the Father of Jesus. Jesus plus our fathers’ authority is far more common than we imagine.
Traditions which are not Christ-centred is that they never spiritually empower; they are merely traditionalism. Someone famously said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And…it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.” (Pelikan). To test whether we as a church are following the gospel tradition or traditionalism let’s look at a couple of real life contemporary examples:
Ros Appleby recently sent a letter to Church Council headed “Family Friendly Church” making an appeal that our All-Age Service be limited to an hour so she and others could feel comfortable in inviting friends with small children. Since Jesus said ““Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”” (Luke 18:16) it is plain that anything which would stand in the way of the little ones coming to Christ through the Church should be removed. It is easy to have an All-Age Service in an hour if we drop communion and use a very simple form of liturgy. The fact that this issue needs to be raised at all shows that we have a tradition of allowing traditionalism to get in the way of bringing people to Christ. Here is another example that disturbs me very much. When I heard that there was going to be a large amount of money flowing back to the parish from our property redevelopment I got quite excited, because I immediately began to see how we could up some sort of Christian presence in the midst of Bassendean somewhere on Old Perth Road. But when I found out Anglican headquarters had decreed that these funds must be used for the upkeep of buildings rather than outreach ministry into the needs of the community I became quite angry because this decree is a formula for death. People must have priority over buildings; today Jesus would be found amongst the poor, homeless, addicts, abused, struggling families and the mentally disturbed. The unhealthy development of tradition has already turned the great cathedrals of Europe into “fossil museums” and the same is happening here. I was walking around Melbourne early in the morning a few weeks ago and went past St Paul’s Cathedral. The steps and lawns of this beautiful building were covered with sleeping homeless people whilst all the doors were firmly bolted. The sort of tradition which has kept Jesus locked inside churches gives churchgoers some sense of security and significance but paralyses mission. The only thing can break the stranglehold of men’s religious traditions is the revelation of Jesus Christ. The authentic Jesus tradition comes directly from heaven and it gives you the power to witness to Christ.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
Paul says “I did not receive”, the gospel, “from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1:12). Paul spent years studying the Bible under those considered to be the best teachers in the world, but when he had an immediate supernatural visionary encounter with the heavenly Jesus on the road to Damascus his whole religious world was turned upside down. From being a persecutor of Christians and someone who despised the name of Jesus he became the greatest witness for Christ of all time (2 Cor 5:16; cf. Eighteen Benedictions etc.). Here is how the Acts describes his transforming conversion experience; “immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” But he became more and more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.” (Acts 9:20-22). From a hater of the gospel message Paul became the most powerful evangelist of all time; the secret of how this happened is found in several other passages in Galatians. In 1:16 we read “God was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (1:16 cf. Matt 16:17). Traditionalism and legalism kills joy but the revelation of Jesus brings the blessing of God the Father and great joy (Matt 16:16-17; Rom 14:17; Gal 4:15). This is how Paul describes such an experience later in Galatians, “But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. 5 God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. 6 And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”” (Gal 4:4-6). The traditionalism I see across the churches is like a dead hand choking the airway of the Spirit so that we people are unable to spontaneously cry out ““Father, our Father.””
Any genuine Christian tradition will be filled with the presence of the life of Jesus himself (1Cor 7:10, 11:23; 15:3). A church that experiences the revelation of Jesus Christ will be bathed with something no human tradition can impart, the pleasure of knowing God as Father and the power this brings to live for God. This sort of tradition means people can’t stop talking about Jesus and showing his love to the world.
Deep in their heart no real Christian wants to be bound by useless tradition, so why does this happen again and again? The Jesus plus problem is rooted in unbelief about God the Father’s willingness to reveal his Son Jesus to us/to me! Unbelief over the revelation of Jesus is always a sign that we have forgotten the full and final revelation of the love of God in the cross and have become distracted by other things (Gal 3:1). Our faithfulness to following the way of Christ’s cross is the test of everything (Gal 2:20; 5:11, 24; 6:14). Everyone who has had a life transforming revelation of the cross will have a heart to take the risk in reaching out into the community beyond the church with the message of the gospel.
Conclusion
When I first became an Anglican I heard an expression I had never come across before, “Such and such is a “good churchman”.” Someone who was as a regular attendee, a helper with the flowers, a lay pastoral assistant, a member of church council, handy around the property or assisting in the office, a member of MU…. All these things have their place but none of them can substitute for the power of the revelation of Jesus Christ. This sermon is being preached to an Anglican congregation but the problem of traditionalism is right across the Church. My old arrogant Pentecostal Church correctly discerned that there needed to be different ways of doing Church if we were to keep bringing lost Australians to Christ. They were right to pay heed to Paul’s prophetic words, “in the last days there will come times of stress. 2 For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. 3 They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. 4 They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God 5 holding the form of religion but denying its power.” (2 Tim 3:1-5). Sadly, if you walk into the average Pentecostal Church (cf. Hillsong) today there may be great music and plenty of young people but the sort of things that first attracted me to that form of religion, healing the sick, casting out demons, reading and preaching the Bible and so on, all of which reveal the life of Christ, have disappeared. This is the triumph of traditionalism in our day.
The Jesus plus problem at times makes me feel angry, but much more deeply it makes me feel sad; the sort of spiritual sadness a genuine spiritual father/mother feels which made it impossible for Paul to give thanks for the Galatian church. If the revelation of Jesus makes God happy a powerless religious life bound by the laws and traditions made up by men saddens his Spirit of God. Where is your life today? Are we willing as individuals and as a church to allow the power of the cross to strip us of any useless traditions whatever the cost and whatever the risk so others might have the revelation of Jesus? It is time to pray.