Traditioned
Abraham is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become the father of many nations.
– From Romans 4
Today is a day for celebrating Jesus’ earthly father. It is the “Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Their son Jesus left his home, was baptized by his cousin, and immediately went to the desert for forty days. When he emerged he began his ministry. From what foundation did this ministry spring?
Between Jesus’ baptism by John and his sojourn in the desert, Luke records Jesus’ genealogy.
Luke begins with Jesus. “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph” (Luke 3:23). But then he lists a total of seventy-seven generations, taking us back to the very beginning, back to Adam, the “son of God.”
As soon as Jesus begins to preach and pray, it becomes evident that he knows the scriptures and the stories of his Hebrew ancestors … like the back of his hand.
A genogram, which is just a simply designed family tree, allows us to quickly sketch physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual connections between our generation and earlier ones. Describing dates and names spawns story after story. These specifics help us value and learn from those from whom we came. Their past becomes our present which leads into their future.
My friend Nick writes a blog brilliantly titled “Mostly Consolation.” Nick is a hopeful, inspired and inspiring Methodist minister who loves to look at both sides of things. But one thing he describes about himself really has no sides:
I myself am temperamentally conservative. That is, I want to live a traditioned life. I am convinced that human beings over time have learned to live life well, to ask and to answer important questions well. I am convinced that to ignore those human voices of the past is the definition of foolishness. When I read a book about any topic at all, I want to go back and read the primary sources. When I listen to music, I want to plot where parts of a band’s or a composition’s sound comes from. And when I do theology I want to dig all the way to the tips of the roots. In fact, when doing theology, I am convinced that ignoring human beings and their thoughts and actions and lives over time is not just foolishness. This is truly for one part of the living, eternal body of Christ to say to another, “I have no need of you” (1 Cor 12:21).
I think Nick learned that deep respect for earlier generations from Jesus. Jesus learned from and valued everybody and everything, in the past and in the right-here-right-now. “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Come and see.”
Jesus knew before Paul that we are all one body, and all of us matter to each other. Jesus was, as Nick calls it, “traditioned.”
That’s the way it is with family trees. I learned from Roland and Angie, who learned from William and Dora and Herman and Tasie. And they learned from … in just a few decades the tree spreads wide to eight branches, then sixteen. I’ve been made from all those who came before me. And so have all of us.
I hope I can follow the example of Jesus. Rather than ignore the histories of those who came before me, can I honor their experience? Learn from it? Share it as best I can?
Lord, I hear trite phrases in my mind: time flies, time does not stand still. But trusting your invitation into the always-has-been, right-now and forever-will-be Kingdom of Heaven sets us apart from time and death. Let me hold this truth as self-evident, and know that it resides in the center of my being, beyond the crush of emotions and incomplete conclusions, beyond above all the frantic fragments of daily life. And Lord, let this bring me peace.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2019/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1764
