Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Memorial of Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr (nicknamed the “soul-snatcher”)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Doctrine
You must say what is consistent with sound doctrine.
Sound doctrine implies that it is correct and will do no harm. Doctors and dentists, engineers and conductors stick to what they know. But if they are dedicated to their profession and their patients, they always want to know more. Religious thinkers think the same. But in a talk we heard a few years ago from Ron Rolheiser, he distinguished between what he called “catechists,” (from Catechism) and theologians. Catechists stick to sound doctrine, what has been decided to be true, while theologians head toward the edges and ask questions that push back on what is currently considered “sound.” They are sounding the sea, so to speak, to see what else might be down there.
When doctors, engineers or religious thinkers stop sounding the sea, when any one of us stops searching the thus-far unknown, we fall into ruts and eventually drown in the mud. Tradition is one thing, but reactionary is another. At the Mt. Pulaski Christian Church, where Margaret and I were married 45 years ago, the joke was that our elders too often said, “We have never done it that way.” Seven words, laid in the path of progress. Tradition? Reaction? Good? Bad?
Always, both.
Just ask Tevye. The fiddler on the roof just keeps on playing his tune. The world is changing. That’s the point! But we must hold on to our traditions., so those changes don’t run over us and ruin us. That’s also the point!
Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do.
Of course. Surely this is true. Tevye, head and master of his house, prays for his family, his wife and daughters, as tradition expects.
Strengthen them, O Lord, and keep them from the stranger’s ways. May God bless you and grant you long lives, may God make you good mothers and wives. May he send husbands who will care for you, may the Lord protect and defend you, and preserve you from pain.
Favor them, O Lord, with happiness and peace. O Lord, hear our Sabbath prayer!
But his daughters choose their own husbands, which is very untraditional, and Tevye becomes angry.
Go on, be wed! And tear out my beard, uncover my head. Tradition! They’re not even asking permission from the papa. One little time I pulled out a thread, and where has it led? Where has it led?
Tevye is a thinker. He wanders his village wondering how things should be. He is a theologian, not a catechist.
On the other hand, our old ways were once new, weren’t they?
On the other hand, they decided without parents, without a matchmaker.
On the other hand, did Adam and Eve have a matchmaker?
Accept them? How can I accept them? Can I deny everything I believe in?
On the other hand, can I deny my own child?
On the other hand … there is no other hand!
We’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?
Today’s Saint Josaphat, Polish, Lithuanian, sought to snatch souls for Christ all his life. At the end his head was bashed by a hatchet in a struggle between Christians, and he died. His messiah had come, and he fought for him. His commitment to strong doctrine made him strong.
Older men should be temperate, dignified, self-controlled. Trust in the Lord and do good.
This is difficult – in the face of Tevye’s struggles with his daughters, in the midst of his village’s persecution by the Russian authorities, in Josaphat’s struggle with the “other” Christians, in my confusion about what is good in an American society where “good” is open to debate.
Jesus set a low bar for his disciples when it came to deciding what was good and what was not. He likened them to servants who are responsible to themselves and to God, to do what is expected.
When you have done all you have been commanded, simply say, “We have done what we were obliged to do.”
But Tevye would see the other side, and say, “On the other hand,” Jesus set a high bar for his disciples, because he knew their “ordinary awareness” separated them from each other, while their “spiritual awareness” would show them their unity, all one, children of God, never needing to protect themselves from each other. This is what God expects from them, what “they are obliged to do,” what is “consistent with sound doctrine.”
Paul threads the needle and recognizes that the grace of God balances the initial conflict between tradition and change.
For the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.
So … we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?
(Titus 2, Psalm 37, John 14, Luke 17)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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