tradition

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders, and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash, and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God), then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” (Mark 7:1-13, NRSVue)

Which is more important, people or tradition?

I went to an ELCA congregation in Tulsa last Sunday that has a traditional Lutheran service at 9:30, a non denominational service from a different congregation in their basement at 10:30, and then a Catholic service in Spanish at 12:00. They bridge tradition and contemporary by having multiple services in their building. This moves beyond tradition. But at the non denominational service I saw a man with a shirt that said People First, Labels Second.

People are always first.

Before labels. Before tradition. Before rules.

People come first.

Do not think traditions are more important. People are always more important.