(Audio)
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
We do honor God with our lips, but where are our hearts? Are they far from him? How can we tell? And if they are far from him, how can we return?
We should cling to God's commandment even in the face of human tradition that is opposed to it. Whether it is within our churches, within society, or within our own families there is always the risk of human tradition that is designed to moderate the complete commitment and surrender that Jesus really wants from us.
The deviations from the true way usually start off with noble sounding excuses and proceed until habit becomes tradition and we eventually forget how it even began. The weight of precedent prevents us from even questioning a lot of what passes for Christianity. But if we take a glance back to the commandments we quickly stand revealed for what we are. Are we loving God with our whole hearts and our neighbor as ourselves? Are we honoring father and mother?
The traditions of men protect our wealth, our status, our reputation, and our comfort. The purpose of God in creation is love. It is all too easy to substitute this love for tradition. To avoid this peril we need to recognize that God has a purpose for us in creation and to live according to that purpose. We can trust that the creator who made all things to be good has a good purpose for us.
God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.
In mankind living his vocation of love creation is upgraded from good to very good. Human tradition isn't equipped for bearers of the divine image. It is too static, too stale, and too inherently selfish. It seems safe, but that safety is a dangerous illusion. Let us turn instead to the Tradition we receive from the living God. It is a living Tradition that reminds us again and again that our purpose is love. This is the meaning of the sabbath rest wherein we have a Tradition of prioritizing love above the tyranny of any work.
Since on the seventh day God was finished with the work he had been doing,
he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.
So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy,
because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation.
Let us rest in the arms of the one who loves us.
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
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