By the Grace of God I am what I am: Tradition, Deep Thoughts, & the Sacred Pathways of Intellectuals and Traditionalists ~ 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

  

How do you know if you’re an intellectual? Well I discovered a whole area of the internet dedicated to jokes that supposedly only intellectuals will get. Here are a few. Scroll down slowly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do you know if you’re a traditionalist? You find the placement of jokes in a sermon during worship to be inappropriate.

This more than being silly. According to the Sacred Pathways, intellectuals are more than people who are smart. Intellectuals – those who love God with the mind and connect with others in that way. You can be very smart and not, as a Sacred Pathway, be an intellectual. My wife isn’t and she is one of the smartest people I know AND a college professor. And a traditionalists aren’t those who necessarily want everything and order and everything in its place but those who love God through ritual and symbol. Funny enough, both have their patron saint as the Apostle Paul and 1 Cor. 15:1-11 provides an excellent source for understanding these pathways as well their potential challenges.

Tradition reminds us what is of “first importance.” tradition reminds us to pay attention what should be passed on; what’s of “first importance”. And I hope you’re paying attention because it’s a long list. The Apostle Paul will go on to reveal what exactly you should wear on Tuesdays, what you should eat on Wednesdays, and who you should vote for in every presidential election. Just kidding. He actually goes on in two verses – two verses – to tell us what is of “first importance.” So what’s fundamentally important turns out to be smaller than we often imagine – Christ died, according to the Scriptures; Christ rose, according to the Scripture. Done. Tradition must always be gospel-oriented and even that’s small. That’s what will unite us. Tradition, what we might want to call big T tradition, in the early church was focused upon the centrality of Jesus’ death and resurrection (e.g. look at the Apostles’ Creed).

Let me be clear “divorce” maybe important but it’s not of “first importance.” Ones thoughts about baptism or the Lord’s Supper are incredibly important – but don’t rise to “of first importance.” There are plenty of social issues that are critical but not big T tradition. The tradition that ultimately matters isn’t in the songs that we sing, the precise way we have communion, or even what we think about every ethical thing. The tradition is Jesus died according God’s Word, God’s plan, Jesus risen, according to God’s Word, God’s plan, and testified by people long before me and you.

Tradition reminds you that you’re fully loved by God but not that special.

When we anchor ourselves in tradition, we learn the delightful reality that we are one of billions whom God loves, whom God calls. We aren’t that innovative, aren’t that clever, aren’t that faithful, aren’t that smart. Tradition reminds you that it is by grace that you are what you are; that it is what God has done for you and not what you do for yourself. Tradition – receiving what is passed on and passed down by others will reveal to Paul how lovingly unspecial he actually is. Paul will often make a big deal about how was called, fighting with opponents and claiming a mantle for himself based on the dramatic experience of encountering the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. It’s not too hard to imagine Paul being with other believers and remarking, “You know I saw the resurrected Jesus. He spoke to me and gave me a task.” And yet he quickly received responses like, “Hey, I did too.” “Yeah, me as well.” More than 500, he tells us. And this recognition of tradition – that others know and love Jesus helped him become less special and understand in greater measure that grace – undeserved favor – is what determines who we are and how God feels about us.

Greek of the week: What are we to make of “abnormally born” in vs. 8? First, it’s a terrible translation of ἔκτρωμα. The word literally means “stillborn” which is also hard in the context of Paul’s point to make sense of. However, when we contextualize the word further by looking at the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, we discover that it appears three times with one interesting connection.  In one instance, the wider context appears to be in reference to defiance of the authority of God. In Numbers 12:12, Miriam is struck with leprosy because of her defiance of the authority of Moses; in fact, Miriam had arrogated herself the title of spokesperson of the Lord on par with Moses. When Aaron noticed her with leprosy, he described her as the living dead with flesh like that of a stillborn. So it’s possible, and perhaps makes best sense of the passage, to say that Paul’s action of persecuting the church, challenging the authority of God, made him like Miriam – for which he suffered.  

Friends, let tradition lead you downward to the freedom of becoming the “living dead” free of a life based on performance or success? Let the Apostle Paul’s journey with tradition of Jesus shape you. Paul still has a way to go – in fact, not without a little irony, after saying, “by the grace of God I am what I am” he will then go on to say, “I worked hard than all of them.” But don’t despair, Jesus who died and rose again isn’t finished with Paul. Later in Ephesians Paul will not say that he is the “least of the apostles” but ⁸ Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ,.” And finally, 1 Timothy 1:15, he declares:  Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Let the full weight of grace, the tradition of Jesus died and risen, pass on to you grace so that you can pass on grace to others.

Pathway Companions

If “intellectual”, was in your top three pathways would you please stand up and wave to the other smart folk? There’s a big scholarly world out there filled with thoughtful and engaging scholars. Robert Barron – read And Now I See . . . Read N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus.

If “traditionalist”, was in your top three pathways would you please stand up wave to others? Again, so many good people here. I would recommend reading James K. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom or Leanne Van Dyk, A More Profound Alleluia: Theology and Worship in Harmony.

Gentle Warnings:

You are not a brain. You have a brain. The Apostle Paul will on more than one occasion refer to spiritual realities as that which “surpass” knowledge or understanding (Phil. 4:4; Ephesians 3:19). There is nothing wrong with using your brain, your intelligence, in service of God. But you must always remember that God is not a subject to be studied and that the mind is a great place for the distortion of ego to hide. St. Augustine, a man of towering intellect, said:  "Si comprehendis, non est Deus." Roughly translated this means: “If you understand God, what you understand isn't God.” The antidote to overthinking – and it’s always the antidote for any spiritual issue – is prayer. But prayer isn’t simply one more exercise in mental fortitude, a heaping of bigger words, but the surrender of one’s thoughts and a bringing down of one’s attention into the heart. St. Theophane the Recluse, the nineteenth-century Russian mystic, will say, “The concentration of attention in the heart – this is the starting point of prayer.” It’s in that concentration that you will discover God as the ground of your being who cannot be described with any sort of logic or words. It’s there that you will learn with the Apostle Paul: “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15: 10a). The only way to know anything is by grace.

Recognize what shouldn’t be passed on. To acknowledge tradition is to also acknowledge that somethings shouldn’t be passed on. Tradition must never be a romanticization of the past. The traditional church helped maintain slavery, harmed women, practiced antisemitism, collaborated with unspeakable violence. If you find yourself always decrying modern realities then perhaps you should engage in a more honest reckoning with the past. There are plenty of things that must not be passed on.

Finally, Jesus taught us that “God is not a God of the dead but the living” (Mark 12:27; cf. Luke 24:5). Small “t” tradition must never be used as an inoculation to change. The grand revelation in John’s Apocalypse is of the God “who is and was, and is to come” (Rev. 1:8). My point is that God is at work at all times and in every season. And while there are many things that should not change or that might need to change slowly that doesn’t mean that many other things can’t or shouldn’t. Every tradition was new at some point. Tradition is a living thing. There was a time when “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” was new. There was a time when our hymnal did not exist. The Tradition, with a capital T, that the Apostle Paul acknowledges is Christ died and Christ risen must always give way to new metaphors, new sounds, new images, in service to the One who is still alive.