Time for a new tradition

I love the story about a synagogue in Eastern Europe where, as the Shema (“Hear O Israel, the Lord is one …”) was recited each week, half the congregation stood with hands raised and the other half remained seated.

This might not have been a problem, except each half insisted that their way was the synagogue’s tradition and, therefore, the right way. So, every week at the Shema’s reading, the standers stood and yelled at the sitters to stand up and the sitters sat and yelled at the standers to sit down.

Finally, the rabbi got fed up and took a stander and a sitter to see one of the founders of the synagogue, a 98-year-old man in another town, to find out once and for all what the real tradition was.

After the rabbi explained the situation, the old man said, “Standing is not our tradition.”

But just as the sitter was about to do the ha-ha gloating dance, the old man said, “Sitting’s not our tradition either.”

Frustrated, the rabbi said, “We’ve got to solve this! Every week everyone’s yelling at each other.”

The old man cried out, “Yelling — that’s our tradition!”

Yelling has become the tradition in our culture. Arrogance and tribalism are our traditions.

Backbiting and violence and playing Gotcha are our traditions, too.

I think it’s time for a new tradition, if not for the culture as a whole, then definitely for the church.

Depending on when you read this, we are either a few days away from the midterm elections or they've already passed, and it’s safe to say some of you are happy about the results and some of you are not.

Either way, I’d like to say something: Politics has become a poison in the church.

However, that’s something we can change, because with God all things are possible and nothing is impossible.

We have the power to reset. To return to our first love, to be the light of this dark world.

The church is meant to be a body that lifts up the name of Jesus, his name alone.

For those of us who call ourselves Christians, if we believe “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), if we want to be agents of change in this broken nation of ours, it’s the good news of the gospel of Christ, not politics, that should be held out, with humility and meekness.

That’s our calling, our mission, the very reason the church exists.

We’ve got to stop shouting at one another in person and on social media, stop sowing division.

I love the way The Message Bible paraphrase puts the well-known verse from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: “Love … cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

“Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always ‘me first.’

“Love doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel.

Instead, “love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth…trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back but keeps going to the end.”

The church is not about winning; it’s about loving, and love doesn’t yell or insist on its own way. It’s about soft answers turning away wrath, humility and thinking more of others and less of yourself.

It’s about strengthening relationships, not strengthening the rhetoric or defending the argument.

Maybe, with God’s help, we can make that our tradition and what we’re known for, because the world desperately needs to see God’s love through God’s people.