Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

As the noted Theologian, the Cowardly Lion of Oz would say: “Ain’t it the truth, Ain’t it the truth”

Especially when it comes to traditions.

I have found, over many years of observation and participation, that the traditions that are created out of great knowledge tend not to be traditions worth continuing, they tend to be carefully constructed cover stories, creating a way for someone to gain an edge on someone else. And the more carefully the tradition is explained, and the more sense it seems to make, the more suspicious I tend to become, knowledge puffs up, “Ain’t it the truth!”

On the other hand, the authentic traditions seem a little odd, don’t they? From out of nowhere they seem to emerge and, to an outsider, they don’t always make a lot of sense, but to those who follow them there is a building up provided, for these are traditions created out of love, and love builds up. “Ain’t it the truth!”

One of the things that I like talking to people about, or to be more exact one of things that I like listening to people talk about, are their traditions.

How do you celebrate your holidays?

What do you do on your birthday?

What restaurant do you visit for a special event?

And I always enjoy hearing about the little details that make a person, a family, a Church unique.

I was explaining to someone this week about the way that we sing a verse of a hymn at the end of the service, after the Benediction. It began on a Palm Sunday when the children had handed out the palms, near the end of the service. Earlier we had sung “Tell me the stories of Jesus” and I was so struck by the image of the words: “Into the city we’ll follow, the children’s band. Waving a branch of the palm tree high in our hands”

And I leaned around, just before the Benediction and said to the Organist – my memory, such as that is, tells me that it was Debby Fasanello during her first tour of duty – I said, “please, after the Benediction can we re-sing that verse about following the children”.

And we did and people liked it and so we did it again the next week and kept doing it, underscoring the reason we picked a particular hymn, underscoring the theme of the day.

A tradition, a good one, I think.

Certainly one that I enjoy explaining.

Traditions, healthy traditions, are always changing, for they are not based upon knowledge, but upon love.

And it’s not that we start out to make traditions or to change them, but we change, the world changes and the healthy traditions change in response.

We are like my old generational friend, Bob Seeger, who sang of his younger years, running against the wind, but then sings:

“I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out”

That’s how it goes with our traditions, as with our souvenirs and memories, what do we keep? When we know that we’ve got too much stuff, how do we know what to give up?

Today’s Gospel lesson gives us three traditions that were meaningful to Jesus, and when I find things that were meaningful to Jesus I try to pay attention.

The first tradition that Jesus observed was the one I pointed out to the children, he worshiped on a regular basis.

This always comes as a shock to some Christians but, Jesus was Jewish and as he put it, he didn’t come to destroy the law, he came to fulfill it for us. He deeply respected the traditional practices of the temple and synagogue especially when he attacked those who would introduce new, carefully thought out, carefully rationalised traditions, traditions that turned the temple into a giant fund-raising venue, traditions that honored people who gave great amounts of money and traditions that exhibited a complete vacuum of mercy and forgiveness and compassion.

But Jesus didn’t look with the puffed up vision of knowledge, he saw beyond the flaws of his faith tradition and he went and he worshiped with love and so he built up the faith of his disciples. And his second tradition was to teach, to really teach, for real teaching frees us up from what others have told us is true, and it allows to discover what is true.

Jimmy Carter once told the story about a time when he was speaking in Japan to a large group and he had an interpreter, Carter would speak and the interpreter would speak and back and forth it went. And he began his speech with a little joke, well much to his surprise and delight, when the interpreter finished talking the audience reacted with loud and lengthy laughter.

Afterwards a friend who spoke Japanese told him why everyone had laughed so loudly. The interpreter had said, “President Carter has told a very funny story. Everyone should laugh now.”

That is what most of what passes for teaching does, especially in questions of faith, it tells us how we should react and what we should do.

That was not how Jesus taught.

Here is the person who, more than anyone else who ever walked the earth, had the knowledge of what God was like and the meaning of life and he placed it in the context of parables about a runaway son and a self-righteous son and a beaten crime victim who has saved by someone who he despised because he was different, and he used field flowers and birds as symbols, and placed the presence of God in each common loaf of bread and jug of wine that people shared at dinner and when he got the occasional complaint that he wasn’t holy enough, that he was too secular in his imagery, too political in his teaching he said “let those who have ears to hear listen.

Mark doesn’t tell us what he said that day in Capernuam, but we know what Jesus’ teachings were like, and what Mark does tell us is that it sounded different than anything people had ever heard before.

People had become accustomed to hearing the same old, same old when they went to the temple. But this was different, this had authority to it. And it confused them, they didn’t know how to react to it, how to feel about it, Jesus didn’t tell them what to feel, he told them what was true and loving and he let that build them up.

Perhaps, for the first time, they were free to hear what God had to say to them.

It was Jesus tradition to worship and to teach.

And it was Jesus tradition to free people.

There was a man there that day and I won’t even pretend to be able to explain all of what followed.

But there were things inside that man, the people of that age called them demons, things that hated the freedom that Jesus was teaching and bringing to the people. And so he cursed Jesus and it twisted him in pain and ugliness.

And you might think that you’ve never seen or heard anything like that.

But I have.

I have heard things come from within people that are every bit as demonic.

I have heard the shouts of hostility and the whispers of hatred aimed at people because they are black or white, or Muslim or Jewish or Christian, or Gay or straight, or male or female. I have heard brilliant demons attack others because they are liberals or conservatives, Republicans or Democrats. I have heard husbands and wives who once loved each other enough to make promises about good times and bad, turn on each other with a raw and ugly hatred based on what they were sure they knew to be true. And Paul says to them all: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

You see, the demon was right that day, Jesus had come to destroy him, Jesus has come to destroy all of the those inner demons that keep us from being the people that we were meant to be, the people we want to be, the people we would be if we weren’t so afraid, if we weren’t so puffed up with what we think we know.

Jesus came on a mission to destroy the walls of separation that keep God’s people apart from one another.

Jesus came on a mission to destroy the sinful arrogance which brings out our own worst instincts.

Jesus came on a mission to destroy the demons of our souls that keep us from believing in God’s love and hold us back from loving one another.

But his mission of destruction is necessary so that he can rebuild and recreate us.

Jesus came to restore us to the image of God.

It is no wonder that unclean spirits, past and present, are afraid of Jesus, he has a tradition of destruction that is grounded in worship and teaching.

In the first of the books of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the children are taken aback when they discover that the savior of this different world is a lion named Aslan.

And they ask the Beaver “Is he safe?” And the Beaver responds, “Safe? Of course not. He’s a Lion. But he’s good.” In much the same way Jesus is not safe to have around your life, he came to destroy things that we hold close to us, but things that we know we are better off without.

But he is good. He came to free us from those things, so that we can be the wonderful and loving human beings God made us to be in the first place.

We find, in our traditions, the ways in which others have discovered their freedom and there are other traditions in which others, created and gifted differently in God’s image, have found their freedom.

And the test of a faith tradition is this: does it build you up? Does it call you to love the unlovely, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to work to destroy the puffed up demonic spirits of war and prejudice, injustice and indignity, and to build up others with love?

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.