Theologian Jaroslav Pelikan once alluded to a kind of nostalgia among modern-day Christians. Pelikan made a distinction between tradition and traditionalism: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time.”
As Alice, a member of my former congregation, often said, “The seven last words of the church are, ‘We’ve never done it that way before.’”
The caution against traditionalism – or nostalgia – is clear. But what does the role of tradition, the ongoing remembrance that marks “the living faith of the dead,” look like? Maybe a little like a tree. When we are rooted in the past, rather than trapped by it, we can grow upward, outward and onward. We can remember the whole story of who we were and who we are in ways that also free us, by God’s grace, to grow toward what we can be.
This message is excerpted from the Bible study “Holy time” by Meghan Johnston Aelabouni in the September 2020 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate Peter Claver, priest, missionary to Colombia, 1654.
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