over the years the church has often gotten the idea of tradition and faith confused. on the one hand we have things that are tradition - practices that are useful and serve a purpose to bring life and healing to a place and people at a certain time, and then there are the teachings of Jesus - timeless principals that no matter who's listening, where or when they are, they always bring life and hope to those who hear them. the confusion comes when we use the one as if it's the other. traditions are like jelly, mould-able, wobbly, if you poke your finger in it it will break, it's important to have jelly in a faith community like ours, but we must never confuse it with the brick of faith in Jesus and what he taught. bricks are hard, have edges, you can build a solid structure from it. Jelly on the other hand it terrible to build with.
the trick comes when we use both. you need to put the brick in the jelly, and not confuse the two, sometimes we may need to look at the jelly as well and get a new flavour, make more because the old jelly has been eaten up or simply the people here and now just don't like it's flavour of this particular jelly.
bricks and jelly...
No comments:
Post a Comment