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The Difference Between Faith and Tradition

Jesus was drawing big crowds. He explained God and how He wanted the faithful to live in a way that ordinary people could understand. This made the priests and other high ranking people in the temple in Jerusalem very upset because it seemed like Jesus was more important to the people than they were, and the Pharisees and Sadducees knew they were much more important and educated than Jesus!    There were a lot of rules for the Jewish people that the church leaders (the Pharisees and Sadducees) enforced as if they were rules from God.  A group of these leaders left Jerusalem to find Jesus and criticize him.  They asked him why the disciples didn't follow some minor Jewish rules.  They were trying to prove Jesus and his apostles weren't good enough to instruct people about God.    Instead of trying to defend himself and his apostles against petty infractions of the rules, Jesus focused on important things! He said that God commanded that people honor their parents, but the Pharisees said it was more important to give money to the church than it was to spend it on things their parents needed.  Jesus said that taking care of (honoring) your parents was a command from God, but the Pharisees and Sadducees didn't seem to mind breaking it.     Jesus went on to remind them that saying you are honoring God, using all the right words, means nothing if you are not living and acting the way God has directed.  Doing the right thing so people will think you are a good person is doing something for the wrong reason.  You should do the right thing because it is right, even if people around you criticize you for it.    Traditions are important to people.  We all have things we look forward to when we celebrate a birthday - like having a birthday cake.  Traditions help connect us to our families, our friends, and our faith.  Traditions are good things, but they should never be more important than following the path that God and Jesus have laid out for us in the Bible.    When Martin Luther realized that the Catholic Church was doing the very same thing the Sadducees and Pharisees had done, he wrote down the things that the Church was saying that didn't follow the Word of God.  He nailed them to the door of the church in Wittenberg.  His "95 theses" were intended to help the Catholic Church correct what it was doing, but the pope and the church didn't want to give up their power or change their traditions, so the Reformation began and the Lutheran Church was the first result.

October 31, 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

October 2017
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