Tradition, the timeless courier of the eternal message we now hold dear.

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

You know, I haven’t been one to fully understand, nor appreciate the cost paid to bring me to my faith in Christ, from the time of Christ until now. I admit it. I have taken the ancient faithful for granted. I have not fully appreciated the sacrifice, martyrdom, struggles, traditions, preservation, and persecution that occured far before my short appearance and existence on earth. I see now that tradition has played a great role in me becoming a believer in our saving Lord. After being a believer for most of my life, it is just now that I look back into time to see the struggles and faithfulness of those that brought the only true message of hope for this world into the future, right to me.

I now imagine those faithful before me in time, like sacrifical, tireless marathon runners, ready to pass the baton to the next runner who will run along side them for a time, to synchronize in pace, to grasp and to receive the baton, and to deliver it those in desperate need of it now and in the future. And in that baton is the message of hope for humanity and creation now, and in the future generations. I see now that it is with each selfless step, guided by tried and true traditions, that these runners that have preserved the journey and message for the generations that follow.

The message is simple yet profound, priceless yet free to all. It is eternal and never becomes stale. It is the cure for the worst disease, death. It is the cure to the infection of sin and the eternal destruction it causes. The sacrifice that obtained this eternal cure was the death of the sinless Christ, that is the Son of God our Saviour. And this cure is to be given away freely, at no cost, to all who will receive it. Amazing! What a cure! What a message!

The call of the church is to carry and deliver this cure, in the form of a message of redemption, to the nations of the earth and to the future. Sadly, this journey throughout time has too often been met with persecution, torture and death. Do I really appreciate this? Do I honour the traditions that have been designed to protect and preserve this inscrutable message? Not nearly enough I admit.

I am now understanding that traditions carry and preserve the message of hope as if in a time capsule from the past, or in a bottle drifting over the seas of time to reach the sands of future generations. We find it, open it and now benefit from it. But will we carry it and trust the traditions that have delivered it to us?

I think of a Keven Costner movie, “The Postman”, that fittingly describes the value of the traditions of these valiant travellers that have gone before me. This story is about a lost man that unintentionally takes on the role of a postman and overcomes all odds to deliver messages in a post war-torn America, to communities lost without hope, gripped with fear, and without contact with the rest of America. This postman is then seen as a hero as he learns to follow the tradition of the postman’s motto, “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night will keep me from my appointed rounds.” He adopts this tradition as a virtue. I believe that those who have gone before me in Christ had followed a similar motto in much the same way, but with the message of redemption, and at times to their own sacrificial demise.

Traditions such as lent, advent, the Christian year, prayer lecterns, liturgy, and others are still fairly new to me. Though, my mind set toward these has changed. They were simply foreign to me and not part of my Christian experience. I once perceived these as mere religious and non-spiritual acts. How naive I was. I now see the value and richness these traditions bring to the church. Who am I to frown on the tools that I so owe my ultimate salvation to? That is not to say that they saved me. But I owe a debt of gratitude for my salvation to the role of preservation of the message of redemtion through the design of tradition.

I have resolved that one day, my body will most likely be buried in the earth and my role in this world will cease. But the roles of Christian traditions will live on and shout hope to the future generations as they guide humanity to God’s saving grace!

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