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One of the first things you see coming towards our parish is our sign. Right on the bottom it says “Scriptural & Traditional”. As these are the among the first words people see when they come to our parish, one could say they really define us. On this day when we celebrate Luke, the Evangelist for whom we are named, it is fitting to ask ourselves, “what does it mean to be Scriptural and Traditional?”
To do that, it makes sense to first look at what the Bible has to say to us. It just so happens that we get a look in our Gospel today at how Jesus approaches both Tradition and Scripture.
Now we would be hard pressed to say that Jesus is “traditional”, at least in the way the religious leaders in His time might define it. There are ways that Jesus falls into the tradition of the Pharisees, yet he chastises their leaders a lot. Jesus was baptized in the Baptism of John the Baptist, yet Jesus builds up His own followers separate from John. He also refers to John as preparing for the bridegroom who is now here in the form of Jesus.
At the same time, Jesus, like all good Jewish boys, went to Synagogue on the Sabbath. Not only was He there, it was, as Luke tells us, “His custom.” He even reads from the scroll handed to him, another typical action for worship in Jesus’ day and age.
The scroll is from the Prophets, specifically Isaiah. Here we see Jesus not only reading from Scripture, but responding to it as well. The passage Jesus reads from is this:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus reacts to this reading from the scroll by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus is honoring the traditions of His ancestors before. He is looking to the wisdom of the past. In doing so, though, He has an eye to what God is saying in the present. Though Jesus listens to the past, His real focus is on what is yet to come.
In order to be a church that is, as our sign claims, “Scriptural & Traditional”, we must do likewise. We must take the lessons we have gained from the past while moving forward, as Jesus did with John the Baptist. We must, at times, question those traditions we live into, as Jesus did with the Pharisees. Most of all, we must follow those patterns and rhythms that bring us closer to God, as Jesus did in the synagogue and through His own reading of Scripture.
To call ourselves Scriptural, we must know it. That is, we must know our Scripture. Not only are we called to understand what the words of Scripture mean, we must also see how it applies to us today. We must look at it to see how it is paving the road forward, as Jesus did through His reading from the Scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.
Scripture is not something that is dead and static. As the author of Hebrews says, “The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.” As we will pray in the collect 4 Sundays from now, we are called to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the words of Scripture. Sunday is a part of that work. We hear the words of Scripture each week, often moving verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter as we go. To truly be Scriptural, that work has to continue throughout the week, and we must not just read the Scriptures but live into them. This is what Jesus would have us do.
In both Scripture and Tradition, we see Jesus paving the way forward. Yet He does so by those ways that are tried and true. Through Jesus’ worship and His reading, He continues the long path of coming closer to God. That may look much different for us now, but our act of worshiping and our act of reading Scripture must do the same by strengthening our relationship with God.
We must also remember that Jesus had a firmer sense of the past than many of those around Him. In fact, He will remind His hometown shortly after our Gospel passage today of all the times towns like theirs that failed to recognize God’s working until God had to go elsewhere. Jesus is reminding them, as the Prophets have reminded us throughout the Season after Pentecost, that if they continue to do the same things their ancestors did before then they will suffer the same fate. If we do not know and confront the past, we are doomed to repeat it. That is one of the messages we receive throughout Scripture.
As we gaze at the past, we see the path we can pave to the future. Though it may look different from now, if we are to be “Scriptural & Traditional” then we must continue, no matter what, to adhere to whatever tools keep us within God’s presence. The Bible will certainly always be one of these.
If our identity as St. Luke’s remains being “Scriptural & Traditional”, then we must wrestle with what that means. Jesus paves a path for what that looks like today. Can we follow Him?