Tradition, but . . .

Soon I will be asked to look over the worship bulletins for Christmas. This will not be a difficult task. We will sing the same carols that we have sung for decades. We will read the same beautiful story from Luke's Gospel that has been read for centuries. We will do so in a church that is decorated the way we always decorate it. We will maintain our most cherished traditions while we celebrate the birth of the greatest change agent in the history of the world.

It is ironic that faithful people so often do not like change, but anyone who spends any time in church worship knows this (you should hear the comments I get if we sing just one unfamiliar hymn!). And our traditions embody something precious. Every time I put on a stole and chasuble (vestments that date from the Roman Empire) and pray at the altar with the very words that Jesus himself used, I feel deeply connected to a reality that extends around the world and down through the ages. We are part of God's ongoing love affair with humanity, and our most sacred acts and words serve to remind us of that.

And that is never more true than during this time of year, when tradition abounds and we look back in comfortable, familiar ways to an ancient story which warms us in part because we know it so well and have heard it so often. But the great message of Advent is to stay awake! And the season does not just look backward to a beautiful birth narrative but emphasizes that we need always look forward to the coming of the One who gives new birth and new life. One of the last things that the Risen Christ says in Scripture is "See, I am making all things new" (Rev. 21:5).

So by all means let's put out the familiar decorations and sing the familiar carols, but let's never forget that God comes among us to change us and change the world through us. Light the Advent Wreath and be open to how Jesus is calling you to be light to the world, perhaps in new and uncomfortable ways. Sing the old carols — and take them seriously. When we sing "cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today," imagine how Christ can be born anew in you. We often like to look to the past, but Jesus is always calling us into the future, into a new reality that we are part of.

Someone once defined the difference between "tradition" and "traditionalism" this way: tradition is the living faith of dead people; traditionalism is the dead faith of living people. May all our Advent and Christmas tradition make us alive in faith and always open to the new things God is doing in our lives and in our world.