A Living Treedition

The Living Treedition

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            We often understand life in metaphors with trees and flowers. A tree grows in Brooklyn.

 

 

                                              A rose grows in black in Spanish Harlem.           

It is the special one

It never sees the sun

It only comes up

When the moon is on the run

And all the stars are gleaming

It’s growing in the street

Right up through the concrete

But soft sweet and dreamy

There is a rose in Spanish Harlem

A rose in black at Spanish Harlem

-words sung by Aretha Franklin based on the song sung by Ben E. King

 

Aretha Franklin sang words based on a Ben E. King song

 

 

            Maybe we should be talking of a living Treedition.

            I remember in younger days seeing a play and then the movie, “Fiddler on the Roof”. I was a Protestant, a Biblical Christian. Tradition – oh it was important in Judaism, but I didn’t imagine it had anything to do with me, a Christian. Over the years I have come to believe that a tradition, a living tradition is something essential to the Christian faith. If we understand a living tradition as if a tree growing near a stream or an unconquered flower growing up through cement we begin I think to understand the glory and beauty of seeing we are each and every person part of a living Treedition.

            1.  A tree, if it is alive, is growing. A living tree is always growing. Its roots spread beneath and along the surface of the soil providing nutrients to the whole of the tree. Above the earth a tree grows both upwards and outwards that its leaves might collect sunlight and rainfall. We sometimes think that tradition is a dead thing, the thoughts and ways of dead men from ancient times or living in seasons unconnected to us. But a living tree, like one sitting in front of a house, giving it shade – is a tree that once was little more than a twig barely sticking its top leaves above the ground. But in a short time it grows above a house roof and gives shade to homeowners following homeowners. The tree witnesses children growing up and growing older, playing in the yard, and then leaving home to pursue dreams. A living tree survives the many seasons, giving shade from generation to generation.

A tree growing in my neighborhood

 

            We might think of a living tradition as inferior to a sacred book. A Christian might think the Bible is so much better than a tradition that one should dispense with traditions and teach solely the Scriptures. But if we think that way, we have likely misunderstood the very genius of the Holy Scriptures we revere. For upon what did the Psalmist meditate to give him the wisdom and the piety to write the songs and prayers of the Psalms? He meditated on the Law and contemplated the words of seers who had written and taught in previous days. As he contemplated the Word of God, the Word of God took root in his soul. If we understand the Psalms, we will understand that the Psalms were part of a holy tradition, words of a man who loved the words of God. The sown word planted into a soul to bear fruit to become a seed in the reading and praying of a soul studying the words of the Psalmist. The Scriptures are layer upon layer of a living tradition, God’s Word sown, studied, inspiring and producing fruit containing seeds to give birth to faith in new generations of hearers. Prophets, who had their lives shaped by word upon word, and precept upon precept, watched as life progressed in their era, in their generation, that they might write and speak of what they saw. Then their insights and stories also were added to the growing living tradition which we find recorded in Holy Scripture. Perhaps the most mysterious of all realities from a Christian viewpoint is how Jesus, in his young humanity was shaped by the words of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. At twelve years of age he asked questions of Priests, Rabbis, and of the Scriptures. At thirty years of age, he began to proclaim the release of the captives based on his having come to understand that he was being called to fulfill the Scriptures. In his humanity he was a disciple of the Word even as he was to become the teacher of all future disciples. The Bible does not teach us to disregard tradition. It teaches us to desire to build something precious to be placed upon an already existing foundation of gold, silver, and precious stone. The Bible is not a repudiation of a Living Tradition but a prime example of the Living Tradition’s existence.

            2.  As a tree’s seeds can be planted in many different soils, locales, and climates so a tradition beginning in one place can be grown in yet another place. In Fiddler on the Roof, the people of the village of Anatevka had to carry their tradition to new places like Chicago, New York City, and Warsaw. The situations of life made rabbis ponder and as the branches of Judaism spread upwards and outwards there grew to be Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed branches within Judaism. In Christianity we have so many church denominations that they can hardly be counted. We often wish our traditions were simpler. But should it be surprising if as our number of branches multiply each branch comes to show forth certain individual characteristics? We can hardly expect uniformity when our living tradition has experienced such diverse settings as an agrarian past, the days of empires, feudalism, a growing merchant class during the Renaissance, the rise of science, the industrial age, and now a confusing digital age. Surely we might expect traditions to be marked by differing characteristics of survival in differing surroundings. But if we look close we might see that in each tradition there is a sense of some universals such as our call to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

            3. An old tree usually has scars. There are many reasons trees have what appear to be flaws. A tree once starved for sunlight may have grown crooked at some point in its life after it grew in a way to reach for the available sunlight reaching its leaves. A scar emerged from where the tree was struck with lightning or fought off disease or pestilence. A tradition is not to be venerated as a perfect history to be worshipped. A tradition is something to be remembered as the story of a God who loves us and preserves us despite our own weaknesses in difficult seasons and times. For example I am an Anglican. In my tradition I like to remember figures like Donne, Hooker, Jewell, Lady Huntington, Newton, and Wilberforce. But I also know that Scots Presbyterians and Irish Catholics have good historical reasons to see in my Anglican history treachery and evil. We value our legitimate traditions not because they are perfect but because they are the backgrounds into which we came and lived the Christian life. Perhaps a story that recently was told on the internet can bring out this reality.

            A wife wished to give her husband a photograph of her as an anniversary gift. After looking at the photograph, the wife asked her photographer if the photographer could remove her flaws from her body. She wanted an enhanced photograph to show her husband what she wished he could see instead of the flaws which embarrassed her.

            The husband looked at the photograph and wrote a letter to the photographer. He explained that he understood she only did what his wife wanted her to do with the photograph. Then he explained why the photograph disappointed him. He told her that for one thing when she removed the stretch marks she removed marks that reminded him of what they did together in bringing their children into the world. He understood that life had been at times rough on them. As a result she no longer had the young woman’s figure and freshness of complexion she had when she was a young bride. But they had aged together and he had learned to see in her aging skin and imperfect features how those features told the story of a relationship treasured through thick and thin by the two who walked it together. He realized seeing the wife’s enhanced looks that he had come to realize that her beauty worn by age, sorrows, disappointments and also successes and a happiness of their being together had made all the things that are counted as flaws to be beauty marks of a deep and abiding relationship. When we look at our varying traditions it is not to see an idealized perfection but to see scars and to know that our God has been good to us in days of abundance and days of affliction.

            As traditions like trees are transplanted beyond their original boundaries they seem to grow differently and look differently than in their original settings. The story was told of John Chapman who ventured into the lands west of the Appalachians and discovered there were no apples in the lands cradled between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. He took apple seeds and began planting them in the lands. He became known as Johnny Appleseed. The story loses a bit of its romance I guess when we discover that Chapman also sold real estate in the lands. Already planted trees could be a good selling point to attract new settlers to buy the plots of land you were selling. That said the Christian faith tradition has been carried from old lands into new lands time and time again.

            At one time, a Christian was thought of us probably being someone from a small sect, almost exclusively from the regions we today call Israel, Palestine, and Syria. The Christian faith was planted in the Middle East and then taken to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Throughout its history it has been moving and being planted in new soils and affecting endless tribes and cultures. Some of us imagine Christianity tied to our particular tradition as if our tradition is the entire Christian tradition. But the truth is the Christian tradition is discovered as if growing like a tree in Brooklyn, as a rose in black in Spanish Harlem, as prairie grass or grain fields in the Midwest, as palm and Redwood trees in California, as bamboo in southeastern Asia, and taking root in differing locales and cultures across our globe.

            On Twitter, I follow a young woman who shows a love and excitement for the Scriptures. She has expressed openly a thankfulness to be the grand-daughter of a prominent African-American minister of a former generation. C.L. Franklin’s name is one with which I was never familiar in my particular Christian heritage. A lot of us did know and listen to his daughter Aretha sing those words about a rose in black growing in Spanish Harlem. A tradition is a heritage that is alive and stirs up memories of faithfulness in lives from before we were ever born. Our traditions have an impact on us in the lives transformed that speak to our own lives. I don’t think we can fully trace how much we owe to a living tradition which impacts our lives through lives impacted for generations because one human being entered a community and had an impact on that community in life and word.

            Finally, let me add something that ought to be obvious. We are probably each seated along a certain branch of the Christian tradition. Each of the branches of the Christian tree of tradition has grown from a seed and has stretched forth in its own peculiar way. Yet each of our limbs are connected to a tree that is connected to its roots and we live as a whole tree feeding on the nourishment of being connected to the roots which nourish us. There will be differences from one tradition to another, but where Christ has been planted in the life of humanity there will I sing and rejoice in the glory given to his name.