The Limits of Tradition

Gospel: Luke 1: 57-66

The figure of Zechariah provides us with important lessons for us about the importance of and limits to a religious tradition.  The first point is that a religious tradition is important for helping us discern God's presence in our own lives.  If we can look to the past and see God acting in similar ways in the lives of others it helps us discern God's action in our lives.  Zechariah failed to see that what God was doing in Elizabeth's life had been done in the lives of others in the tradition.  

At the same time, Zechariah also helps us to recognize that God is not limited to the tradition, that God does new things as well.  In giving the name John to his son, a name never before given in his family, Zechariah recognizes God's presence in the here and now, in the new, and not just in the past.  Just as Mary conceiving without intercourse is a new action of God, just as women are the chosen leaders of the story, God is showing his presence in a number of new ways in the Gospel.  

Advent is a time of recognizing God in our lives both through the tradition and in the new.  Tradition alone is a heresy that seeks to limit the unlimited God, to make the unknowable God utterly knowable.  It rejects the biblical truth that God has and continues to do new things, to reveal himself ever anew in our lives both in the tradition and in new things.  Advent is our time to discern how God is revealing by orienting us within the tradition and in seeing him within the new as well.