Tradition - Weslayan Quadrillateral

Overview of The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience

We have been reviewing these

Scripture is primary and interpreted through these lenses, this week we talk about tradition which in some ways, the quadrilateral itself is an example of tradition.

Tradition is Blackmail by Dead People

Story about Dave

There is a sense in which there are two sides to tradition

Why we need Tradition?

We don’t make things up ourselves

We exist within a particular tradition

We have the Bible

The articles of Religion

The Book of Discipline

The Apostles Creed

The Nicene Creed

And the entire history of the Church

We need tradition so that we don’t have to start from scratch all of the time in our faith

The ways that it helps us to see ourselves in correct proportion to God

Family traditions -

What are the drawbacks of tradition?

Tradition itself is value neutral and just because something is “traditional” doesn’t make it good

Tradition has been used to justify slavery in the early American Church

We exist in a denomination where we are having an ongoing conversation about striking “traditional language”

We know that tradition is not value neutral

What we are handed down from the previous generation is not something that must adopt, but it is always something that we must be in conversation with

Tradition is something that we ought to be open to allowing to change us

Tradition is ever living and ever dying

We need new images for how we are connected to those that go before us and I think this passage provides some images

Ephesians 2:19 NRSV

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,

We are surrounded by the Saints and Prophets

All saints Sunday here in a couple of weeks

Both the saints and the prophets of old but also the saints and the prophets of our own lives

We were likely here because someone maybe a parent or a friend said something that made us walk into this church this morning

We exist in a timeline that God is doing something significant in

We have the surrender of it not all being on us but also the hope of the world that is yet to come

As a people of instant gratification we need reminded from time to time that the church the ecclessia is far larger than us

Ecclessia not being lower c church but Capital C Church

The church is bigger than we thought

For Ephesians Ecclesia doesn't mean the individual unit of the church it means the tradition of the Church that has cosmic echoes.

We will sometimes differentiate this as the big C Church and the little c church

We are faced with the Question of if the church we are passing down is better or worse than the one that we received

Citizenship in the Tradition of God’s Church

we are citizens of God's Kingdom, participating in something greater than ourselves.

Citizenship is a helpful imagery for tradition because to be a citizen you both have benefits of participating (at least theoretically)

You are also called to add to or contribute to something that is bigger than yourself also

Tradition is the same way we both benefit from not having to reimagine everything from scratch while also having the responsibility to contribute in a meaningful way

We are adopted into the Tradition of the Church

To be adopted means to be brought into the family of God

this passage was addressing the Gentile/Jew divide

It means that even messy people like us are invited into the tradition of the Church

Ephesians 2:20 NRSV

20 built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:21–22 NRSV

21 In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

We are bricks of building we may never understand

We are not a part of a dead tradition we are a part of a building that is on-going

Often we draw on tradition as a source of authority when we are figuring out what to believe.

Out of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Tradition is the only one in which we are contributing members

Scripture we don’t have a way to change

Our experience is unique to us so when we bring that to the text it is not something that we can or do pass along to others

Reason is unique to us

Tradition is the only theological norm out of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral that we are contributors to.

A timeless God dwells in the Tradition of the Church

Ephesians 2:22 NRSV

22 in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Meaning that God exists in around and through not just the physical geography of the Church, but in amoungst and through the community that is the church.

We inherit something that we pass along

We are reminded not only that we have saints and prophets in our lives who have gone before us

We remember that we will be someone’s saints and prophet one day

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.