The virtues of heritage

Once it took a trip to Israel and stayed at the famous Seven Arches Hotel on the Mount of Olives.  The Seven Arches is the place where most of the panoramic pictures of Israel was taken. It is just feet away from Bethpage, the beginning of the Palm Sunday road.
What a place it is!  There is the temple mound before you, and Mount Zion. There are the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt by Saladin the Turk along the foundations of the original walls. The Garden of Gethsemane in the valley below, and a little sign pointing down into the vast white sea of tombs in the great cemetery by the Eastern gate.  The sign says ‘the tombs of Haggai and Zechariah.”  The enormous sense of the ages long past is in that place as you are taken up in the realization of your own smallness and insignificance in time.  I have never been to the Grand Canyon but it must be a similar experience. You see your own place in the great scheme of creation there. But standing on that mountain in Israel, you cannot help but be overwhelmed by your place in the great scheme of creation, the heritage of Biblical history.
But what is history to us?  If we don’t have the eyes to see it, it is nothing.  A lizard crawling on that same spot would feel nothing but a hunger for its next meal. But God gave us the ability to appreciate what has come before us, and what will come to pass. This gives us the ability to appreciate what God has done, is doing and will do. 
But this sense has to be developed, just like every other sense.  To learn from history we must develop the virtues of heritage, so we can sharpen our connection with the past.  These virtues include memory, honor, and fidelity.
Memory is the second virtue of heritage. We need to remember the past.  The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 143:5 
“I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
And consider what your hands have done.” 
Deuteronomy 32:7 says:
“Remember the days of old;
Consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
Your elders and they will explain to you”
Our modern church suffers from a kind of Spiritual Alzheimer’s, which can be almost as devastating to the soul as the real thing. To have memory is to have wisdom. We are told in Proverb repeatedly to remember the voices of the past. 
Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.
Prov 1:8-9
My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart,
for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity.
Prov 3:1-2
Listen, my sons, to a father's instruction; pay attention and gain understanding.
I give you sound learning, so do not forsake my teaching.
When I was a boy in my father's house, still tender,
and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said,
"Lay hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands and you will live. 
Prov 4:1-4
Listen, my son, accept what I say, and the years of your life will be many.
Prov 4:10
This small sampling of verses is enough to show how important memory was to the writer of Proverbs.  Listening to our heritage gives us the gift of wisdom, prosperity, success, and a long life. 
“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers.” Proverbs 22:28. Once removed, it’s almost impossible to reset. We cannot fully appreciate why that boundary was there in the first place until it is gone.
Honor is a recognition of the debt we owe people of the past.  A person may be dead but that doesn’t mean we owe them nothing. We still need to see that their work is carried forward.  The fifth commandment states “Honor your father and your mother, that your days be long upon the earth.” This commandment is considered the foundation for all human social relationships.   The Westminster Shorter Catechism elaborates by saying that included is this command is “preserving the honor, and performing the duties, belonging to everyone in their several places and relations, as superiors, inferiors, or equals.”
Honoring the past means submitting in love to the wishes and desires of those who have gone before, whether they are dead or alive.  Honor to the past does not mean we should slavishly copy the past. Sometimes it is imperative that we go against the wishes of our ancestors, as they found it necessary to go against the wishes of their own. Honoring them does not mean slavish obedience but respect and love. 
The Hebrew word for “honor” is "kebed", which means “weighty.”  To honor our ancestors is to place weight on their wishes.  Honoring our historical roots gives us the wisdom to face our current challenges.  Our parents left what wisdom they could behind, to show us how to survive.  To place no value on the wisdom of ancestral tradition hurts ourselves.  We must remember that we will someday be ancestors to others, and we will want to leave some of our own traditions behind, too. 

Fidelity goes beyond honor and memory. It is being faithful where we are placed. In Matthew 10:11, Jesus gave His disciples some unusual travel instructions.  "Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave.”
 But what if, while we are staying at a home, someone gives us a better offer?  What if the family down the street offers you a bigger room and better meals?  Why not just leave them and go where the house is bigger and the food better?
That’s where fidelity comes in.  To change houses is to insult our host. If we were led to stay with one hose, don’t change until there is a clear calling of God to go elsewhere.
St Benedict, in his rule for monks, called this stability. When a monk entered holy orders, he stayed at the house where he was called unless sent out for mission work. There was no reason to change location until God called them elsewhere. They stayed loyal to that one house.
Loyalty is a precious commodity in our world.  Most people change careers two or three times in a lifetime. They change churches several times. We even change spouses! 
But in our constantly changing lives, we miss the value of a deep, long-term relationship with the same people over time.  After many changes, we lose all sense of history. We become like the lizard on a rock in the Holy Land, who can only see what is before him, missing the grandeur of God’s working through the ages.  
Don’t ignore your heritage. Go deep in it.  In the next blog, we’ll talk about how.

Do you think that heritage is undervalued or overvalued in the church?  What purpose does heritage serve in the church.  I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you think.