Tradition! Tradition!

I’ve always been a sucker for good, old musicals. Oklahoma, Singing in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and the list goes on. Yup, I’m one of those people. So a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed that Fiddler on the Roof was on Prime, I put it on my watchlist. 

But everyone knows you can’t just jump into a 3 hour movie without forethought. It didn’t take me too long to decide that it wouldn’t be a waste of my life to watch it again and plus I’d probably only watch the first half anyways….yeah….I watched the whole thing.

There are a couple of things that really stood out to me this time. Which is saying something considering I grew up on that movie. My sisters and I would sing those songs on car rides and while we did dishes. Harmony and everything. I have it memorized to the point that I left the room for a minute just as the line came up, “We’ve been waiting for the Messiah our whole lives; wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?” And I called out from the other side of my apartment, “He’s already come, Motel!” (Yeah, I talk to movies when I’m by myself.)

But back to life lessons, people. I was SO struck by how much Tevye talks to God throughout the whole movie. He’s literally in constant communication about every single thing. I’m not saying he always has the best attitude but I’m saying it actually really convicted me to look at my life and see how it compared.

Also, when I watched the scene before the Sabbath it suddenly reminded me of church. They are rushing around crazily to get everything done before the Sabbath comes. They are arguing with each other, shouting, everything is chaos. And then suddenly it’s like, “Okay, hush, it’s the Sabbath now.” Whoa. Have you ever had a Sunday like that? Have you ever had a crazy morning where nothing goes right, you fight on the way to church, and then get to church and pretend like everything is perfect? Yeah, me too.

And lastly, I got a huge chuckle right at the beginning of the movie. Tevye is, of course, explaining the basis of the whole story line: TRADITION! He explains about the traditions and then says, “You may ask, ‘How did this tradition get started?’ I’ll tell you!…..I don’t know. But it’s a tradition!”

And I laughed because there are SO many things in our churches today that are like that. Things we do simply because that’s the way they have always been done and no one even remembers why. BUT IT’S A TRADITION! And sometimes you can look at Scripture and see why a certain thing is done and other times it’s not clear until you try to change it. There may or may not be a reason. I’m thankful to be a part of a church that is becoming more open to new ideas little by little.

Sometimes I need to remember myself that change is okay. Feel free to remind me anytime. I’ll try to be like Tevye and examine to see if it’s something that really matters or not.