Tag Archives: Hat

Traditions: Serious and Silly

April 23, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
Matthew 15:1-2 (NIV)

Traditions are a funny thing.

On one hand, I am a lover of history and so it easy for me to wax nostalgic about certain traditions. I can find incredible meaning and a depth of emotion within them. I can’t hear a horn blowing Taps without tearing up.

On the other hand, my individualist nature rebels when people take traditions too seriously.

In today’s chapter, there is an undercurrent that is easily lost on the casual reader. Matthew is careful to point out that some teachers of the law came from Jerusalem to inspect Jesus. Jerusalem was the home office. These officials were the big dogs sent to check up on all the rumors about an the upstart preacher who was #trending in flyover country by the Sea of Galilee.

The first thing that the grand inquisitors notice is that Jesus and His followers don’t follow the tradition of ceremonially washing their hands before they eat. This is a serious tradition that continues to this day. When I had the honor or visiting Jerusalem and enjoying a Sabbath feast at the King David hotel, there was a sink right there in the dining room for people to ceremonially wash their hands before the meal.

Traditions die hard.

Jesus pokes back at the inquisition, pointing out that they are rabid about the “tradition” of ceremonially washing their hands before a meal while completely ignoring God’s command to honor their parents if they can profit from it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I mentioned in a recent post that I like hats. Growing up, I was forever getting in trouble with my father for wearing my hat at the dinner table. I always thought this odd because my friend Chef Alex is required to wear a hat around food to avoid hair falling into it. So the chef must wear a hat around the food but if I wear a hat at the table I’m offending people.

Even a year or so ago I stopped at my local church to pray during the lunch hour during our local gathering’s regularly scheduled Thursday prayer time. One of the sisters who serves by praying over people came by to ask if she could pray for me, which was kind of her. She, however, asked me to remove my hat as she was offended I would wear it inside the church. But, when I was in Jerusalem and attended synagogue or approached the Wailing Wall I was required to cover my head.

People are silly about traditions.

Jesus makes this point in today’s chapter though I have observed that it never gets much airplay on Sunday mornings. Poking at people’s sacred cows is a bit like poking a stick at a rabid dog. I’m not the sick one, but I’m probably going to get bit and I have to ask myself if it’s really worth it. When my sister asked me to remove my hat before she would pray over me I respectfully honored her request, though everything inside of me wanted to press her as to why she was offended. She probably would have quoted Paul’s letter to the believers in Corinth in which he says that, “Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.” But he follows that up by stating, “But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.” I noticed that my sister was not wearing a head covering.

Perhaps I should have offered her my hat.

I also noticed that Paul wrote to believers in four different letters to “greet one another with a holy kiss.” My prayer sister didn’t so much as pucker her lips as she asked me to remove my hat, dangit.

People are silly about traditions.

In the quiet this morning, I love the fact that Jesus poked the big dogs from Jerusalem regarding their rabid hypocrisy when it came to their traditions. Less than a week after Good Friday, I’m equally reminded that these same rabid, big dogs will quite literally kill Him for it.

People get very serious about their traditions.

As a disciple of Jesus, I personally prefer to care more about the heart issues Jesus was concerned about and less about human traditions that make little or no sense in the grand scheme of things. But, that’s just me.

“Down, Cujo. Down!”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

Different

March 3, 2025 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

“‘You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.’”
Leviticus 11:47 (NIV)

I like to wear hats. I have a lot of them. Not the ubiquitous baseball cap, but actual hats like a pork pie and fedora. It’s funny how often people will comment to me about it. I suppose that it’s, in part, because I’m an Enneagram Type Four, the “Individualist,” and we actually like to be a little different. It’s a thing.

Beginning with today’s chapter, we’re entering a new section of the priestly instruction manual God gave his newly appointed high priest, Aaron, and his sons. It was also an instruction manual for the Hebrew people and how God wanted them to live. This section of the manual deals with being ritually clean and ritually unclean along with prescribed rituals for dealing with any uncleanness.

Today’s chapter begins with food. God tells the Hebrews that there are certain creatures they can eat and others that they cannot. In some cases, scholars have argued that the restrictions given had certain health benefits. For example, cud chewing animals tend to secrete the toxins of the food they chew so by the time it gets to their stomach, only the most nutritious part of the food is left and the meat of the animal is healthier. While this is true of cud chewing animals, this healthy versus unhealthy distinction is not clear through all of the various types of creatures God labels clean and unclean.

What is clear is that God has chosen the Hebrews to be His people. He’s already breaking all religious convention of that day by being the one and only God and by choosing a people to perpetually dwell with, lead, instruct, and provide for. With these instructions, God is ensuring that His people will be different from all of the other peoples around them. They eat differently, they have a completely different belief system, they behave differently, and live differently.

Hundreds of years later, when God’s Son, Jesus, shows up, He will instruct His followers that they are to be different, as well. He spoke of food, as well, but this time it was metaphorically. He said that everyone knows a plant or tree by the fruit it bears. Some bear good fruit you can eat. Some bear bad fruit you need to avoid. So, He expected His disciples to bear “good fruit” through our thoughts, words, actions, and relationships that are marked with love in all its positive varietal attributes. Jesus graduates the “difference” from dietary to spiritual, from food to behavior, from meat to love.

In both cases, the underlying mission is for the world to know God through His people, that they might see, believe, and follow. With his fledgling Hebrew tribes in the toddler stages of humanity, it begins with simple instructions for how to eat. It’s much like teaching a little child how to dress, eat, and wash their hands. God is taking baby steps in His relationship with humanity the way every parent does with a child.

So in the quiet this morning, I think back to my hats. It is a little different, which I confess that I like. Nevertheless, it’s not the different that Jesus asks of me, and of all His followers. The difference He wants people to notice in me is in the way I love them and others, the way He has loved me: generously, graciously, mercifully, humbly, and sacrificially. That’s a pretty “clean” and easy instruction. Lord, help me not dirty it up today.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Hats, Fasting, and a Couple of Important Questions

January 8, 2018 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

“Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?”
Zechariah 7: 5 (NIV)

Yesterday I had the privilege of leading our local gathering of Jesus’ followers. I was kicking off a series of messages on Paul’s letter to the believers in Corinth. And so, I’ve been mired in studying the letter and the situation in Corinth around 55 A.D. One of the themes that bubbles to the surface over and over again are instructions that Paul gave which are rooted in contemporary Corinthian culture. Other instructions are universal to human culture in all times.

I find myself asking, “What instructions were for the Corinthian believers at that time (that don’t fit our current realities)? What instructions may speak to me in 2018 (that the Corinthians couldn’t fathom almost 2000 years ago)? What instruction are ours (they apply to anyone, at any time, in any culture)?”

For example, one set of instructions is about covering your head. In first century Corinth there were layers of meaning in the cultural and religious aspects of whether you covered your head and when. Some of it came from Jewish law and tradition (which the Greek believers probably thought silly) and some of it was the practical differentiation of woman broadcasting in publicly that she was not one of Aphrodite’s temple priestess-prostitutes.

The truth of the matter is that until a generation or so ago, the tradition of women covering their heads in church and men removing their caps/hats was still a big thing culturally. The local Costume Shop has hundreds and hundreds of gorgeous women’s hats with cute little veils that locals have donated over the years (see featured photo). There was a time just a few decades ago when a woman would not go to church without a hat on. Today, in our culture, if a woman does so it’s simply a fashionable novelty.

Likewise, my dad and I have a good-natured, on-going feud when we’re gathered for family meals and it’s time to pray and eat. My dad gives me grief if I have a cap on. I have never been able to discern a good reason for having to remove my hat when the family is informally ordering a pizza and watching the game. I joke with my dad that it’s actually more sanitary if I keep my cap on. He always wins the argument on his authority and my respect, but I’ve still never heard a good reason.

The bottom-line question is: “Why (or why not) are we doing this?”

That was the exact question God had for the prophet Zechariah. Zechariah and company inquired of the Lord whether they should continue to observe traditional months of fasting. God replied, “Why are you fasting?” God then goes on to point out that what Zac and the boys are not doing are things like being just, showing compassion to people who are different, looking out for the needs of orphans, widows, and the oppressed. The implied question God is asking as I read between the lines is this: “Why would I care if you self-righteously starve yourself in some public display of your religiosity when you’re missing the heart of what I desire from you — to love others as you love yourself?”

Good question, and a good question for those of us who claim to follow Jesus and have wrapped ourselves in religious traditions of all kinds over the years.

“What does God care about? What, therefore, should I really care about? What in my religious practices, rituals, and cultural rules do I make a higher priority than the things God truly cares about?

Chapter-a-Day

Calm Assurance in Stormy Seas

July 6, 2015 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Just before daybreak, Paul urged all of them to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been in suspense and remaining without food, having eaten nothing. Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive; for none of you will lose a hair from your heads.” After he had said this, he took bread; and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat. Then all of them were encouraged and took food for themselves. Acts 27:33-36 (NRSV)

I grew up on the water, and as a boy I wanted nothing more than to be a sailor. There was a period of my childhood, around the age of nine, that I wore a sailor hat all of the time. My mother still jokes about finding me asleep in bed with my sailor hat on and jumping into the pool forgetting it was still on my head.

Our summer vacation every year was two weeks on Rainy Lake which lies on the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. It’s a large lake and our daily fishing excursion normally entailed a long trip in our rented john boat across a vast expanse of open water. When storms came up, the white caps could swell to decent heights. It could definitely make the trip back to camp in our small boat a rather frightening affair for a small kid.

I can remember as a young boy paying attention to my dad during those seemingly endless trips in stormy waters. If dad was calm as the boat rocked and rolled, if I looked back at dad and received a “Isn’t this fun?” smile, then I knew everything was going to be okay.

I thought about those moments this morning as I read the chapter and imagined being on board the ship with Paul and Dr. Luke as their small ship was mercilessly pounded by a raging storm for two entire weeks. The fear and mental weariness among passengers and crew had to have been immeasurable. And then Paul speaks with faith and assurance. He smiles, and encourages them. “Take some food. Be strong. Don’t be afraid. Everything is going to be okay. We’re all going to make it through this.”

This morning I’m thankful for parents who comforted me as a child in stormy times. I’m thankful for teachers, counselors, mentors and friends who walked with me through various difficult stretches of life’s journey and gave me the encouragement I needed to weather the storm. I’m praying today that I might return the favor to those in my sphere of influence who face their own frightening storm clouds and the gusty winds of life change.