Tradition!

Tradition!

You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition.

Mark 7:9

During rehearsals of Verdi’s great opera Otello by an American opera company, the tenor, who was preparing for the chief role, was perplexed by certain instructions from the stage director. The director insisted that, at a certain moment near a climax in the action, while the chorus was singing and during a rest of only a few bars in the tenor role, the tenor should walk to the back of the stage and return again toward the footlights to resume singing. Doing so required impeccable timing and seemed utterly senseless from the point of view of dramatic action.

The tenor protested, but the stage director would not yield, saying, “It is the tradition of the part.”

“Why?” asked the tenor.

“I don’t know,” came the reply. “It is the tradition. You must do it.”

“Who created this role?”

“Tamagno.”

Unable to do anything but accede to the director’s wishes, the tenor carried the incident in his memory. A year or so later, being in Italy, the American sought out the great, aged tenor Francesco Tamagno. When he was granted an interview, he asked, “Maestro, I wish to ask you about a certain piece of business in the role of Otello.”

The old man heard him out and was obviously puzzled. In an effort to recollect his motive, he peered for a time at the pages of the operatic score.

“Yes, yes,” he said at last, “it is very simple. Note that in the final passage Otello must sing a high B-flat. So, while the chorus was singing, I went upstage to spit.”

Father, we are often frozen in time by our long-held traditions, unable to move past them to more-effective or more-useful ways of doing things. Help us, Lord, to be willing to look into your Word to compare honestly our human traditions with your holy commands and freedoms. Help us not to worship our traditions over your truth. Amen.