We're not good because we are old. . .

In my neck of the woods a roofing company advertises how long they have been around and says We are not good because we are old, we are old because we are good.  It is an interesting way of putting it.  In other words, old is not automatically good but one does not stay in business long without being good -- without delivering to the customer and earning their loyalty and trust.

The Church does not suffer from a shortage of folks who believe that being ever new is the key to revival.  Whether in liturgical or non-liturgical denominations, there are many voices who insist we must change or die, go with the times, and re-invent ourselves from time to time.  They have been largely successful in evangelicalism and moderately successful in nearly every other tradition -- except, perhaps, Orthodoxy.

No one defers absolutely to the past.  But only a food would dismiss the voice of those who went before without giving due consideration to their witness.  Yet the key here is neither antiquity nor modernity but faithfulness.  If I might rephrase the advertising slogan,  We are not faithful because we are old, we are old because we are faithful.  Faithfulness bears the good fruit of longevity.  Faithfulness endures every new old heresy and new bad old idea.  It is no secret that Jesus said "He who endures to the end shall be saved."  Endurance is the victory of faithfulness that is steadfast before temptation, steady under trials, and patient in trouble.  

At the time of the Reformation, the cause was not novelty or newness but faithfulness.  Whether or not you agree that this movement was salutary, it would be a false characterization of Luther and his cohort to say that they wanted to breathe fresh new air into the Church.  If anything, their claim and goal was to breathe the air of the ancient fathers, to be refreshed by Scripture and authentic tradition, in restoring things gone astray.  Needless to say, not everyone who claims their legacy is as committed to the catholicity and faithfulness of the Church as they were.  That is an ongoing struggle and not one battle after which you may rest on your laurels.

The Church will not decline because we failed to be new but she will surely suffer from failing to be old, to be faithful, to live out and confess the yesterday, today, and forever faith.  We do not need to constantly reinvent ourselves or upset the apple cart on Sunday morning.  We need faithfulness, anchored to the Word of God, within the living tradition of the faithful who went before us, and determined to make sure the body lives by the head which is Christ.  When and where that happens, the Church need not navel gaze at herself to see how things are going but march ahead while the saints pray her on to the day when heaven and earth shall be forever one before the throne of God.