We will drink no wine, for our ancestor Jonadab the son of Rechab commanded us, 

"You shall never drink wine, neither you nor your children."

- Jeremiah 35.6

When Bear Bryant led his second-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide into the 1979 Sugar Bowl against the top-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions, fans and sports writers immediately noticed that something was missing: the Bear's signature checked fedora. The legendary football coach had sported that distinctive headgear throughout his career, but on this day he appeared bare-headed on the sidelines.

Asked about the sartorial alteration, Bryant replied, "My mama always told me to take off my hat indoors."

That forty-fifth edition of the famous bowl game took place in the New Orleans Superdome back when roofed football venues were still something of a novelty. Despite everything he had riding on the contest, and despite the notable superstition of coaches about changing a winning routine, the Bear put deference to his mother above all other considerations. (Must've worked: The Tide defeated Joe Paterno's outfit in a hard-fought 14-7 battle and Bryant notched his fifth national title.)

When the prophet Jeremiah, acting on God's instructions, invited the Rechabites to belly up to the bar, they cited a similar precedent: Family tradition forbade them from tippling. The Rechabites weren't anybody special. Though they could claim distant kinship to Moses by marriage, they were a small outfit who scraped a living on the nomadic fringe of Israelite life. In unfamiliar circumstances, surrounded by the elite of society and with the Babylonian marauders stalking their ancestral stomping grounds, they could have been forgiven for taking a belt, perhaps out of fear or politeness or the simple notion that in times like these, Cary Nation herself might need a stiff drink. But they held fast: We don't do that in our family.

Jeremiah suddenly switches roles and goes from barkeep to prophet, using the Rechabites as his sermon illustration. They heeded the dusty mandate of a dead great-grandfather while Israel spurned the commandments of the living God. Jeremiah carefully calibrates the contrast: The text makes seven references to the "ancestors" of these gypsies, and contains seven statements by the Lord regarding obedience. ("Obey" and "listen" are the same words in Hebrew.)

Final note: "obey" translates the Hebrew word sh'ma that begins the ancient Israelite creed in Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone." For God, "hearing" is not a mere auditory phenomenon but an active response. Hearing may start with the ears, but it always ends with the heart and the hands.

To this day, I won't walk through a door ahead of a woman, because that's what my mother taught me and I am far more afraid of her than of the fiercest feminist who ever burned a bra. I sometimes wonder if I fear God to the same extent.

When the seconds tick off the clock, with the game on the line, how faithful are we to the living law of our living God?