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Posted: June 27th, 2007 at 2:12am By: Rev. Rebecca Schlatter
Last Sunday many Christians observed the feast day of John the Baptist, the prophet who "prepared the way" for Jesus. In my Lutheran church, we aren't as well educated on the saints as some of our fellow Christians, and some wondered how this date was chosen.
The traditional answer is simple but not particularly compelling: According to Luke's gospel, the mothers of John and Jesus — Elizabeth and Mary — were related, and were pregnant at the same time. Traditionally, then, John was born six months before Jesus, which helped locate his feast day six months before Christmas.
I'm more intrigued by a more practical explanation: Christians felt the need to channel midsummer energy into an outlet they considered more worthy than pre-Christian revelry. Just as winter solstice traditions were folded into Christmas, so the summer solstice became a day to celebrate Jesus' precursor, John the Baptist.
From the beginning, Christians have not exactly appreciated anything they considered "pagan." The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, carries injunctions against various kinds of nature worship and "observing special days and months and seasons and years" (Galatians 4:10).
This prejudice against so-called paganism isn't limited to ancient or medieval times. I once heard of a late-20th-century, mainline Christian church built on a hillside with stunning views of trees, mountains and sky — and built without a single clear window. As the story went, that was because the leaders were afraid people might be distracted from God's Word and start worshiping the trees instead. That story may or may not be historically verifiable, but the fact that it's believable at all illustrates an age-old fear: Christians approach dangerous territory when they pay too much attention to nature.
In this fecund time of midsummer, nature is hard to ignore. Since ancient times, midsummer has been a time of celebration and fertility rites. Even in the high desert where I live, this is a time of blooming. You don't even need windows to smell and feel the richness and heat in the air.
You can't suppress or argue against such sensations, and I can't help but admire the way some of my Christian ancestors knew that. Instead of eliminating midsummer celebrations, they transformed them — building the "new house" of St. John's Day from the "old bricks" of solstice and New Testament traditions.
I didn't learn about this connection in church, however. I discovered solstice traditions in my early 20s, when I became more distant from the church and read avidly on New Age spiritualities. From them I gathered some interesting and often helpful "bricks," many related to nature. When I started coming closer to church again, I wanted to keep those bricks for the new house of faith I was building.
Solstice was one of those bricks. I discovered how the seasons could help me sense God at work in and around me. Days that marked changing seasons provided a model for turning points in my own life, and helped me pay attention to them. I particularly liked the summer solstice, with its long hours of daylight and traditions of bonfires. In fact, I even had a solstice party for my birthday one year. Our tame gathering around the indoor fireplace unfortunately lacked a bonfire's drama. But we made the best of it, writing down what we wanted "cleaned out" of our lives at the turning of the year, and then burning the papers.
Like many who say they "find God in nature," I too find God at work in the seasons of nature and of my own life. I find that same God in the seasons of the church: Advent (which deals with the darkness of the year and of life), Christmas, Lent (which means "springtime"), Easter, and the long growing season of Pentecost (in other churches called "Ordinary Time," extending through the summer and fall).
But I can see why some people assume that "finding God in nature" is antithetical to "finding God in church"; Christians do have a long history of suspicion toward, distance from, and co-optation of nature celebrations. Perhaps now we need to improve upon our ancestors' strategies. Perhaps we need to build a communal "new house" of faith that has room for a closer relationship to nature — appreciating it, preserving it and truly belonging to it.
In the literal "house" of my current church, beautiful nature photographs grace the walls of the sanctuary. As a downtown church, we don't have windows either, but these photos provide windows to the world's beauty. I'm fairly certain that no one is worshiping the trees and flowers and mountains in these photos. Rather, they remind us to worship the Creator of this amazing, cyclical, energetic, fecund world in which we live.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter.
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Last Sunday many Christians observed the feast day of John the Baptist, the prophet who "prepared the way" for Jesus. In my Lutheran church, we aren't as well educated on the saints as some of our fellow Christians, and some wondered how this date was chosen.
The traditional answer is simple but not particularly compelling: According to Luke's gospel, the mothers of John and Jesus — Elizabeth and Mary — were related, and were pregnant at the same time. Traditionally, then, John was born six months before Jesus, which helped locate his feast day six months before Christmas.
I'm more intrigued by a more practical explanation: Christians felt the need to channel midsummer energy into an outlet they considered more worthy than pre-Christian revelry. Just as winter solstice traditions were folded into Christmas, so the summer solstice became a day to celebrate Jesus' precursor, John the Baptist.
From the beginning, Christians have not exactly appreciated anything they considered "pagan." The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, carries injunctions against various kinds of nature worship and "observing special days and months and seasons and years" (Galatians 4:10).
This prejudice against so-called paganism isn't limited to ancient or medieval times. I once heard of a late-20th-century, mainline Christian church built on a hillside with stunning views of trees, mountains and sky — and built without a single clear window. As the story went, that was because the leaders were afraid people might be distracted from God's Word and start worshiping the trees instead. That story may or may not be historically verifiable, but the fact that it's believable at all illustrates an age-old fear: Christians approach dangerous territory when they pay too much attention to nature.
In this fecund time of midsummer, nature is hard to ignore. Since ancient times, midsummer has been a time of celebration and fertility rites. Even in the high desert where I live, this is a time of blooming. You don't even need windows to smell and feel the richness and heat in the air.
You can't suppress or argue against such sensations, and I can't help but admire the way some of my Christian ancestors knew that. Instead of eliminating midsummer celebrations, they transformed them — building the "new house" of St. John's Day from the "old bricks" of solstice and New Testament traditions.
I didn't learn about this connection in church, however. I discovered solstice traditions in my early 20s, when I became more distant from the church and read avidly on New Age spiritualities. From them I gathered some interesting and often helpful "bricks," many related to nature. When I started coming closer to church again, I wanted to keep those bricks for the new house of faith I was building.
Solstice was one of those bricks. I discovered how the seasons could help me sense God at work in and around me. Days that marked changing seasons provided a model for turning points in my own life, and helped me pay attention to them. I particularly liked the summer solstice, with its long hours of daylight and traditions of bonfires. In fact, I even had a solstice party for my birthday one year. Our tame gathering around the indoor fireplace unfortunately lacked a bonfire's drama. But we made the best of it, writing down what we wanted "cleaned out" of our lives at the turning of the year, and then burning the papers.
Like many who say they "find God in nature," I too find God at work in the seasons of nature and of my own life. I find that same God in the seasons of the church: Advent (which deals with the darkness of the year and of life), Christmas, Lent (which means "springtime"), Easter, and the long growing season of Pentecost (in other churches called "Ordinary Time," extending through the summer and fall).
But I can see why some people assume that "finding God in nature" is antithetical to "finding God in church"; Christians do have a long history of suspicion toward, distance from, and co-optation of nature celebrations. Perhaps now we need to improve upon our ancestors' strategies. Perhaps we need to build a communal "new house" of faith that has room for a closer relationship to nature — appreciating it, preserving it and truly belonging to it.
In the literal "house" of my current church, beautiful nature photographs grace the walls of the sanctuary. As a downtown church, we don't have windows either, but these photos provide windows to the world's beauty. I'm fairly certain that no one is worshiping the trees and flowers and mountains in these photos. Rather, they remind us to worship the Creator of this amazing, cyclical, energetic, fecund world in which we live.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter.
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