Author: Bill Kirkwood

Pagan roots of Christmas and Easter(?)

Posted on by Bill Kirkwood

It began with a simple Facebook post from a friend who, after taking down Christmas decorations on Dec. 27, asked when others dismantled their decorations. Some had already taken theirs down while others, wanting to preserve some Christmas cheer at the end of a dreary year, wanted to keep them up longer. A few mentioned the traditional season of Christmas which lasts for 12 days, ending on January 5. They would undecorate after Christmas was over on January 6.

In reply to my comment about these 12 days of Christmas, one friend-of-a-friend brought up the topic of whether I would agree that Christmas and Easter had their roots in historical pagan celebrations. My short answer was “No to Easter, maybe to Christmas.” The answer required a lot more space than FB etiquette called for, so here goes . . . 

Our celebration of Easter Sunday (or more properly Pasca or Resurrection Sunday) flowed out of the Jewish celebrations of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost (a 50 day observation following the Feast) which in the first century had already been celebrated for about 1300 years. We must realize that at the time of the exodus almost the entire world, except for this group of Hebrew slaves, was pagan. There were hundreds of gods and thousands of shrines and temples to these gods. Paganism was the culture of the day . . . the water they swam in. This was also true in the time of Jesus. Remembering that the first Christians were Jews, we can understand that Passover, the Feast, and Pentecost were part of their upbringing, their major holidays, like Christmas and New Year are to most of us. But for these early believers Passover took on new meaning as they celebrated the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus. In fact for the first 300 years of church history Pasca was not a day, it was a period of 50 days. Celebrating something as monumental as a risen Savior required more than a day . . . it required 7 whole weeks!

While there were almost certainly pagan celebrations of springtime in those days, the true roots of our Pasca/Easter holidays flow out of the Jewish holidays which had already been practiced for over 1000 years.

Now Christmas, on the other hand, may have had its roots in the pagan festivals surrounding the winter solstice. There are 2 main theories of how December 25 came to be the Festival of the Nativity.

1. The Romans observed Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra, the god of the sun, during this time of year. In the 4th century Christian leaders, seeing hordes of pagans entering the church, began adopting the festival of Saturnalia, saying that its final day, December 25, was Jesus’ birthday. The hope was that a pagan holiday would be transformed into a Christian celebration. Unfortunately the result was that many of these “converts” continued in their pagan practices, and Christmas was a raucous season of revelry and debauchery.

The problems with this theory are twofold- no early Christian writers refer to changing the Christian calendar in this way, and it would be unlikely, during a period when Christians were martyred for standing against the pagan culture, that leaders would deliberately adopt a pagan holiday as Jesus’ birthday. 

2. The second theory of the roots of Christmas has to do with calculating the date of Jesus’ death. Early Christian Fathers believed that a perfect life would begin and end on the same day. In the year 200 Tertullian calculated that Jesus died on March 25 on the Roman (solar) calendar. Therefore the perfect Savior was also conceived on March 25. Jesus was born a perfect 9 months later on December 25. Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. This theory was affirmed by Augustine around the year 400.

So now you see why I replied as I did to the query of the friend-of-a-friend. Our Easter/Pasca celebration had its roots in Jewish tradition, and Christmas perhaps had some tradition in pagan holidays. Either way, for followers of Jesus there is nothing pagan of these sacred days when we celebrate the two most significant days in human history.

“Me” songs vs. “God” songs in worship

Posted on by Bill Kirkwood

I’ve been ruined. For one of my classes I read and wrote about the criteria for choosing songs used in worship. One of those criteria considers whether a song (or “song set”) is “me-centered” or “God-centered.” The other day I was asked if there wasn’t room in church to sing a song about what God has done for me. It’s a very good question.

We live in a consumerist, materialist culture. Nearly every choice I make in a day centers on what I like or don’t like. Scrolling through my Facebook feed I decide every second whether or not I like a post enough to stop and read. Watching American Idol(or any other talent show) I judge what I like or don’t like. Every commercial, every song, every route I drive to work, every incoming phone call, every fast-food restaurant, I decide what I like or don’t like. This mindset is the reality and totality of our existence, like a fish surrounded with water. For ten thousand minutes every week, life is about “me.”

So when we walk through the doors of our church we are still in this mode of reference. We constantly judge the experience according to what I like or don’t like. The songs we sing, the volume of the music, the style of the preacher, the perfume of the person sitting next to me, the cute (or not so cute) child two rows back, the temperature, the comfort of the seats, and a hundred other things.

I contend that for the seventy-five minutes the church is gathered in one place (set against the ten thousand they spend not gathered), we must do everything in our power to set our attention on the only reality that truly matters. That reality is that that the God of inestimable excellence in glory, holiness, and love has invited us into his presence. He chooses to speak to us, he chooses to listen to us, he chooses us to be his people. In the words of John Jefferson Davis, “The ecclesia,the assembly of the living God, the true church, is that entity constituted by those people elected and called by God, assembled by his authority in his presence to experience and respond to his presence in the worship-event.”[1]

Notice the only defined human activities in the above statement are to assemble, experience, and respond. It’s not a response that rates the event or the environment. It is a response to the One who invited us into this event, the One who delights to interact with his chosen people. The only “rating” that should happen is to assess the worth of the One before whom we assemble.  For seventy-five minutes we have the opportunity to focus our fickle attention on the God of inestimable excellence. We worship pastors must do all in our power to counter the ten-thousand minutes of self-centeredness, and have laser-like focus for these seventy-five minutes on our God.

Davis continues to examine what is the nature of an individual Christian. Once we are in Christ, we are no longer an “autonomous, individualistic self, but a trinitarian and ecclesial self.” [2]To put in plainer English, when we are saved we enter into the unique community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Triune God inhabits us (John 14:16, 23). These words are spoken over us in our baptism. Baptism also ushers us into the body of Christ constituted in the church. While we remain individuals, we are now individuals in relation to Christ and his body. Think of a married couple: while they remain a man and woman, in their new condition of marriage they are one person. Same with the individual in Christ. He or she is indeed an individual, but now is identified in relation to the Triune God and the body of Christ, the church. So Paul can write, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

So back to the question of songs that focus on what God has done for me; are they the best songs to use in our 75 minutes together? Chew on the above thoughts and we’ll continue soon. Tell me what you think here.

 

[1]John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence(Downer’s Grove, IVP Academic, 2010), 62-63.

[2]Davis, Worship,71,

Is God limited?

Posted on by Bill Kirkwood

When we consider our relationship with God, is he limited in his actions toward us? The short answer is, “Yes, God self-limits himself in response to the nature of our relationship with him.” In any relationship there is a relational distance between participants. In intimate relationships the distance is small. Sometimes that space grows large as a relationship experiences hurt, anger, or ambivalence. This is true in the divine-human relationship just as it is in human relationships. When we grow distant from God, God is not able to be the kind of God that God wants to be. God’s possibilities within the relationship are more limited.* Consider Isaiah 59:1-2, , “Look! The LORD does not lack the power to save, nor are his ears too dull to hear, but your misdeeds have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden his face from you so that you aren’t heard.”

When we do not stay close to God through the dialogue of prayer God becomes distant. We like to say “If you are far away from God, guess who moved?” And while it is true he is always near, he becomes limited in our life as a result of our ambivalence toward him. This is the nature of any real relationship. Look at it this way: if he just created us to do everything he wanted, that’s not relationship, it’s slavery, or merely robotic response. In order to maintain the integrity of relationship both parties must be open to being affected by the actions of the other party.*

By allowing humans to be a true party in the relationship, according to Fretheim, “God makes himself vulnerable. People can now speak words to God that hurt–words that reject his Word, words that presume upon the relationship, words inimical to the continuance of a harmonious relationship.”*

Finally, if the distance grows between us and God, something else will fill the void…the enemy and evil. See Jer. 12:7, “I have abandoned my house; I have deserted my inheritance. I have given the one I love into the power of her enemies.

It is so important that we stay close to God through the dialogue of prayer.

*Taken from the article by Terence Fretheim entitled “Prayer in the Old Testament: Creating Space in the World for God” in the book A Primer on Prayer edited by Paul Sponheim, pp. 52-55.